Denied Ambrosia
Shepherd's pie from the freezer, plenty of vegetables, and then I stopped. The old ritual was a pie-and-gravy sandwich on buttered bread, then more bread to mop up the gravy. Tonight I didn't follow it, and my brain has filed a complaint.
Tonight’s dinner was shepherd’s pie from the freezer, with lots of vegetables. I was pleased with that.
What I’m less pleased with is my brain, which is still sulking.
The shepherd’s pie itself was never the problem. The problem was what I built around it.
For me, shepherd’s pie was never really eaten off a plate. It went in a sandwich. Two slices of bread and butter, with a chunk of shepherd’s pie and gravy as the filling. And once that was gone and the plate was clean, bar the gravy, another round of bread to mop up what was left. A whole secondary meal, and I never really noticed I was doing it.
Tonight I had the pie and the vegetables, and I didn’t make the sandwich.
I’m not going to pretend I didn’t want the bread. I did. Gravy-soaked bread is about as hard to resist as food gets.
Breakfast had already included two slices of Danish bread toast, so bread wasn’t off the menu for the day. I just decided the extra sandwich and the gravy-mopping wasn’t worth it this time.
It’s not the calories I’m noticing. It’s the decision. I wanted something, and I didn’t have it, and that’s a different feeling from not wanting it at all.
There’s clearly some chemistry at work here, and I’m putting it on record as the Gravy–Bread Attraction Principle. The amount of bread needed to mop up gravy goes up with the amount of gravy left on the plate, and down with how hungry you actually are. Shepherd’s pie is especially dangerous, because the gravy is spread all over the plate, covering the vegetables and surrounding the pie. And the lamb in the pie seeps out into that gravy, which is what sets off the chemical reaction.
Lamb with mint is worse. One slice of bread becomes two, then the second slice is used to chase the crumbs and gravy left by the first. At that point dinner isn’t really dinner any more. It’s a bread delivery system.
So tonight’s achievement wasn’t just resisting bread. It was breaking the gravy extraction cycle. The gravy won, I suppose, but it didn’t get any bread.
Wife’s shepherd’s pie is a category of its own. It’s on the list of foods where the calories have to negotiate with how much I love the dish, and I’m not sure they’re winning yet.
But tonight the rational part of me won. Full, fed, vegetables eaten, and no sandwich.
My brain has noticed, and it wants it on record that this was an unacceptable waste of ambrosia.
I’ve noted the complaint.