As I may have mentioned here before, I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. Sure, I enjoy the occasional sugary food, but I don’t spend brain cells thinking repetitive, lustful thoughts about them — no, not even when I’m PMSing.
In fact, there is one sugar product that I find — not gross, exactly, but definitely personally unappealing in amounts as it’s conventionally used. That is buttercream frosting. It’s just too much Bam!, in-my-face, single-note sweetness for my taste. And yet, it’s the frosting that’s on everything. (Because the entire world does not operate according to my personal preference, or something silly like that.)
In grocery stores — even in the crunchier, more granola grocery stores where I tend to shop — there are always baked goods with buttercream frosting (or maybe shortening-cream frosting). And almost all of the frosted baked goods have this frosting. In potlucks or shared meals or friends or coworkers stopping by with treats, brightly colored buttercream abounds.
I think, in my head, this has been transformed into feeling like a certain type of scarcity.
Because what I really love is cream cheese frosting.
I realize, yes, that the ingredients are actually quite similar to those in buttercream frosting, but for me, the addition of the cream cheese makes a huge difference to my palate.
In a world where cream cheese frosting was more readily available on ready to eat items — or a world where I did more baking for myself — this would be a mild to moderate preference. I’d see something with cream cheese frosting, and I’d make a calm but quick calculation to determine whether I was physically hungry, whether I found the food psychologically appealing, whether I was prepared to deal with the energy consequences of s sugary food item, and whether I was prepared to deal with the digestive consequences of dairy (which, no, the dairy in a single item’s worth of cream cheese frosting should not upset my GI tract, but I also don’t limit dairy as strictly as my guts would prefer, either).
In reality, though, what happens is this –
A coworker brings cream cheese frosted cupcakes for a school event. The next day in the faculty cafeteria, there are leftover cupcakes.
There is leftover cream cheese frosting.
I mean, there is a leftover plastic container filled with cream cheese frosting. I am a little puzzled as to how this made it to school, but I am not complaining.
She offers us cupcakes.
My entire iffy foods calculation process is obliterated by the mere presence of cream cheese frosting.
I joke, “What I really want is the cream cheese frosting and a spoon.”
I’m not surprised when she laughs. I am surprised when she gets a spoon. “Go ahead.”
And now I’m facing a dilemma. I don’t actually want to eat the entire container of cream cheese frosting — even in my frosting-obliterated brain, I know this — but I do actually want to dig in with a spoon. I’d be over it by the third or fourth spoonful, but with the rest of my school day to get through, even this would be ungood in terms of the inevitable sugar crash.
I consider that I should actually do that — eat cream cheese frosting by the spoonful — someday, just to get over my preoccupation with it. But today is not that day.
I eat a cupcake — already topped with a portion of cream cheese frosting — love it, and head back to class wanting more.