12.22.10 — The Good, the Bad and the Evil

One of my coworkers has made a tradition of bringing in bagels and lox each year. He told everyone ahead of time that we was doing it today, so others brought in some fixings of their own. We ended up with several packages of salmon, I think 3 tubs of cream cheese, a couple tubs of egg salad, some red onion, tons of bagels, a box of crackers appeared and then the gift basket lobster spread and salmon spread from one of this week's gift baskets. There was plenty for everyone.

The primary supplier, CR, wanted to know why I was photographing the spread since it was all "healthy." Well, technically, as long as I'm not eating any of it healthy or not, up on the blog it goes. But, as I explained, the only healthy part of all of that was the salmon. On it's own, salmon is great. It's very low cal and has a ton of protein. However, slathering it with cream cheese and egg salad and carrying it around in a big freakin' bagel tends to crank the calorie total up to 11 (on a scale of 1 to 10). So no, I didn't have any.



You might think that salmon and bagels for a large group might be enough food first thing in the morning. You'd be wrong because 3 big bags of candies showed up. Remember the industrial box of chocolates from a couple days ago? This haul had more.

That had to be enough, right?



Good lord. Yes, that is bacon sticking out of the top of those cupcakes. These monstrosities are french toast and bacon cupcakes with maple buttercream frosting. How in the hell is something like this even legal? I was literally stunned when they were deposited on the kitchen table. The audacity, the sheer lunacy of making cupcakes of this magnatude left me unable to form coherent thoughts. All I could get out when I saw the crazy woman who made them was, "What the hell were you thinking?" I understand now how the villagers felt when they saw Frankenstein's Monster for the first time — burn it and hang the creator for bringing such an abomination into the world.

I forgot to mention that she also brought in crumbled up bacon so people could sprinkle more on top just so they could have bacon in every bite.

Of course, the cupcakes were wiped out quickly.



How do you top that? Well, you don't... ever. But, the craziness of the salmon, chocolates and bacon was brought back into a little balance by the arrival of these home baked cookies by one of our long-time copywriters who is now freelancing (well, she got laid off from here last year and is now freelancing, but still loves us). Naturally, I passed on the cookies, but just looking at them restores some of my faith in my fellow humans. Yes, we are capable of creating great culinary evil, but we can also create with love.

12.22.10 — Random Piece of Meat

Wow. I don't even have to try and mock this one. It's just plain disgusting. I imagine that's what muscles on a fat person look like. I'm sure if some Hannibal had chopped me up for his dinner a few years ago, his knife would have been coated with gloppy lard like this one is. I'm almost getting sick to my stomach just looking at that. How do people find that appetizing? I'll admit, I sometimes take my photos with a bit of an agenda and try to make the food look as bad as possible. I didn't do anything to this one. What you see is what you get, and I don't know about you but I'm getting sick.

Bleh.

12.21.10 — Stuff I Did Eat Today

A coworker asked me recently, "So what DO you eat every day?" Excellent question. Here it is:



Pre-workout snack: 1/2 cup of Kashi Go Lean cereal, 120 calories. Got to fuel the burn.



Breakfast: 3 egg quiches with some salsa, 300 calories. My wife makes these things in bulk on the weekend so that I can just pop a couple into the microwave and get going in the morning.



Daily Snacks: Greek Yogurt with 1/4 cup Kashi Go Lean cereal (in place of granola), 120 calories. 2 apples and 1 orange, approx. 260 calories. I try to space these snacks out to keep from getting too hungry between meals. I eat one of the apples around 9 am, the yogurt/Kashi mix at 11, another apple at about 2-3 and then the orange at 4 or so. In between all of that, I'm usually chewing gum.



Lunch: Taco Salad (chicken, avocado, olives, tomato, salsa, sour cream on baby spinach) and Sugar Free Jello Pudding, 438 calories. One of my favorite salad lunches, also one of the highest calorie salads. My lunches range from just over 300 calories up to 450. Don't let the relatively small size of the container fool you. This would fill a dinner plate and be heaping. Back to an older post, 2.5 cookies or this for lunch. Easy choice.



