My New Year’s Resolution is to eat brie, really good olives and antipasto, and more chocolate. I realize that consuming large quantities of these will result in the opposite of what most people hope for – I will pack on the pounds, instead of losing the holiday bulge.
I suppose moderation is the key.
But I never really do these things any way. Chicken nuggets, meatballs and frozen store brand lasagnes fill my freezer. Meals are fast, kid-focused and usually feature something to dip stuff in. Crackers are something for store brand mozzarella cheese and Hubby has a deadly fear of olives.
Fancy foods are off our horizon. The last time I bought fancy olives from the grocery store olive bar might have been around 2008. And this is so sad because I really love fancy olives and all things salty and oil-soaked. Heck, I used to make my own olive tapenade from scratch and eat it spread over hot, olive oil drizzled crostini. Sigh.
The chocolate, well, that’s a more regular purchase, I buy some every couple weeks. But I’m going to buy more. And lots of it.
The brie – well, I’ve never even bought it before, and had only had the nice melty brie at my urbane sister’s holiday events. For me brie was always something in the land of very special occasions, accompanied by champagne.
And the S. Pellegrino mineral water I washed it down with? I’ve never had that in my entire life, and I bought it because it seemed fancy-smancy.
What happened?
I bought all this stuff expecting to have the in-laws over for a holiday dinner, and I knew they’d like it. Or at least they’d pretend to like it and then gossip about it to the rest of the family later. Then we had the great MIL-meltdown which led to us not talking to them and of course they did not come over for dinner.
Which meant that we had all this fancy food and drink sitting around.
Normally meals for us bring home the truth in that great line from Christmas Story “My mother has not had a hot meal to herself for 15 years.”
That is the story of my life. During our small family Christmas dinner I had to microwave my plate twice, it kept cooling off before I could sit down and eat it.
So what about this fancy food?
Mr. Sensitive and I ate it. All.
On Christmas Eve, when Hubby had the two little ones out last-minute shopping, Mr. Sensitive and I sat down and had a lovely lunch. I pulled out the nice dishes. We had the olives and marinated mushrooms. Sundried tomatoes, oil-drenched artichokes, and fresh cucumbers. We had melty brie and special crackers. We opened a package of figs. And we drank the fancy mineral water out of fancy wine glasses.
It was quite the festive affair.
And honestly, both Mr. Sensitive and I appreciated it more than the in-laws would have.
We both enjoyed our fancy, high fat lunch – I realised how much I really like this kind of stuff. There is life beyond store brand cheese and crackers and sippy cups. I miss it.
So my New Year’s resolution is to eat more of this stuff. And say screw the in-laws.
Really, who appreciates it more, anyway?
Happy New Year everyone! Do you have any resolutions?
