May 21, 2020: Hunger Games
Shelter In Place, San Francisco, California
I don’t know the name of this modest moth that’s visiting our garden. This one and his compatriots land on every available bloom, the more colorful the better. Not knowing whether they are friend or foe, I leave the moths alone; our borrowed cat only swats at them half-heartedly from her hiding spot in the shade. They don’t seem to be the culprits taking chunks from our heavier green-left plants, and they make good pictures feasting on the foxgloves.
Are you hungry all the time? I am. This wasn’t so at the beginning, but lately I’m famished, no matter how recently I’ve eaten. Gone are my pre-virus occasional snacks of fruits and nuts; gone is my renunciation of sugar and wheat. I start the day with English muffins (when we can get them) with lots of butter and piles of sweet jam, and move on from there.
It’s probably no coincidence that I crave familiar comfort foods the most. The other day I actually considered making Christmas cookies now, in May, so attached was I to the prospect of tasting my great-grandmother’s ‘sand tarts’, a Southern version of a Scottish treat. I remember when I was probably three or four, she stood me on the framed heating grate, my eyes and nose just over the counter’s edge, so I could watch her mix the dough and smell the cinnamon she sprinkled on the top. I did make chocolate chip cookies a few weeks back (a once-upon-a-time special treat for my own kids during Minnesota snow storms), but my full-fledged hunger games had yet to start; the sugar was just too much for me, so I dropped off most of the batch to Jack’s kitchen crew as a special treat. I don’t dare try baking them again today. I’d eat them all, and quickly! Oreos, though, have snuck onto our shelves, a cookie I associate with family campfires. Sometimes I’d sneak an extra Oreo when my mother wasn’t looking; I do that now sometimes, when John has left the kitchen. Triscuits and Wheat Thins remind me of Dad’s evening declaration: ‘Cocktail time!’ Only occasionally have we been able to order any good cheese to go with them, but the crackers taste like home just the same. Plus, almond crackers - my new obsession - like Dad, I eat them as I wait for dinner.
Of course, these new bad habits might be chalked up to the limited food varieties available for delivery - we take what we can get (at least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it). Or maybe it’s boredom. But really, of course, the cravings come mostly from the accumulated stress of sixty-plus days of isolation, the worrying politics behind it, and the fear that some day there really won’t be any food at all (food scarcity, I’ve discovered, is a primal fear of mine and every time the panic hits, I donate to the food bank for those who are hungry now, for real).
How is all of this snacking affecting my weight, you ask? Are you imagining me ballooning as we speak? Up until recently, I had still kept off the pounds lost way back in ancient history (January). But lately, well, I’m guessing the battle has gone the other way. I wouldn’t know, because the batteries died in the scale last week, and I don’t care because another bag of Oreos is about to land at our front door.