Turnip Cake?

It's been four weeks off sugar. Tomorrow will be four weeks binge-free. It's starting to feel a little more normal. My food seemed more contained this week. I'm finding snacks are a slippery slope for me. For instance, I pack a snack to eat later in the day and eat it in the car on the way to work. So I'm trying to just eat three meals a day with nothing in between. I didn't do that yesterday. For some reason, I could sleep on Tuesday night and I had to be up early for my last day teaching for the semester (I have a 7:30 AM class and promised to bring my students doughnuts to celebrate the end of the year). When I'm tired, I find I go to food for comfort, thinking it will give me energy. I didn't eat a lot, but I ate a lot of small meals very close together. I ate at 6:15 AM, 10 AM, 11:15 AM, 2 PM, and 4:30 PM. There's no way I was hungry at 11:15 AM after eating a pint of strawberries at 10 AM. In the afternoon, the students of my afternoon class brought pizzas. I hadn't planned on eating that. I've noticed yeasted doughs are rough on my stomach, I get terrible pains. But, hey, it had been ten days since the last terrible pain, and I thought, maybe I am cured. I also had a meeting after work, and I didn't know how long it would last or if I would last food-less through the meeting. I suffered for those pizza slices today. Practically incapacitated when my friend came over to help me plant a garden. She was digging up invasive Bermuda grass from the planter boxes, and I was lying on the ground in the happy baby yoga pose. The pain got better, but it bothered me all day.

I feel like I need to go back to the mention of doughnuts. My students asked, where will you get doughnuts at 6:30 in the morning? I thought, seriously? They don't know that doughnut shops open by 6 and some are 24 hour? In fact, the doughnut shop was hopping at 6:30 AM. I bought enough for each student to have two--they had suggested two dozen for fourteen students. I had some absences and some non-doughnut eaters, so there were several doughnuts left at the end of class. I pushed them on my students--"Bring them to a friend!" Still, there were 8 left. Yes, I'm very aware of how many doughnuts remain in a box. A student from the next class came in and I offered her a doughnut. She said yes. Then, I asked if I should leave the rest for the class. She said, sure, there's only four of us. I said, perfect--there's 8 doughnuts left. I am not a woman who can fathom people would want just one doughnut. I was a little tempted, because I was so tired, so it was pretty amazing I resisted. Buying sweets for others: another slippery slope. But it's so core to who I am.

My favorite job ever was working as a baker and barista at a small coffee shop in Marfa, TX (at that time, pop. 2424). I absolutely loved giving people sugar and coffee; it made everyone so happy. That is, until some people complained about how, since I'd started baking again, their weight was coming back on. I took that as the best compliment. So what do I do with this part of me that loves delighting people with sweets? How do I remain Sweetie the Baker as I change my own relationship with sugar? I will continue to reflect on that over the weeks. For now, I'm just super grateful that I'm not stopping at gas stations, grocery stores, taco shops, and Costco food courts between appointments in my day, that I can get to appointments on time and enjoy the produce in the box of vegetables I pick up weekly from a community farm. This week, we got turnips, and they included a recipe for turnip cake. I may make it with stevia. It doesn't have flour in it. I'm curious. Or I may roast them and eat them with salt. 

Thanks for reading and for posting about your own journeys.