Guilt

I should have baked today. I could have baked today. I virtually promised that I would bake today. Yet I did not. Normally, it is deeply satisfying to bake on a Sunday. It’s as if you are storing up for the week: here’s the bread (more likely cake) that’ll see us through in the tough days ahead. And by Sunday night all the reject croissants that I haul in from L’Etoile are pretty much gone. There is a breadbox in the kitchen, but it stands empty.

Perhaps this low/no carb era that we are living through is at the bottom of the baking inertia that has overcome me. I know and understand that the act of baking is sinfully bad and I am only providing unnecessary carbs for those who would rather see themselves with a steak and an egg than with a piece of raspberry tart with a dark chocolate crème patisserie or a flourless chocolate cassis cake (that has one third of a cup of the dark currant liqueur and half a pound of bittersweet Ghirardelli). So I buy the fresh currants for decoration, but I neglected to bake the cake.

I remind myself that the low carb craze isn’t new. Back in the 60s, during my first brush with ‘dieting,’ I picked up this booklet (for a mere $.35):


reading material from 1965 

On the first page I read:


the motivating introduction 

Did people really once diet on sauerkraut juice? The fashion surrounding food consumption is truly remarkable. At least I know all this will pass. And in the meantime, I am definitely going to bake. Tomorrow.

Sunday reading and zesty grinning

Ann, my blogging compatriot, says (here), in between chews on yummy Espresso Royale caramels (I love those!), that she hasn’t missed a day in posting on her blog. I’m right there, too, but it hasn’t been without challenge. When I started this blog on January 2nd, I thought that the hardest thing would be to feel motivated to write on a regular basis (at least twice a day). In fact, finding motivation has been the easiest. But finding a hospitable environment for blogging has been at times trying -- there are so many pressures in each day to do everything but blog!

And so it is always inspiring to read a few good words on this Great Blogging Project in the blog of another (see post here). Truly, to know that something you wrote would give someone even the faintest of smiles is completely gratifying. (I read your terrific blog regularly too!)

This blogger uses the words “a good enjoyer” to describe a person who takes pleasure in things. It’s true, I’ve been accused for a long time of having a wildly happy approach to each day. When I was a kid, my parents gave me the mawkishly old-fashioned label of “ray of sunshine” (we were in the 1950s, the world was less jaded, it sounded even charming then). Throughout my younger years I felt like I should act in ways to give substance to the label. Too much pressure? Not at all! I liked the role, played it effortlessly and with a great deal of zest.

But I was a misfit in my own family. My mother was moody, my father was on his own cloud and my sister was a more brooding child (she was molding her own more artistic temperament to a family structure that would not accommodate it). So there I was, all grins and happy plans, without the enthusiasm of others to match my own.

Eventually I learned to temper it somewhat. But even the greatest feeling of frustration remains always just a passing phase for me. I’ll wake up and suddenly the list of possibilities is before me. The cloud passes. I’m the kid with the zesty grin all over again.

Here’s a photo from 1958 (I’m not quite 5 years old): I am in a dining room, in the Polish mountain town of Zakopane, feeling…happy.


just another day