Food! Glorious Food!

Food! Glorious food! I love food. And that fact is now more excruciatingly evident than ever before. The reason? Well I’ll let you guess. It starts with a ‘d’ ends with a ‘t’ and there is an ‘ie’ in-between it. I’ve never liked dieting because I like eating. But because I like eating, I am now dieting. Fascinating how that works.

In France, the temptations are great. If you’re hungry or lusting after a freshly baked baguette you might as well stay inside munching on celery, because baby, this town is full of freshly-baked-baguette-carrying-Frenchies wafting the delicious smell into your nostrils.

Walking around Saint Germain or le Marais is torture. Everyone is eating and drinking, diving into their plates of golden crisp French-fries accompanied by a pan-fried sumptuous-semi-bleeding steak and a bottle of a rounded Bordeaux. Aaand if you’re really naughty you follow up your already calorie packed lunch with a plate of profiteroles (or bourbon vanilla ice cream filled cream-puffs) drizzled with warm dark hot chocolate. Excusez-moi but I am drooling.

One of the French dieting standards is quinoa. Hmm. No longer drooling.

The woman who says, “Oh, I just love quinoa! It is so versatile. Healthy too!” is dead on the inside and has chalk for taste buds. I’m going to go out on a limb and declare that there is no enticing way to prepare quinoa. I’ve made it like a risotto, put it in salads, substituted it for couscous like a tabuli and yet, it is still reminiscent of being force-fed a plate of hair.

All jokes aside ladies: if you were confronted in a restaurant and were given the specials, one being a tagliatelle in a white wine sauce with chanterelle mushrooms or anything with quinoa in it…which would you choose?

Hello! Heart-attack-on-a-plate-s’il-te-plait!

As my mothers hairdresser once said, “I’d rather be fat and eat my cheesecake.”

And as I say, “I wish I could eat everything and be a size 0.”

And as the world tells me, “That is impossible, suck it up and eat your quinoa.”