yes, I am a panderer
(Apologies to anybody who's vegetarian.)
As part of the Atkins diet we're on, Mer and I have dived headfirst into the racket that is the diet industry.
Atkins-branded breakfast bars, shakes, ice cream, and even pancake syrup. Which costs a damn lot.
I tried to make pancakes for dinner one time with the flax mix and the Atkins syrup. It took over an hour and the pancakes were less than 1cm thick. Paper thin and hell to scrape off the pan. Definitely not the hearty, heart-clogging, inch-thick, butter-soaked monsters of my youth. They did taste like banana walnut, however.
Initially, it was sheer hell the first few days, having to give up all forms of carbs. All forms of sugar. Most forms of alcohol -- I couldn't have a beer when I got home from work. No starchy vegetables. No breads or cereals. No fruit.
I would find myself staring at the vending machine for minutes at a time, desperately wanting everything in it. I found every spare thought cycle was devoted to thinking about food. I was diet-crazy.
After that, though, it's been going reasonably well. Both of us don't really have daily sugar cravings any more (both of us are recovering sugar addicts), and that's a major victory in itself, especially considering I shouldn't be anyone's model for self-control or restraint. I've lost around 10 pounds.
So Mer and I went to an expensive dinner last night after our workshop, mainly because I was demanding a manly-man dinner of steak and some sort of alcoholic beverage I could drink (these are mostly restricted to the hard alcohols derived from non-starchy vegetables, such as gin -- thank God for juniper berries).
It was there that an amazing discovery took place. Mer discovered that she has a taste for a nice steak. (I feel slightly guilty about this, as it's one of the few vices I have that has a more direct effect on the environment -- beef farming sucks. I almost feel as if there's a brand of SUV I enjoy driving around. Damn, I like steak though. At least we don't have it that often, in spite of our being on Atkins.)
My wife developing a taste for beef is nothing short of earth-shattering.
I tried to come up with some sign that would tell me she'd entered the final stage of her corruption, or that she'd been taken by aliens and replaced with a pod person.
Mer has a mortal fear of rollercoasters; an actual phobia. She rode on one when she was a teenager and she passed out from sickness and fear. She says her corruption will be complete if she rides a rollercoaster. Eating beef in the front car.
I almost want to pay a comic strip artist to render that scene.