Food Sins

You know that sticky white rice you find at American Chinese restaurants? And that reddish pink "sweet n' sour" sauce you also find at American Chinese restaurants?

I love that shit.

I love dripping copious amounts of that sauce over the plain rice and watching it turn from light pink to reddish, all the while I am telling myself to use as little as possible. I love eating it. I consume its warm, sick sweetness with much voracity. It's nothing but sugar and cheap carbohydrate, but I wallow in the self indulgence.

I don't buy these things for myself; it's my parents and associates. They buy takeout filled with sodium and saturated fat, and they don't like rice without it being fried with bits of animal in it. So, they stop by and give me the rice because they know I often pair it with flavor it with fresh garlic, ginger, and chiles, and pile it with stir-fried vegetables.

But sometimes...sometimes there is that sauce. It beckons to me--beckons to my childhood memories of comfortableness with unhealthy eating habits...and I just can't help myself. I've just got to have it. Just a taste. I bargain with myself: "Only a little serving of white rice and a tablespoon of sauce. I'll save the rest of the rice to accompany my [name of healthy vegetable dish]." But a little bit of rice becomes half the carton and way too much sauce, and then a few subsequent spoonfuls rice later I figure I might as well finish it all off in one sitting...

If foodie-dom were like the Catholic Church, then admission to this kind of lust in confession would no doubt cause the priest to grip hir lentil bead rosary tighter and cringe at the unholiness of the flock.

"Vicar! Forgive me! I cannot bare this secret! Visions of these warm satanic sugars plague my every waking hour! This scarlet lust stirs in me and I just can't control it! Free me from this temptress! Why can't I stop, oh why?! The madness! THE MADNESS OF IT ALL!"

Satan steams among us.