3.17 - Kind of Expected These

Store-bought St. Patrick's Day cookies. Feh.

Next.

3.16 - Back to Normal

The Chinese food for the earlier meeting was a fluke, because the next client meeting of the day and the more traditional Specialties' catering, and because only one client showed up there was a complete platter of these monsters left for the masses.

Let's face it, Specialties' cookies are obscenely large. Unnecessarily large. They are so over-the-top big that I don't think I would have tried to put a whole one away even when I was at my heaviest and most gluttonous. These things ought to be on the National Institute's of Health's Most Wanted list.

There really can be too much of a good thing, and these cookies are it.

3.7 — Tub o' Cookies

A random tub of store bought cookies. Judging by the variety, I'm thinking someone had a few packages of cookies with a couple cookies left in each. Throw them all in an old butter container and voilá, Tub o' Cookies.

Temptation meter: Not even flickering.

2.24.11 — I think I'm getting bored

I think the love is waning. I used to pop up out of my chair, iPhone at the ready, snapping photos, styling the items on the kitchen table, getting my light just right. Then I'd be back at my desk, uploading the photos and getting all sarcastic on this blog.

Maybe it's the monotonous march of the same foods over and over, but it's getting a little old. I need something big. I need something new. Cookies, donuts, pastries, even the monthly fried chicken. Been there, done that. They aren't even a temptation challenge any longer. I guess that's a good thing. I've worked so hard at resisting this stuff that I don't even feel a blip when I'm facing much of it any longer.

Still, something that tests me would be nice every once in awhile. Cookies? Eh.



If I had the calories to spare, I would have had one of these. I did take a bite of the peanut butter one after someone opened it. It was extremely bland. How you can make peanut butter bland takes some real doing.

Anyway, Kashi's cereals make a great low cal granola substitute and I have some every day in my yogurt as a snack. So, these aren't something I had to resist necessarily — I did mostly to keep the calorie budget in check.

2.12.11 — Poker Food 2

The monthly poker game rolled around and the snacks this time were dominated by chocolate. Cookies, candies, those new mini Reeses' bite thingys, two kinds of Oreos, etc. I was mostly good and stuck to the fruit trays (which I brought) and the veggies. I did have some of the pita chips and some regular potato chips. However, keeping with my new moderation attempts, I had very few chips and focused on the fruit and strawberries.



These looked very tasty, but since they were swimming in oil and covered by slabs of cheese, no benefits that the tomatoes or herbs might have were worth it.



Of course, all the chocolate was there because the next day is Valentine's Day and somehow giving high calorie snacks and chocolate to people is how you're supposed to express your love or admiration. I guess it would be okay if it all also came with a free diabetes screening.

1.5.11 — Really?

You'd think by now that people would stop dumping their unwanted or leftover crap in our row. I need to check around to see if we have a hidden Statue of Snack Liberty somewhere, imploring all of our coworkers to bring their huddled calorie masses into our safe harbor. If I find her, I'm kicking her ass and shoving these Trader Joe's wannabe Oreos down her throat.

1.3.11 — Food from Home

The agency was (mostly) closed during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, so there weren't any good opportunities for food to not eat. Today, however, we got right back on track.

One coworker, lets call her Butter Knife, went home to Philly and brought back some local favorites that aren't available on this side of the country -Tastykakes. They looked comparable to the various Hostess cake-related offerings. Most people who knew of the Tastykake we excited to see them and to dig in. By the end of the day, three of the four boxes were empty and the fourth was close. I only heard one person give them an "eh" review. Most came in and were looking for someone to split a cake with. The big yellow ones did remind me of Hostess Zingers, a particular childhood favorite of mine. I was intrigued, but not enough to take the plunge.



These didn't come from three thousand miles away, but were apparently just as tasty without the cutesy spelling of "cake."

Homemade with the able help from my coworker's young daughter, who does her best to lick the spoon sometimes before the baking is done. I'll admit, the cookies on the bottom of the pile looked pretty inviting, and knowing that they might have that special Gaby touch was definitely a plus.

Of course, I took a pass. Maybe if Gaby licked the spoon on a nice fruit salad...

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.

12.21.10 — 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.

12.14.10 — 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...

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?

11.2.10 — 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.

