23 Responses

1. As someone who eats a pint of ice cream in one sitting, I appreciated this flashback. Thank you!

2. DH has much more self control than I do. He reads the nutrition label and sees that the container of Talenti should be 3 servings!! THREE!! So, we make ourselves ration out that treat. Sigh. I’ve let my ice cream stores dwindle, so there’s nothing out in the garage freezer now. It’s the only way I can make sure I don’t cave!

3. Jenny, First reactions:

   1. Wow. I’ve wakened full of anxiety and felt plenty of repressed (or not) anger during the day, but never that much anger at night. Well, more than once (at times in the past, frequently ) I have awakened from dreams where I was having a heated but nonviolent argument with someone.

   2. I know that letters from prison are a big thing, but I had sort of thought that the fact that most romance readers are female might overbalance the fact that most prisoners are men, and romance authors might get them mostly from women prisoners.

   3. I’m not sure that men have that men turn less to comfort food, but it may be more frequently directed to savory foods like French fries and potato chips.  Or carb and fat combinations like pizza. Or carbs and alcohol, like beer. That said, I’ve eaten one heck of a lot of ice cream in my time, although I’ve been cutting back. (By buying it less frequently. I’m not sure why dieticians recommend flat impossibilities like half-cup servings.)

   1. Alcohol is sugar.

      1. Kelly, Alcohol is metabolized into sugar, but it does non-sugar things to you in the meantime. Starch, as in those chips, fries, and pizza crust, also metabolizes into sugar but doesn’t taste the same or seem to effect me, at least, in precisely the same way, before being metabolized.

         1. Aaugh! Affect, not effect.

4. I read that Nancy Pelosi eats ice cream for breakfast every morning, and she’s fabulous! Could it be cause and effect? Could it work for me? 🙂

5. I’m still technically in perimenopause at almost-61, meaning I still have vasomotor symptoms consistent with the erratic operation of my ovaries (had a hysterectomy at 50 but left the ovaries because I didn’t want to start HRT). Mood swings are the first sign one of those damn things is trying to expel one of my shriveled ova. And, oddly enough, I long ago noticed a correlation between sugar consumption and the intensity of the vasomotor symptoms *and* mood swings. Which is really infuriating. Sugar is one of the few inexpensive pleasures of life, and here it goes setting off everything from depression/anxiety, rage, heart palpitations, hot flashes, brain fog … whoever designed this system was an asshole.

6. Women famously turn to fat and sugar to deal with their emotions, and they also are famously less violent, so maybe we need to get men to eat more ice cream?

   These days, I totally get angry at night. During the day I keep myself busy, then at night, when I’m trying to go to sleep, thoughts I have about the news make me infuriated.

   Eating a pint of ice cream will result in me being depressed. Attempting to address the problem with a shovel will get me imprisoned. Slip is for sissies, right? 😉

   1. I’m confident my husband would support your theory since I’ve limited the amount of ice cream in our house.

7. Well if they didn’t make food so good with all the sugar and fat, we wouldn’t be obsessed. I love the throwback posts, and as always, the comments are great. Except for the one who asked if you were sleeping with Bob. Oof. I apologize on behalf of all the sane Oregonians.

   1. Well, you know, romance readers. We train ’em to think that way.

8. I laughed so much at the responses there. Where are those hilarious people, now? We need them back.

   If vampires were real, a vampire lover would be your perfect solution. You actually look a little like Bella, in Twilight, if you dyed your hair.

   The thing that saves me from a Dove addiction is the price.

9. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15797382#CommunityReviews

   Companies hire food scientists to trigger obsession with their food. They wouldn’t make a lot of money if people only bought their food once.

10. Ha. This must have been before I found the blog. (I don’t remember when that was, just that it was through Lani’s blog, back in those long distant days.)

    Do you still have that weird disease? I don’t remember hearing you mention it. Until wanting to kill Bob, which comes up fairly regularly…

    I don’t have any trouble eating a small amount of ice cream, although not eating anything sweet at all at the end of dinner is definitely an issue. But you will pry my glass of wine out of my cold dead hands. I don’t care how many calories it has. I believe it is necessary for digestion of dinner. I must have been French in another life.

    1. Unlike, not until. Sigh.

    2. No, the disease disappeared as silently as it had arrived.
       Of course, others took its place . . .

    3. I’m trying to lose weight so training myself to eat 3 (no idea why 3) dried apricots or dates or figs instead of desserts. Sort of works until it doesn’t!

11. I’m more like pralines and cream from Baskin-Robbins no longer seems to be carried at our store. I have to actually go to a BR.
    I have been shooting a film in Mammoth for the past few days well actually since September 8 and I am home. And it feels wonderful and it’s also easier to breathe at this altitude, but I had a wonderful time. I wish you some good times this weekend.

    1. Well, TELL US ABOUT THE FILM, SUSAN.

12. I love these flashback revisits. I used to read the blog back then and it was a welcome break from work and kids and chores. I have very fond memories of the posts and comments.

13. THIS!!! “ Why in God’s name do we turn to sugar and fat when what we really want to do is unleash rage and mayhem? What primal instinct buried deep in our DNA says, “Don’t express your anger, eat something that will kill you”?” I’m currently having sugar (in the form of alcohol because chocolate gives me migraines and I to beat temptation I don’t have any ice cream in the house) and repressing my rage.

    Thanks! Has anyone come up with an answer to these very valid questions?

14. Anthropologists are now walking back the theory that before herding and agriculture, women were gatherers and men were hunters. But it did seem to explain a greater female love on the average for sweet things. If you’re gathering, a big find is likely to be high-calorie foods like fruits and honey and sugar cane. If hunting, big calories are more likely high-fat meat.

    Then there the nursery rhyme that little girls are made of vegetable substances like sugar and spice, and little boys are made of animal sources like snails and puppy-dog tails. (I have no idea what snips are.)