Dinner: Lasagne with a cup of corn added in, 532 calories. A go-to dinner. My wife makes up a big batch of this, freezes it in appropriate serving sizes so that I have a quick option when there's time to make a normal dinner. Dinners tend to run between 450-550 calories.



After Dinner Snack: 15oz. of watermelon, 140 calories. Depending on how many calories I have left to play with at the end of the day, I might have some pineapple or cantaloupe with the some watermelon, or have some Cheerios (no milk). Cheerios is a great snack because it's fairly low call so long as you don't put milk on it.

So, total calories for today: 1910, just 13 over my target of 1897 (determined by using the LoseIt! weight loss and calorie counting app).

That's a pretty typical day for what I am eating each day.

Back to our regularly scheduled food abstinence blog.

12.21.10 — Solstice Cookies

Didn't the ancients celebrate the Winter Solstice with a traditional tray of soft sugar cookies covered with a glop of sugar icing topped with sugar sprinkles? No? Heathens.

Like so many food items that make it into our office lives, this tasty round of sugar crash waiting to happen just kind of appeared. No email. No announcement. Someone just deposited them in the kitchen this morning. I'm sure it was someone who had to stop at the grocery store on the way into work, saw the cookies and thought they'd do something nice for their coworkers. I can appreciate the gesture. I've done it myself, although I bought a pile of apples the last time I did it.

But, and you knew this was coming, the cookies pack a punch and equal about 2 apples worth of calories (2 really big apples at that) coming in at a whopping 180 calories each. Two of those equals my lunch on some days. Three equals dinner.

Come on, you might say, it's just a cookie. True, but three bites of sugar or a half-pound of apple? Kind of an easy choice.



SP brought in these cookies that his wife made. Everyone raved about them. Honestly, if I weren't doing what I'm doing, I'd be all over the little peanut butter with Hershey's Kiss cookies. Just about any peanut butter/chocolate combo is right up there on the best things in the world. While I might think the red hots embedded in the oatmeal cookies might be a risky choice, I was told it was very good as well.

But, add up one of the delicious cookies from above, 2 (at least) of the peanut butter Kiss cookies and an oatmeal Red Hot cookie, just for curiosity's sake, and you've got probably a good 500-600 calories in your gullet in a matter of minutes. That's a third of my daily calorie budget.

12.20.10 — Gift Basketapalooza

Now this is more like it. When it starts coming in crates, you know someone is serious. Also, this one had a great variety of stuff. High quality chocolates. Flavored popcorn. Champagne in single-serve bottles (single serve at least for the booze hounds in this place). More peppermint bark. Crackers. Lobster spread. Salmon spread.

An aside — I like the easily applied consistency of a "spread," but I have a problem with calling the paté-like substance in conjunction with it's main ingredient an "X spread." Lobster spread just sounds... dirty.



Compare these chocolates with the box o' bulk cellophane in the other post from this morning. Which would you want to jump into and cover your body with? These may suck balls, but just look at them. You want these chocolates inside you and now. The other ones, not so much.



And oh lord, here is the topper. The Danish butter cookie tin. Actually, calling this a tin is inaccurate. It's more like a small industrial drum of cookies. I guarantee that once this monster makes it out into the general population (aka the Kitchen), it will be gone before the end of the day. These things are crack and this office is a willing pool of addicts.

We only have 5 working days before C-Day (yes, we're open and will be here until the wee hours on Christmas Eve — the glamorous advertising life). It took awhile, but the gift basket train is finally rolling in.

12.20.10 — In Bulk

I don't know if this qualifies as a gift basket or just really lazy packaging. It was a big box — like 12" x 24" x 3" or so — full of individually wrapped chocolates, in there grab bag style.

Figuring that the chocolates had to be really good to make up for the haphazard presentation, I asked someone who was walking away with a couple in hand how they were. Not good. I didn't follow up with my next question... then why did you come back for more?

12.17.10 — Son of Gift Basket

Another cracker/chocolate/cookie/pretzel-laden gift basket showed up. None of it even really got my temptation meter to even flicker.

