Saturday, March 22, 2008

Sugary Kisses


Last night I cooked dinner for four, and I made a mistake. It was last minute, and there was no way I was going to have time to make any more manicotti. What I did was pour spaghetti sauce all over each one, forgetting that the sauce had sugar in it. I found out after the pizza fiasco that a lot of times marinara and pizza sauces have sugar to neutralize the acidity of the tomatoes in the sauce. I usually only buy a brand of marinara that doesn't use sugar, but for some reason, this was all we had while I was cooking dinner. I knew I wouldn't be able to sit there at dinner and just have a green salad. So I made the decision to eat some manicotti anyway, after spending several minutes trying to discreetly scrape off as much of the sauce as I could. I felt so guilty taking my first bite. Conversation flowed freely around the table as I sat in my secret bubble of guilt. Then I had an amazing thought that set me free of my guilt. First of all, after scraping all of the sauce off my manicotti, I probably ingested a total of 5 little granules of sugar, maybe less. Secondly, it occurred to me that I probably ingest a lot more sugar than that every time I kiss my husband. He is chocolate's biggest fan. He eats it two or three times a day or more. Breakfast is literally a piece of bread with thickly spread peanut butter topped with a pile of chocolate chips. Then, he usually has a mocha sometime around breakfast or lunch. Lastly, in the evening when he returns home from work, he grazes through the cupboards and freezer and refrigerator eating anything that has chocolate or is chocolate. Given that we kiss all of the time, surely I am picking up sugar molecules second-hand. I can do nothing about this fact. I am not willing to give up kissing my husband and it goes without saying that Jeff is not willing to give up chocolate. I know all of this sounds silly, but see how hard it is to go without sugar?

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