I would eat this every day for dinner if I could.I may not run like a Viking (yet), but I can certainly eat like one.
I blame my Ukrainian genes for this insatiable appetite. There's a reason we Slavs are able to work those potato fields from dawn to dusk. Growing up, gargantuan meals with multiple sides were de rigeur, though, to my mom's credit, many of these meals were vegetable-centric, since we grew and tended to multiple gardens on the monastery property.
My grandparents, who lived in the same town, were also constantly trying to shove food down my gullet, because I was way too skinny. My grandfather would tell me, in his thick Jackie Mason–sounding rasp, that I was going to blow away in the wind if I didn't eat more; my grandmother would hover over my dinner plate, scowl, and issue forth the "Mangia, mangia!" command. I'm not sure why she would revert to Italian in these bordering-on-forced-bulimia situations, but I guess the Ukrainian version of "Eat, eat!" didn't sound nearly as compelling.
Sunday dinner, either at my grandmother's or our house, was always an all-day event. My mom toiled away in the kitchen preparing a massive repast all day long, while my dad watched football or played soccer with us or tinkered with some broken object, pretending to fix it while watching football. To this day, the plates we use on Thanksgiving to fill up on turkey, stuffing, and all the fixins are so immense that we refer to them as the "Viking plates." These plates do not fit in the dishwasher.
So, with my family's unhealthy preoccupation with food, it's no surprise that I now have portion-control and willpower problems. When I was younger, my gloriously fast metabolism kept me in lithe fighting form despite my gluttony. I was a painfully skinny, gangly tall girl who downed two school lunches every day and who once ate an entire pizza by herself at a party. Devouring a pint of ice cream after eating a whole hoagie at Mike's Subs in Buffalo was par for the course during my freshman year of college, and I still didn't weigh enough to donate blood (the threshold was 110 pounds at the time).
I still don't know why I was (and still am) always so ravenous, but I do know that my metabolism screeched to a halt when I hit 30. Throw a couple of pregnancies onto the pile, and you've got Jenny 3.0, a slightly chubbier incarnation of my former skeletal self.
So I'm at a nutritional crossroads. I'm actually a pretty clean eater for most of the day. A typical breakfast for me is cereal (usually bran flakes) or oatmeal with a ton of blueberries, bananas, and/or strawberries thrown in, maybe with some yogurt on the side; sometimes I make myself eggs. This does not count going out to brunch on the weekends, natch, when I indulge in cheese-smothered omelettes with bacon and waffles, but that's maybe a once-a-week thing.
Lunch is usually a salad of some sort, or a small soup-and-sandwich combo, supplemented by a piece of fruit and milk. I snack on crackers, some cheese, fruit, or yogurt. Beverages, which can be one of the biggest calorie-suckers, are also not my downfall. I don't like overly sugary drinks, so I mostly drink water, unsweetened iced tea, and coffee with no sugar. I rarely drink soda, and I never order one of those 800-calorie venti mochaccino concoctions at Starbucks, not because I'm resisting them, but because I simply don't like them.
Up to this point in the day, I'm also able to eat human-sized portions. So what's the problem? 6 p.m., that's the problem. That's when my metabolism seems to kick into overdrive. Dinner is usually some chicken, pasta, or beef variation (I wish we ate more fish, but three other people in my house have outnumbered me on that front), with some veggies and a carb. While I can eat sensibly during the day, for some reason the evening hours compel me to stockpile the French fries, rice, roasted red potatoes, and macaroni salad.
After dinner is even worse. Around 9 p.m. the cravings really kick in. I think the Hobbits (and Taco Bell) call it "Fourth Meal." I'm not a big sweets person, but I do start hunkering for cheeseburgers, bread, homemade mac and cheese made with four cheeses (Gruyere, cheddar, mozzarella, and parmesan, in case you're wondering), grilled cheese. Yep, I'm a bread, cheese, and meat girl. Plop me down at a Long Island diner and serve me up a pizza burger and cheese fries with gravy, and I'm in heaven.
At least I know what my triggers are, and this awareness has been helping to eliminate my bad habits as I get myself into shape to do the Dash. The no-eating-crap after 9 p.m. rule should have been implemented long ago, but it took this race to bring this noxious habit to the forefront. Though just writing about cheeseburgers has made me recall the pack of Bubba sweet-onion burgers in the freezer that are just screaming for release from their temporary frozen home.
No matter how well I remedy my troublesome eating habits over the next few months, I will definitely be chawing down on those turkey legs at the finish line. Maybe with a side of cheese fries and a cheeseburger for good measure.
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