10.27.10 — Pumpkin Pie and The Lingering

It's been a slow week for goodies. The best my coworkers could come up with were these Pumpkin Pie cookies. After announcing my new weight loss achievement (201 lbs. lost), maybe they taking it easy on me? Yeah, I didn't think so either. We don't call Judy the Snackasaurus because she has tiny forearms and hands.

Still, the dollop of cream cheese did make these a little intriguing. Eh, who am I kidding. They looked kind of sad, and they were all stuck together in a unnatural kind of cookie mass.

Speaking of stuck together...



They just won't die. I can see now why old people have bowls full of hard candies that have melded into one ginormous chunk. These things linger beyond any kind of normal life span. Seriously, a bowl of ANYTHING is gone sometimes in moments around this office. The fact that the Ranchers have survived almost a whole week is nothing short of amazing... and a little scary.

10.4.10 — A Uwajimaya Run

Judy went up to Uwajimaya's and brought back a grab bag of snacks. Thanks to a recent visitor to Seattle from the Philippines, I've tried the BOY Bawang Corn Snacks. Holy crap those things are tasty — kind of like Corn Nuts but not as hard, lightly flavored with garlic and salt, and waaaaay too easy to go handful after handful straight to open, gaping maw. It was hard to resist them.



More from the trip to Uwajimaya. I don't need to crack one of these open to know my future doesn't include eating fortune cookies.

8.27.10 — Chocolate Carnage

The remnants of some Specialties cookies, much like the remains of a wildebeast after the lions, hyenas and then buzzards have had a go. Not much left but the odd chocolate chunk, crumbs and cookie bits.

Total weight loss = 185

8.11.10 — Summer Party

We had our annual summer party at work today and took in a Mariners' game. I thought it would be foodaggedon, but it really wasn't. They had plenty of fruit and as long as I dumped the buns and kept to the mustard, a couple hot dogs and a boca burger worked out fine. So yeah, I did eat some things today... just not the potato salad. It looked crunchy. I can't do crunchy potato salad.



I'm starting to think I have more food-related achilles' heels than I thought. First it was just french fries. I LOVE ME SOME FRIES. Then it was ice cream. Now I'm thinking chips have to be on that list. Who doesn't like chips and something creamy and slightly onion flavored to dip them in? Damn chips.



Ah beer. Nothing like taking in lots of empty calories and only getting a gut and "honey, why did your coworkers leave you on the lawn again" questions from your wife in return.



And like manna from heaven, eventually the giant cookies and brownies appeared. The cookies were your basic lot, but the brownies... ooooh, they looked all moist and chocolatety. And yes, sometimes using the word moist can be a positive thing. Sometimes moist is good. Sooooo good. Of course I'm guessing here. They could have been solid as a rock. Yep, they probably sucked. I'll just keep telling myself that.

Current weight loss = 179

8.2.10 — Aimee's Leftover Top Pot, Cherries & More Leftovers

My coworker Aimee moved this weekend and bought some Top Pot donuts and cookies for her moving crew. They didn't finish them, so we're the beneficiaries. They were sitting about 5 feet away from my desk, mocking me.

I guess I could have technically had some of these cherries. They were left in the kitchen this morning. I imagine they came from someone's personal cherry tree, or something like that. I didn't eat any, mostly because I really don't like cherries. On the blog they go.

A three-for today. The meager, well picked-over hand-me-downs from a client meeting. One Specialties cookie, 3 bags of chips and a box of lettuce with equal parts croutons and ranch-like dressing. Yum.

Current weight loss = 176

7.23.10 — Three Kinds of Cookies

These just kind of magically appeared in the kitchen this afternoon. No agency-wide email went out calling the hyenas to the injured wildbeast, bleating its last breath in the lonely vastness of the savannah. No, they just appeared, mocking me, and then in a matter of moments were gone.

Current weight loss = 173

7.21.10 — Cookies & Top Pot Donuts

One of our clients sent over a couple baskets of huge cookies in the shapes of kittens, dogs and bunnies (based on TV commercials our agency is currently creating for the client). It's nice to see a happy client and it's always nice when the agency gets some tangible appreciation, but I almost couldn't imagine trying to eat one of those cookies. I'm sure they were easily half my daily calories (or more), each.

And then, someone plopped down two dozen Top Pot donuts. I love donuts. Really. Especially maple bars, any sort of old fashioned donuts, the chocolate frosted chocolate cake ones. All of them actually. Oh, and apple fritters. Man I could get knee deep in an apple fritter. Sigh.

Current weight loss = 173