12.15.10 — Brittlegeddon

It came today, my kryptonite, my nemesis, my favorite coworker-supplied food item — LJ's father's peanut brittle.

Just look at it. How can you resist that? It's beautiful. It's flavorful. It's thick with sweetness and crunch. It's got great color and texture. It demands that you take a big slab in your hand and crack off a chunk with your teeth.

The brittle owns your sorry ass.

It's also got something like 140 calories per ounce.

Not per chunk or piece or handful. Per. Ounce.

Just one of those slabs is going to run you 3 or 4 ounces. That's nearly 500 calories for one piece. Imagine, if you will, a gallon-sized zip lock back lying near you, beckoning all day long. So easy to reach in a grab a piece as you walk by. So convenient if you are an hour or so away from lunch and feeling a little peckish. Did you have 2 or 3 pieces? When it got down to crumbs did you take a handful? Do you know how easy it would be to eat a couple thousand calories of this stuff and not even really notice?

Several people, knowing the deep relationship I have with the brittle, reassured me that given my exercise frequency I should be able to have a small piece or two. Surely this is one I could eat.

Too tempting. Too easy to get dragged into to that amber heaven. There is no having just one piece of brittle. And besides — I'm losing weight. I've lost 210 pounds and nearing a gigantic milestone. I don't work out so I can eat more, I work out to crank up my weight loss. Why would I slow myself down for even a day just to have some candy even if it is crystalized, peanut-infused, molasses-colored love?

No, not today my dear peanut brittle. Not today.

12.14.10 — Gift Basket, Ho!

The first gift basket of the season. I honestly expected more of them to have shown up already. This one didn't disappoint as it was loaded with cookies, cheese sticks, kettle corn and two kinds of peppermint bark. It was attacked mere moments from the email announcing its arrival went out.

I'm sure there will be more to come, each more elaborate and overflowing with high calorie tidbits. They will be conveniently placed nearby where the urge to graze will be strong. A nibble here, a chunk there, a handful of this and that — before you know it you've eaten the equivalent of a damn Big Mac.

That isn't the worst news, however. A coworker's father sends us a big batch of peanut brittle each year. She posted a photo of the brittle as it cooled in the snow outside her father's house with the promise that it was on its way.

The brittle may break me. More to come...

12.13.10 — Cupcakes

More Cupcake Royale cupcakes. Yawn.

12.11.10 — Poker Food

Not at work, but food that needed to be resisted nonetheless.

Our monthly poker game potluck – lots of dips, fried food, crackers and sweets. That bowl in the lower right has deep fried mac & cheese balls. The cherry covered things in the upper left are mini cheesecakes. Of course, there was beer, whiskey and all sorts of alcohol to be had.

I brought a couple diced melon trays and probably had about 150 calories worth — which if you track that kind of stuff means I had nearly a pound of watermelon and cantaloupe. Not as satisfying as fried mac & cheese perhaps, but I had a clear conscience.

12.9.10 — Pizza and Balls

Another agency meeting of some sort, another stack of leftover Zeek's pizza. There was maybe a full pizza between two boxes. 10 minutes after it hit the table in the kitchen, gone. I almost had to run back to my desk to get my iPhone. Seriously.



And then late in the afternoon, a tub of Hawaiian chocolate covered macadamia nuts showed up. They smelled good, but I was told that they weren't that good. "They're not worth it," was the instant review.

My coworkers, making my weight loss more difficult and easier all at the same time.

12.8.10 — Cheap Bastards

I didn't even have any and I was irritated.

A client sent this paltry collection of chocolates to the agency today as some sort of seasonal gift. Pah. Wait until the real gift baskets start rolling in from some of our vendors. Now that's a party. This was a poor excuse for holiday cheer.

12.6.10 — Monday Morning Tequila

This is almost the perfect food item for an advertising agency first thing on a Monday morning — Tequila filled chocolates.

The aroma coming out of the plastic container (with a classy gold plastic screw on lid, of course), was super sweet booze. I got a little buzz just breathing that in.

