final reflections from the week that was

The Significant Eater was doing it tougher. Is it a macho thing, the “anything you can do I can do better’ credo? While I did a spring clean, he actually fasted. One friend quipped that he was getting into the spirit of Ramadan. I nibbled on apples and focused my ‘fast’ on a week or so away from being food obsessed. He, on the other hand, sipped water and poured over cookbooks. Masses of them, all meaty and hearty. The antithesis of his current diet.

While new posts of my favourite food blogs piled up to be read in bloglines, I tried (though failed) to avoid reading epicure and I did not read a single recipe. On my trip to the library I followed my regular path: return books, cruise the books and DVDs waiting to be shelved, then straight to the culinary part of non-fiction. Ah! Then I averted my eyes, detoured to design and art and completed the u-turn towards fiction.

I found that food, or to be precise, thinking about food takes up more of my day than I had previously realised. How often had I started the working day wondering where I would have lunch? And after lunch, how soon did I contemplate what would be for dinner? On Wednesday’s it was always a rush to be home before “The Cook and The Chef” started. All little things that added up.

While these small routines in themselves may not amount to a full-blown obsession, when you add a blog dedicated to thoughts on cooking, eating and occasionally drinking – it did get me thinking.

For me the spring detox is as much about giving my mind a break as it is to ‘cleanse’ the body before the onslaught of the more social end of the year. It isn’t til we break a habit, change the route we wander through life – that we can really understand how we operate.