It is mid January and I am still on my Low GI diet. My main struggle has been that it cuts out a major food group – cakes! I am ashamed to say that in the last 3 or 4 months my sugar addiction had spiralled out of control and action had to be taken.
Saying I have a little bit of a sweet tooth is like declaring the Pope a little bit Catholic, therefore giving up my beloved cakes, biscuits and puddings has proved to be particularly challenging.
It wasn’t always this way. Up until about ten years ago I could take or leave your chocolate fudge cake and would happily choose a starter over a dessert (I was also a lot slimmer). What changed? I tell you what changed, I met the love of my life, who does have an incredibly sweet tooth. All of a sudden a whole range of chocolates, cakes, muffins, jelly babies and all sweet treats in between came into my house, and so I started to eat them …… and eat them ….. and eat them. I honestly believe from the bottom of my ever-increasing bottom that sugar is addictive and I became a hopeless sugar junkie.
At first I could handle it, but in recent years the situation has escalated and brought me to where I am today – cold turkey. You probably don’t believe that I have a problem but here are some lovely examples which illustrate my point perfectly:
ROCKY ROAD GATE
Not long after having my little girl I invited two shiny new friends round for coffee. In a bid to impress I made a whole batch of Nigella Lawson’s Rocky Road. Over coffee we enjoyed one slice of the tray bake each ( I didn’t know them well enough at that point to reveal my true colours). Now a whole batch of this gorgeous Nigella creation probably equates to 15 pieces of Rocky Road. How much do you think was left by the end of the day? Well let me tell you NONE. I sat all day and just ate and ate and ate, It was so darned good I just couldn’t help myself.
JELLY BABY GATE
To cheer up my somewhat grumbly husband one evening I picked up a family size bag of Jelly Babies as a present, before getting a train home. Ten minutes into the journey the box was open the cellophane compromised and jelly infanticide had begun. The commute was only half an hour so at least I can say it was not a long drawn out demise. I alighted the train and presented BC with a packet of two jelly babies, shame faced and feeling very sick.
I can’t make truffles every again. Same story as above really. BC desperately wanted me to get his mum’s truffle recipe from his sister. I obliged and set about making a huge batch of truffles – half rolled in vermicelli and half rolled in desiccated coconut. Oh my god, the very thought of them …….. anyway, I wolfed down around 20 truffles in one day, was consumed by guilt, destroyed the recipe and ruined BC’s chance of rekindling fond cakey memories.
It’s not just what I eat but the way in which I sometimes approach cakes and other treats. I will hide them from myself around the house and when I outfox myself and find them I eat them like bulimia without the vomiting. It is not a pretty sight.
So my completely dysfunctional relationship to all things sugary is out in the open and though like an alcoholic I can never be fully cured, I feel I am on the road to a recovery of sorts. You might have noticed that there is a whole page on this site dedicated to a cake of the month and to achieve this I do actually have to eat cake. So it is with a heavy heart , for the service of this blog, that I pledge to begin the reintroduction of cake sometime in February.
Onwards and upwards to another cakeless day for the Grumbling Tummy.