Sweet Surrender

I noted in an earlier post that my "near vegan" claim goes out the window around the holidays, while my status as a vegetarian stays intact. I guess I just don't have the willpower. This week has been a perfect example of my lack of restraint.

My office receives quite a few goodies from vendors with which we work during the year. Sometimes we get a nice fruit basket (but honestly, I have so much fruit at home in danger of crossing over to the dark side that I've been eating stuff at work that I brought from home). We get a lot of Hickory Farms meat and cheese boxes, too. I can resist those, no sweat. But when there are two ginormous barrels of cheesecorn and caramel corn in our kitchenette, I can hear the sirens' song calling to me. I cannot resist the cheesecorn in the least.

Plus, for the second year, my company has had an in-house bake sale to raise money for the United Way. I baked some banana walnut muffins that I got from an old church cookbook of mine, but veganized it with Earth Balance margarine and flaxseed/water egg substitute. I'm afraid they didn't sell very well, although I told no one they were vegan. (My office knows I'm vegetarian, but since I'm so unsuccessful in my vegan efforts, I haven't made mention of it.) So I brought home quite a few unsold muffins to keep in the freezer and thaw one at a time for breakfast.

Of course, my healthy offering didn't stand a chance when up against pecan pie, homemade cookies, Chex mix, ranch-flavored oyster crackers, cheesecake...I could go on. For $5, I bought a bag of Chex mix, slice of raspberry cheesecake, homemade turtles (circle pretzels with a pecan half pressed into a melted Rollo candy), and some sugar cookies for the kids. The cheesecake - devine! The turtles - faboo! The Chex mix - addictive! To make matters worse, I was asked to man the table for the afternoon and found myself with a dollar burning a hole in my pocket. Hello, pecan pie slice - goodbye, good intentions. (Gosh, I sometimes wish my co-workers - or their wives in some instances - weren't such good cooks.) I didn't even eat dinner last night, I was so full.

Then today, one of my co-workers handed out homemade peanut butter balls. Enough, already! Chocolate with peanut butter is my kryptonite! Luckily, I only got five of them. I ate three before lunch, then the last two in the afternoon. Followed by an unsold slice of leftover cheesecake. ("I can't believe I ate the whole thing.") Light dinner tonight - half of a leftover baked acorn squash with a little Earth Balance, and about a cupsworth of cold rotini noodles dressed with homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

Oh, well. To quote Scarlett O'Hara, "tomorrow is another day."