Booze and chocolate have been paired up for a long time. My mom used to make rum balls at Christmas that I absolutely loved, and yes they had real rum in them. It does seem like a good way to absolutely maximize your calorie intake in one bite-sized package. I almost want someone to pound all of these down to see how many it would take to actually get you drunk.

I won't be that person.

12.3.10 — I'm gone for a couple days...

I was out sick a couple days this week. After staying home and resting up, I made it into work this fine Friday to be greeted by what else than more Top Pot donuts.

Is anyone else here just done with the whole donut thing? Isn't it time for the fad to fade and these sugar and fat-laden bombs to be relegated back to the 24-hour coffee shop and the creatures who inhabit them?

And then...



Time for the monthly manager's meeting. Apparently, these meetings are so fun that the only way to lure everyone there is to dangle fried chicken, mashed potatoes, potato salad, rolls and gravy under their noses. When it all came in (from Ezell's again), I walked past the meeting room and got a face full of the smell. It honestly made me a bit queasy. The overwhelming aroma of fried food smothered in grease just about turned me off lunch altogether. If I went off my diet today and was open for food business, I'm not sure I could actually jump into the chicken and fixin's full force. None of it is appetizing anymore.

Bleh.

And just to top it off...



Cookies from Trader Joe's, called Joe Joes. 4 flavors: Double Chocolate, Peppermint, Peanut Butter and Ginger. The Peppermint and Peanut Butter were gone in minutes. Surprisingly, the Double Chocolate are lasting the longest. Each cookie is about a half inch tall and a couple inches across. 130 calories per cookie. A couple people have had one of each. 4 cookies have more calories more than the majority of my meals. One and a half cookies equals about 20 ounces — that's 1.25 pounds of diced watermelon and pineapple (I know this because I've been eating that for my evening snack). Is it any wonder how calories can sneak up on you if you aren't tracking them? Today alone between the donuts, fried chicken and now these cookies, I could have added a cool 2,000 calories minimum to my daily total. That's kind of crazy, and that's how you get to 400+ pounds my friends.

11.29.10 — Jelly Bean Roulette

Um... yeah, right.

I watched someone get the Puke, Canned Dog Food and Rotten Egg flavors. Even if I was eating everything under the Sun I'd be passing on this one.

11.24.10 — Status Snacks

Our team has been working hard lately and today was the drop dead deadline for getting a ton of stuff out the door before Thanksgiving. The account team manager brought in some breakfast goodies for our morning status meeting to get the morning started on a good note.

The OJ did appeal. Orange juice is my favorite juice. In fact, I really have a hard time with any other kind of juice. I love to eat apples, but can't handle apple juice. Same thing with grapes, cranberries, etc. For me, its orange juice or nothing. Even mixed orange juice options like these ones are okay.

On the other hand, that's a lot of empty calories. Its been a long time since I had any... and it will be a long time before I have any. Yesterday I ate the pizza, today I'm back to normal.

11.23.10 — Full Disclosure

So a couple inches of snow shut down Seattle on Monday night and only a skeleton crew made it into the agency on Tuesday. Our owner decided to reward those of us who managed to meet the minimum requirements for our jobs - showing up - by buying pizza for lunch.

Of all the foods I've given up over the last few months as I've pushed to reach my weight loss goals, two have been the hardest: french fries and pizza. Unfortunately, these two items seem to make regularly scheduled appearances in our office, especially pizza.

Here I was again, facing the imminent arrival of one of my favorite foods and, knowing how we order things in Costco-level quantities, a lot of it. I made sure to eat my lunch ahead of time, just so I wasn't hungry when the pizza appeared. The snow slowed down the delivery, so it ended up being more of an afternoon snack than lunch for everyone.

I was a little peckish, but not starving when it finally arrived. I was prepared to do my thing, go in for a couple iPhone shots and then head back to my desk like usual. But then I got to thinking. I'm an adult. I know the consequences. I'm not desperate or hungry or breaking down. I didn't feel like I deserved a treat or a cheat. I simply decided to have some pizza.

