Food for thought, from the blog of Barefoot Kitchen Witch: From Me: Just yesterday I ate too much, simply because it was there. I had leftovers from the hurricane and simply plowed through them. Then I had an allergy attack---which always happens if I eat too many carbohydrates. I was perplexed about the pleasures of foods I used to be able to enjoy. I just get too miserable from allergies if I eat like I used to eat. But I don't want to never have the pleasures of certain food again. Believe it or not, as I considered this and prayed about my attitude towards food, I browsed through my list of blogs and came upon this well written observation, blogged by Jayne, concerning an All-you-can-eat buffet that she, her husband Bill, and their 15-month old son visited. It is well worth reading:

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Our table was pretty close to the food, which was good because we could kind of scope out the layout and plan our routes...but not good because the long line for the lobsters went right past our table. We were treated to a neverending look at people who have turned the all-you-can-eat buffet into a way of life.

It was sad, actually, to see so many very overweight people - entire families of enormous adults and their rapidly expanding children. There is no appreciation for subtlety of flavor, for artistry, for the simple pleasure of a steamed lobster, fresh from the sea. They aren't eating because food is a pleasure, they are eating because there is food there. And when there is food out there, cooked and ready to go, it is one's moral responsibility to eat it. All of it. Quickly. If you eat slowly, you get full, and then you can't eat. So you eat quickly so you can eat the most you can possibly cram into yourself.

I felt (and Bill did too, he told me later) tense the whole time. I felt I was expected to eat about twenty lobsters to make it worth the price of admission. And the object of the game is not to enjoy your lobster. Oh no. Enjoying the taste of something takes way too long. "Savor" is a forbidden term in the land of engorgement.

You must rip off the claws, tear them apart with your bare hands, suck out the meat, twist the tail off the body, crack the tail open, tear out the meat, eat that (dunked in a barrel of melted butter first) in one gulp (like a trained seal catching a herring) and toss the body into the shell bowl.

To me, that is a mortal sin. I felt like I was going to hell for it. When I eat a lobster, I eat all of the lobster. I have friends who "can't be bothered" with picking through all the little legs and the chambers of the body...I also like the coral (the eggs), and the tamale (the exploded liver). In fact, the tamale is my favorite part. So - to not eat all of the meat in the bodies was agonizing.

But I did it. But never again.

I only ate 2 lobsters. (Bill at 3, Bob ate 4, which is a huge change from his younger days when he could eat 6-7 or more at a sitting.) Ate a few other things, and some dessert, but I couldn't gorge myself.

Bill and I decided that one lobster, shared between the two of us, and picked clean, tastes far better and is a far more pleasurable dining experience than gulping down the lobsters we had today.
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