". . . zee spites of life . . ."

Sophia Loren is on record as having attributed her, erm, attributes thus: “Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.” Following in her pulchritudinous footsteps, supermodel Laetitia Casta claimed “my breasts were made in Normandy from butter and creme fraiche.” I can tell you from experience that eating plenty of the aforementioned prescriptions doesn’t in any way guarantee one will become a siren–more likely, a zeppelin, if one applies the medicines too assiduously. I can even say that sometimes, as Pogo’s lady-skunk admirer Mam’selle Hepzibah referred to l’amour itself, food is “zee spites of life”–both the spice and the bane of existence. My love of food becomes at times something of an amour-propre, in which I am shaped by my love of food and in turn, my self-image is affected by my disaffection with my shape. But I can also tell you that I know this is not only an extremely common complaint but also one I am inclined to ignore and suppress, thanks to my adoration of food and the eating thereof.

I am an unregenerate omnivore of sorts; while there are a few (probably previously mentioned) foods I eschew to chew, they are generally in no way designated unwanted because of moral, ethical, logical, political, practical or physiological reasons. Yes, that’s changing a bit as my old carcase ages enough to begin objecting on its own to some things that weren’t previously non-grata on my plata. So as I said before, I am hunting up alternatives to wheat, for example, and finding that I lean toward some foods more as a way of leaning away from others I’d long eaten now that they don’t agree with my innards as well as they once did. The rest only gets avoided if I just plain don’t get its appeal, whether it’s a textural or flavor-based or conceptual thing. As for the objections others may have to a food for any of the above-named reasons or any others, for that matter, I am able to find plenty of things to like and overfill myself with in almost any setting, so if I need to lay off the red-in-tooth-and-nail eating while dining with my vegetarian companions, I can happily do so; if it’s time I got more kosher or halal because I’m at table with friends for whom that’s important, I can swing that way too.

I can be semi-well-behaved when I really have to. I even learned to make wheat-free lemon shortbread to be kinder and gentler to the digestive attachments of my sweet tooth, but still . . .

But chances are pretty good that when left to my own devices, I’m going to eat a whole lot of whatever looks, smells and tastes good to me at the moment, and rare indeed are the moments when something or other doesn’t appeal. If the offerings in question should happen to be loaded with butter and eggs, taste rich and sweet and salty, have a juicy dash of ripe fruit and lavish lashings of cheese and avocado and chocolate and perhaps be sided with a rasher of excellent smoky bacon, look out! I’ve worked very steadily over the years to achieve my one form of womanly curvaceousness, that burgeoning bulge at my equator, and while it’s easy to maintain, I don’t recommend that you get between me and the buffet table at any inconvenient juncture or I can’t be held responsible for your safety. Just sayin’. Think I’ll go poach me an egg.

At least edible perfection doesn't have to be complicated!