I think if I had been starving, or desperate for something other than salad, or feeling like I had done something to deserve a food reward that I would have stopped myself. As weird as it sounds, I felt like making the decision to have the pizza from a calm, logical mindset made it okay. I don't think I was coming up with any justifications, I just decided to have some, enjoy it and take whatever consequences come. I also decided that by doing this, I will have to make sure I don't make the same kind of decision again any time soon.

That's the hard part about moderation, isn't it. Do it once, maybe once in awhile, but it can't become a pattern or a frequent occurrence because then it's not moderation. So, here's my test. I had some pizza. It was good. And now I have to be even more diligent and disciplined than before.

11.19.10 — Morning Lumps, Boobies then Pie

It's been awhile. I was beginning to think my coworkers had thrown in the towel. But no, as this platter of Specialties cookies n' lumps proves.

While I know deep down that eating one of those gigantic cookies would taste good (although not orgasmically good — Specialties tends to be a little greasy), I'm pretty sure just one of those bad boys would come close to wiping out my calorie budget for the day.

I don't think anything can taste so good that it's worth blowing a whole day's worth of calories.



And then they hit me with the boobie cake. It was a coworker's 40th birthday, so his team got him this boobie cake. There were jokes, some motorboating and incriminating photos. The boobies were solid marzipan and about as real feeling as, well, big fake boobs.



And if you have boobies, you need to have a slice of pie...

Our building had a "tenant appreciation" pumpkin pie giveaway. Odd, yes, but apparently one of the servers was a total fox so everyone went down for a piece. Ahem.

I did not. I figured as long as it was down in the lobby, it didn't concern me. But then, a couple hours later, the leftover pies show up in our kitchen. Seriously? Are we now the unhealthy food dumping ground for our entire building? What the hell?

11.9.10 — Sigh (and Candy)

Top Pot. Again. For like the billionth time.

Is this what waterboarding feels like? A constant, steady, unrelenting drip, drip, drip until you can't take it anymore and just give over your will to your torturer? You find yourself so helpless against the quiet barrage that you don't have a choice any longer and let the inevitable happen?

Sigh.

I chew my gum. I eat my apple. I mix my granola into my greek yogurt and take a few more drips on the forehead. The inevitable does not happen today.



More Halloween leftovers appeared in our row this afternoon. Eh. Not really even a little tempted.

11.8.10 — Costco's Finest

Here we have a collection of the finest European cookies with Belgian chocolate... from Costco.

Don't get me wrong, The Woman and I swear by the big box from Kirkland. Their fresh produce and meat selection is surprisingly good. We make a pilgrimage there at least once a month.

But, it is a little comical to be getting Kirkland Select brand of premium European cookies. Not comical enough for me to have any, of course.

I will note that the tray pictured is the second of two. The first one was wiped out before noon. Current bets have this one emptied by 2 pm.

11.5.10 — More Ezell's

This month's managers meeting meant more Ezell's fried chicken and fixins. Again, everyone was really high on the chicken and it did smell pretty good. I could only take their word for it. As for the fixins, I refuse to believe that cold mashed potatoes, runny coleslaw (urk) and coagulating gravy was "tasty" or "hearty" or any other appetizing descriptor.



The mashed potatoes was the only item that was wiped out. Maybe it was good warm.



I've already said what I will about coleslaw. This is a case where the photo speaks for itself.



And then we get to the brown pool, slowly coagulating in the back corner there. I guess it's unsurprising that it didn't look like anyone had touched it.

All in all, not appealing even if I wasn't trying to lose weight.

11.4.10 — Post Party Donuts

The Agency had a big party last night to celebrate winning An Important Award (and rightfully so - it was a radio campaign for a pro-bono client that won the top award in a competition that had never given the award to a PSA before. It really was a big deal. I'm really not being an ass by capitalizing An Important Award).

As these things tend to go with this group, most people who went to the party are in the hurt box this morning. The organizer showed up a little while ago with 5 dozen assorted Top Pot donuts as a way to help ease the rough edges (and oh are there rough edges everywhere).

Normally, as I've pointed out before, the arrival of food in our kitchen and my coworkers' response often reminds me of a pack of starving hyenas falling on a wounded wildebeest on the Serengeti. After this morning's display, I need a new analogy.

