July 22, 2010

Buffet Blues

As I recently wrote on Twitter in a throwaway line, before realising how profoundly deep it actually was: I am a woman of complex issues, but simple tastes. In other words, I can spend hours thinking and talking about my problems, analysing them in minute detail, and working through solutions before doing pretty much nothing about them. But when it comes to food, I'll take bread, pasta, and ice cream with chocolate sauce, and eat them. Immediately. With immense pleasure.

In further other words, I am impossible to please emotionally, but dead easy to please gastronomically. And this dichotomy has existed within me quite comfortably since I first discovered my preference for plain food, at around the time of my weaning (onto ice cream, I believe).

Until now.

You see, I have just returned from a marvellous holiday in Thailand, where the food service consisted of three magnificent buffets a day, with a range of options covering everything from Italian to Thai to French to Modern American to those weird foods that you can only breathe in from a test tube (okay, so not really those, but almost everything but). And the dessert section alone stretched across a room approximately the length of a tennis court, which was helpful because after a week at the resort many guests had expanded so dramatically that they couldn't fit into a regular size room.

Most people were immensely happy with the selection of food on offer. I, on the other hand, was miserable and conflicted. Because every day I was faced with the same dilemma: given access to every dish under the sun, all I wanted was bread and pasta.

Day after day, I would wander through the buffet, regarding the incredible array of meals - platters of prawns, chicken, salads, meats, sauces, pizzas, soups, savoury mousses - and walk right past them onto the bread and pasta. And I would choose the bread and pasta. EVERY single day. Lunch and dinner. I couldn't resist.

This caused me tremendous angst. I was self-conscious(did people notice my same, simple choices, day after day? Was I becoming the weird Pasta Lady from Oz?) and guilt-stricken (all this money spent on a holiday and I was eating some of the plainest, cheapest foods known to the human race). And dessert just made it worse. In the company of every exotic cake, pudding and biscuit known to chefs around the globe, I chose ice cream. VANILLA ice cream. With COTTEES TOPPING. It was a shunder.

Still, the angst, the self-consciousness, the shame... none of it translated into actually DOING anything about the problem. It got tucked into my huge Box Of Complex Issues and ignored, as all the other Complex Issues are. And I buried them with food, which was the cause of the problem, so the whole thing perpetuated a destructive, delicious, vicious cycle.

But that's okay, because, as I sit here and regard my tummy (which gives new meaning to the term 'Outward Bound'), I know that, could I do the holiday over, I wouldn't change a thing.

On the other hand, there was a chocolate souffle I saw at the dessert table on Thursday night that did look pretty special. You know, I should really have had just a small piece....

18 comments:

  1. Noooo! You had a world of exotic gastromic delights at your fingertips (or should I say, lips) and you let it pass your stomach by. You'll just have to go back.

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  2. Ooh that made me hungry. I could eat a whole Box of Complex Issues right now

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  3. LOL at Sharpest Pencil!

    Have to say that I'm with you on the buffet. A buffet can serve every gastronomic delight in the world, but if it has hot chips, then that's where I'll be. Again and again and again, ignoring all other options so I can eat my body weight in chips. French fried, crinkle cut, fat, wedges- I don't care. Give me CHIPS!

    Sorry. *calming down* But honestly, why fight it? How often in life do you have *exactly* what you want laid out in front of you, yours for the taking? Very, very raely. Life is short. Eat chips.

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  4. Okay, I want to be supportive here, I really do but... Seriously? You're kidding, right? Bread and pasta I can do at home. When someone else is cooking I want brulee and... well, impossible stuff that I can't make myself. Except for the Cottee's topping. It can't be beat on ice cream. You know it.

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  5. From one freak to another, I don't see the problem here? While I might not choose bread and pasta, I can guarantee that I would choose the same 2 or 3 dishes the entire time I was there. It's what I do.

    Of course, I would have made one other change to your daily menu and added chocolate mousse to that ice cream ;-)

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  6. Hmmm...yeah, I WANT to be all supportive and shit, too...but seriously, girl, you can eat bread and pasta at HOME! What were you thinking? I'm with Al - I pay for someone else to cook food for me, I'm to want the things I can't be bothered to make for myself at home. Or even, dare I say, sample a bit of the local flavour? LOL

    Next time, take me in your suitcase, and I'll eat all the gorgeous buffet yummyness while you sail serenely into the pasta...We'll split the excess baggage charge on the way home. ;)

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  7. I didn't see any problem at all until, you passed up on the chocolate. What.is.wrong.with.you? But most supportive on the bread front. There is only one better food than bread, glorious bread and that is chocolate.

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  8. Weirdly, I'm the same.

    Do you watch Masterchef? Hmm, I thought not...

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  9. You know what, it was YOUR holiday so it is YOUR right to enjoy it whatever way suits you. If that's bread and pasta then go bonkers.

    That said, I do believe from time to time it is healthy for us to take a risk and be more adventurous. Often you'll wish you had the bread and pasta anyway, but sometimes taking a small risk can have unexpected benefits.

    www.wastyle.blogspot.com

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  10. Sensible girl - I note that not one OS tummy bug affected you and you enjoyed your comfort foods.
    Rock on - comfort foods are the BEST...and anyway you let fish eat you a bit didn't you?

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  11. Haha! I love you and your huge Box Of Complex tIssues...I mean Issues! lol x

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  12. Good grief woman, what is WRONG with you? There I was, thinking you were a sophisticated citizen of the world, and all you want is bread and pasta? Honestly, my flabber is totally gasted.....

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  13. bread and pasta is some of the best food you could have, its ok, sometimes you are fixed on certain things and dont even look at others, i happens to me when i go out and travel, i am fixed on one thing or another and just want to eat them only while travelling

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  14. bread and pasta is some of the best food you could have, its ok, sometimes you are fixed on certain things and dont even look at others, i happens to me when i go out and travel, i am fixed on one thing or another and just want to eat them only while travelling

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  15. I didn't see any problem at all until, you passed up on the chocolate. What.is.wrong.with.you? But most supportive on the bread front. There is only one better food than bread, glorious bread and that is chocolate.

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  16. LOL at Sharpest Pencil!

    Have to say that I'm with you on the buffet. A buffet can serve every gastronomic delight in the world, but if it has hot chips, then that's where I'll be. Again and again and again, ignoring all other options so I can eat my body weight in chips. French fried, crinkle cut, fat, wedges- I don't care. Give me CHIPS!

    Sorry. *calming down* But honestly, why fight it? How often in life do you have *exactly* what you want laid out in front of you, yours for the taking? Very, very raely. Life is short. Eat chips.

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