I'm on a Spree!

Modesty was never my middle name. Really. So, I don't mind talking about how careful (on the whole - and not including the India trip, which I've been so silent about on this blog that it's like it never happened) I have been about the things I eat these days. I hate to call it a diet because that immediately brings to my mind pictures of a large white plate with a piece of celery on it ... and I hate celery! To make Ma's mind easy and because I like to get my terms correct, I need to define this food experiment with a word other than "diet", so I'll call it a "healthy culinary fest", which it really is, as I have learnt to be a lot more creative with food in the last year and a half, satisfying my palate, my stomach and my body's nutritional needs at one go. (Okay, so I'm not all that careful, but I've virtually stopped eating out - yes, lunch too, and that, in itself, has made me a "much better person", nutritively speaking.)

Careful or not, though, I've always had a sweet tooth, and I've always needed to satisfy it. That's not negotiable! So, over the past year or so, I've been sampling different sorts of candy. I buy the smallest size and keep it in the drawer at work, and eat a little every day, usually less than a serving size recommended on the pack. The ultimate goal is to find something that gives me a sugar kick for a bit while still trying not to down too many useless calories along the way. And, of course, if it adds a little something good on the side, so much the better.

To that end, I've gone over Raisinets, Skittles, Runts, M&Ms with peanuts, cherry-flavored Twizzler ropes (eat just one stick a day ... and they last longer in the mouth too), something made out of raw sugar and peanuts and coated with a thin chocolate layer that does give a good peanut protein kick but also adds a bit more sugar than you need (cannot remember the name, comes in a little red pack), and then the inevitable assortment of gummy worms and bears, etc. (No, I didn't really do gummy worms, but other similar jelly-like thingies that, once again, I cannot remember the names of.) And then I landed upon Spree!


They look like Cadbury's Gems, but have no chocolate. They're instead sweet and sour and a little soft on the inside, and (unlike Skittles, which I know you're comparing them with) last for a good while in your mouth if you don't mess with them unnecessarily. A serving calls for eight of these, but I found that four per day did just fine for me ... and I can live with 30 cals of useless sugar per day, can't I?

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Now, why did I embark upon this post? Oh, yes! As I was meditatively chewing (meditating on MATLAB, not on the candy) on a Spree piece, I suddenly remembered "lipstick" days with Cadbury's Gems. If you were female and grew up with Gems, you'd know what I mean instantly. We picked up a piece from the pack, moistened our lips with the tip of our tongue, and ran the piece over our lips, in the hope that some of the color would rub off and give us that longed-for and forbidden touch of make-up. Most of us chose the traditional lipstick colors - red, pink and orange - but sometimes you'd find someone vainly trying to rub green or blue color onto their lips. There wasn't anything against doing that ... the key was to make your lips the same color as your nail paint. And the color of your nails, in turn, depended upon which sketch-pen in your set flowed the smoothest. If you didn't have a sketch-pen set, never mind; a generous friend would usually lend you hers. After all, it's no fun getting dressed on your own! And, in return, you'd offer her the Cadbury Gems piece in the color of her choice (to match with the sketch-pen on her fingernails). If you and your friends only had money for Gems and not a sketch-pen amongst you, you'd carefully pluck individual petals of the madhumalati flower and (temporarily) stick them to your fingers with your spit, and then hope that there were enough red and pink Gems pieces to go around among the group because the slow coaches would otherwise have to stick with orange, or worse still, go without! (There was no question of pairing madhumalati-flower nail-paint with yellow, green or blue Gems! We're girls, remember?)

Those were the days, weren't they? (Okay, I need to stop, I'm sounding like I'm Fifty!)


P.S. At the risk of sounding like I'm seventy-five, not to mention giving the impression that my mother didn't "look after me" well enough, I'd like to mention that, after the petals had done their job, we carefully sucked the honey from the center of the flower. Mmmm!! (I only wish I had the courage to allow my children to really "live". Okay, now - thank goodness - I'm starting to sound a little closer to my age!)

"Are you going to turn our woods into a laboratory? You can't capture God with a camera."

"It's not God I'm looking for."

"It's not proof you need. It's faith."

"Tell me about your faith, Reverend."

"Faith? It's what a man must live by."

"Sometimes a man can hide behind it."


-Photographing Fairies, 1997.

Veggie Woes, Veggie Wont's!

One day, many years ago, I picked up a serving of a dish that had "Vegetarian Lasagna" labeled on it. (Those were still the days when I didn't know where to find a good veggie lasagna, and I was trying to sample as much of new cuisine as possible. Of course, in those days, I was also naive enough to think that "Vegetarian" meant no meat, no fish, nothing that walked or flew or swam! Now, countless disgusting interesting experiments and a few close calls later, I know better.) As soon as I opened the foil wrapper, I was hit by a curious and rather strong scent. I decided not to think about it (if you're a poor student who's just spent a whopper of $7.00 on a small package of food, you don't want to dump it into the trash can in a hurry) and sampled a morsel. It tasted alright, nothing great, but edible. Mentally deciding that "one time's no harm" (a motto I used a few times in my life before I realized that a stomach upset was the inevitable result) I took a few more bites. By the time I'd eaten a quarter of it, the smell was really getting to me, and I wasn't very happy about the way my tummy felt either. Chalking up $7.00 to the price of experience, I threw my lunch away. I wondered what they'd used to make the smell so strong; like all Indians, I blamed the oil first. ("Mumble-mumble-mumble ... making me eat animal fat ... how they can call this veggie beats me ... mumble-mumble ..." etc.) But I never really found out as I never tried the dish again.

Late yesterday evening, I was working on some data all alone in the lab when My Advisor walked in. He put a covered dish on the table, and asked me where my colleagues were. I told him they'd gone home. He said, 'Well, you may not be able to eat all of this since you're vegetarian, but you can try the bruschetta. I got leftovers back from the faculty meeting.'

I wasn't yet very hungry but I was curious to know what sumptuous fare faculty dined on at their meetings, so I uncovered the dish. A strong smell filled the room, the same scent that had made me throw away the lasagna five years ago. I knew I had eaten something that had moved at some point in its career, so I was excited rather than disgusted at the smell. Ah, finally I'm going to find out what I ate that day! And then I saw the non-bruschetta part of the meal.

Calamari. Fried squid.


I knew there was a really good reason why I switched to taking a dabba from home for lunch! And, in case you're wondering, the bruschetta went into the bin too!