Poppadom: Moderation

I'm sorry I haven't updated for ever so long. I've been traveling and internet and inspiration were both a little hard to come by. Hopefully, we can get back to our normal schedule soon. In the meantime, Happy New Year!

Ken came home last week. My big brother can be a nuisance, but the house sure is a lot livelier when he’s around. He teases the dog and sleeps half the day, argues with me and never ever hurries, unless it suits him to. Already, I can’t remember how we lived without him.

This time, he came home with an agenda: He had decided he needed to get fit, as quickly as possible. After a few hours of internet, he deemed himself expert on the subject of weight loss and treated me and Amma to a long discourse on the subject. We were briefed in detail over what his diet was to be and how we should do out best to create a menu worthy of tempting his appetite. He took a vow to eat nothing but fruit the next day.

The next day dawned and he woke at midday, full of righteous energy. He broke his fast with an orange. I, with my own prompting from the devil, chose to bake cinnamon rolls and their scent floated over his head like a halo. He refused to be tempted. After another slightly briefer talk on how he was feeling so much better and lighter already, with his intestines uncrowded by unwanted carbohydrates, Ken let me alone.

I’ve baked David Lebovitz’s non-fat gingersnaps before. His recipes are incredible. All you need to do is follow them blindly, for perfect results. I made them again that morning, close on the heels of the cinnamon rolls. They weren’t so much for Ken as for me; I like nothing better than a spicy gingery cookie with a glass of orange juice for a middle-of-the-day snack. Because my oven is tiny, I baked them in batches of nine, and the whole process took nearly two hours. Finally, I had a pile of chewy, brown cookies that glimmered with sugar crystals when the light hit them, and I was thoroughly chuffed.

It was only around dinnertime that I realised the stack had rather diminished in size. Over dinner, K announced that he was quitting on his decision to go on an all-fruit diet. Amma had convinced him, he said, that for a growing boy of 24, such deprivation was unhealthy. He would henceforth simply limit his indulgence, he said, and the excess weight would come right off. He made a good dinner, enough to make up for the missed lunch and breakfast. Then he turned his mind to dessert. He had heard me refer to my cookies as non-fat and the phrase had stuck. After polishing off about half a dozen in quick succession, he finally leaned back in his chair, contentedly. He sighed and said, “Moderation is key.”