Good Christ. 2 dozen were gone in minutes. Minutes.

Maybe piranha cleaning a cow's carcass down to the bone. Or, swarming South American army ants cutting a swath through an unsuspecting village. Or I can go with accuracy - a group of seriously hungover office workers who are desperate for sugar and grease, and haven't made the trek over to McDonalds yet. Yeah, that works.

To make things worse, I was very hungry myself this morning. The smell of all that sugar, grease and quiet desperation was hard to resist.



I do love a good aftermath shot. By the end of the day, there were 4 or 5 donuts left, out of 60.



Mid-afternoon, these showed up. That's right, the leftover Cupcake Royale cupcakes from last night's party. There were close to 30. I almost gained a pound by accidentally breathing near the cloud of sugar haze hovering over the kitchen table. Between the donuts and cupcakes, the aroma was powerful enough that I could smell it back at my desk.

11.2.10 — Uh Oh and More Candy

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

An unexpected challenger enters the room.

I had been girding myself against the traditional bite- and fun-sized post-Halloween onslaught. But, like a prize heavyweight fighter who had prepared to go all rope-a-dope on his normal class of opponents and suddenly finding himself facing an goddamn ninja horde, I find myself unable to withstand the lure of these soft, chewy circles of cookie heaven.

Well, almost.

See, unbeknownst to the ninjas, that heavyweight fighter came into the arena packing an AK-47 and whole lot of fucking ammo. Result? A lot of dead ninjas.

You may not be fun-sized, you cookies, but I will eat none of you this day.



Another batch of leftover Halloween candy appeared In the late afternoon. The Poprocks don't do much for me, but everything else would have normally been on my Definitely Fly List, especially the Reese's cup. You got your chocolate on my peanut butter? You got your peanut butter in my chocolate? Sounds like a recipe for a party in my mouth. Those two flavors together is on my top ten list of favorite things, along with the Blues Brothers movie (original only, the sequel sucked ass), the words magma and waffles, and reading LOL Cats captions. I once did an experimented with Peanut Butter Captain Crunch and Coco Puffs to try and find the perfect ration to produce a reasonable chocolate peanut butter breakfast cereal. Turns out to be about 25% Captain and 75% Puffs (the Captain has a powerful flavor).

Wistful ramblings aside, the photo is here so I didn't eat any of it.

11.1.10 — The Day After

Hmmm. I was expecting a lot more. I mean everyone takes their leftover candy from Halloween night to the office the next day. I think my coworkers are getting annoyed that I'm putting everything they bring in up on this blog.

Someone asked me today how long I'm going to keep this up. I answered, "Until I start eating it." She said I needed to start eating stuff soon. She then said she didn't bring in her leftovers mainly because she didn't want to end up on this blog.

I do know that people are no longer telling me when stuff shows up in the kitchen. I've had to "discover" stuff more and more. I don't think they are hiding it from me yet, but they also aren't being so blatant about dropping off food.

That's okay. We're getting into that special season. Now that Halloween is done, it's time for Christmas with a slight detour for Thanksgiving. The last few months have been nothing.

10.29.10 — Office Halloween

Our annual office Halloween party — costumes, booze and lots of pot lucky food.



Things got started a little early with the Monkey Brain shots — a disgusting looking mix of kaluha, schnaps and grenadine. I didn't try one. Those that did kind of regretted it if only for the texture, described as something akin to snot in a glass.



The old standby. Is there any other candy in the world that has as bad a reputation as candy corn that still gets purchased, put out in big bowls and (sometimes) eaten by people? I don't think so, and yet it endures.



More of your normal Halloween bite-sized fare. Or maybe that's fun-sized. Or maybe it's why are my thighs as big as small children-sized?

What follows is a sampling of the variety of treats, both tasty and confusing, that were displayed on the table in our kitchen. I stayed away from it all and honestly wasn't that tempted by any of it. Mostly I was fighting off a supreme level of irritation because our group almost didn't get to go at all due to a pile of last minute work dropped on us right as the party began. Maybe that is the secret to resisting food you shouldn't eat — be really angry already when you face it.