Okay, Reader, I hit the first serious consideration of actually driving out for the express purpose of buying junk food last night. I had a wonderful Saturday, staying out late at a contra dance and extending it into a tea date -- and was so tired Sunday that I, paraphrasing The Beatles, "...hadn't done a bloody thing all day". I was so lethargic and disgusted with my lethargy that the old association of self-disgust and the desire to stuff myself with comfort foods started settling around me like a fog. And I had the added fantasy that by eating stimulating foods like salt or sugar, I would therefore get off my arse and DO something with my evening!
But by now I have worked too hard to get off at least refined sugars to blow it with that particular addiction. Fried salty snacks, that was the rationalized allure. Was I particularly hungry? Yes, a bit, and that was contributing to the craving -- and I really just didn't want hard nor fibery nor watery raw foods any more. In my enthusiasm of starting this project, I have not been utilizing my full 25% of "free" cooked foods, be it junky or not; I'm also getting tired already of such limited variety of fresh foods this time of year.
This is one of the standard myths of the raw foods movement which I find to work against people; when I hear audiences at lectures complain about lack of variety, every lecturer I've ever heard replies like a robot: "There are enough kinds of fruit on this planet to have a different one every day of the year", or something to that effect.
Great -- but I don't have access to them!! If one wishes to eat organically-grown foods, as is most ideal, then one can buy at this time of year at my coop citrus, apples, and pears. Different types of citrus, sure -- I can be overwhelmed by the choices of eating Mandarin oranges, Valencia oranges, or navel oranges. Bosc pears, Asian pears, or red pears. A few exotics like kiwis imported from New Zealand, which is hardly ecological; yet I snap up a few from time to time just to ward off this culinary boredom.
So what did I do? Sighed and broke out the black olives and cashews. I was actually too tired to make any fancy cooked foods and I knew I had a very heavy work load this week and couldn't afford to be starting out with a food hangover. Saved by the fats!