How I Know I Am An Emotional Eater

                              

I never have viewed myself as an emotional eater. Sure, I am one of those people who eats out of boredom, but I have never really considered that emotional eating. The term "emotional eating" evokes an image in my mind of a woman crying and eating an entire pint of ice cream. However, as much as I think this, it is not always the case. 

1. It is still emotional eating even if it is not comfort food. 

Once, I read an article that said one way to tell if you are an emotional eater is that you only crave  "fatty foods or sugary snacks." For me, that is rarely the case. I will eat a salad out of boredom. If I feel nervous, I will eat a piece of wheat toast. Vegetables may sound equally as good as ice cream.

2.  It is still emotional eating even if it isn't sadness, anger, stress, etc. 

"Emotional eating" is not a very precise term; the colloquial "eating your feelings" may actually apply better. Boredom is an emotion, but I also eat when I am feeling sick. If I have a stomach ache, headache or even the flu, I always think some sort of eating or drinking will help.  That article on emotional eating said that you are eating to fill a void. Emotional eating is also not always caused by negative emotions; you can eat because you are happy too. 

This brings me to why I can tell I am an emotional eater and what emotional eating really is.

1. You believe a moment or state will be made better by food.

You can be very happy, but feel as if a moment could be made better by food. If I am having fun, I will often think about how the only way this moment could be better was if there was food which leads me to get some food. This is fine if I haven't already eaten, but usually I already have. I think food is the cure for everything--not just emotional; I think food might make me less tired or cure a cold by give me a nutrient I am lacking. 

2. You believe you deserve food!

This was how I officially decided I am an emotional eater. I constantly justify what I am eating. Yesterday, I ate an entire bag of salted caramels but I deserved them because I had sunburn. In actuality, the emotion I was feeling was uncomfortable and the caramels took my focus away from that. I have never thought I was an emotional eater because I was focusing on the deserving part and not the emotional part (I told myself deserved them for an situation I didn't choose not an emotion). Justifying food goes much further than this. Some excuses are more valid than others; I am okay with things like  "I ate a lot but it is fairly healthy." However, I will go as far to say, "I deserve a rootbeer because we could all die at any minute and it would suck if I had denied myself happiness for my last moments."

After all is said and done, I love food and I am not one who thinks you should deny yourself the happiness that comes from food. I will probably still say that I want (but don't deserve) a doughnut because we could all die any moment now. Instead, what I hope to get from my realization is to stop eating out of boredom and to be more selective about the times I treat myself. 

Seabright Beach

On Saturday, Bing got to go to the beach with my friends and their dog. Bing loved digging holes and getting sand all over our beach blanket, but I think the beach was a little too hot and crowded for him. He didn't want to play near the water or run around, and spent the entire time sleeping in the sun on the towels with his daddy while everyone else went swimming. We enjoyed a picnic of sandwiches, kale salad, gorgonzola pasta, roasted potatoes, hummus, and garlic bread over the sounds of my friend's guitar. After over 6 hours at the beach, we had delicious clam chowder and seafood. Between the 5 of us, we went through 3 bottles of sunscreen and I still managed to get a horrible sunburn down just one arm. For me, sunburns are like hangovers; I spend the whole next day feeling awful thinking about how I never want to go in the sun again.

Graduation Dinner

Since Kyle didn't want to walk in his graduation ceremony,  we went out to dinner in Piedmont to celebrate him completing his Master's Program. Bing and I are very proud of him.

Crispin Hard Apple Cider: Cho-tokkyu

I have mentioned before that the reason I don't do much beauty pampering is that I can't stand the size of my bathroom.  Occasionally I will go to a spa for pampering, but tonight the closest I am getting to that is lying in bed with a nice bottle of hard cider and watching Peep Show.

I have tried several hard ciders by Crispin before but they been hit-or-miss. Tonight, I am enjoying their Cho-tokkyu, a apple cider fermented with authentic sake yeast. I wasn't looking forward to this particular bottle because I can't stand sake. I guess, sake cocktails are almost passable but straight sake I don't like warm or cold. When I poured the glass, the cider was extremely light in color-- a hazy straw color. On the palate,  it was a lot drier than their other ciders. It was still heavy on the carbonation, but neither the apple or the sake flavor was very present. In my bottle, there was not much settlement which was probably one reason for the lack of apple flavor. While it was crisp and enjoyable, it reminded me more of dry white wine than cider. 

Salad Dressing Love

To me, salads need to be thoroughly dressed. There is nothing worst in a salad than those dry leaves that didn't get any dressing. Luckily, I see a lot of recipes for salad dressing on Pinterest; however, a lot of them require using seasoning packets as a base. When I needed to bring a salad and dressing to a dinner party, I had to find a recipe my friends, who are picky with ingredients, would consider acceptable. (We once got into a 10 minute worried kerfuffle because I used vegetable bouillon mixed with water --even if it was organic-- instead of stock.) So, after modifying a basic creamy balsamic recipe, I came up with something they thought was amazing and is really easy to make.

Creamy Balsamic Recipe

1/2 cup of balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons mayonnaise or aioli

1 tablespoon brown mustard

2 tablespoons lemon juice

3-4 cloves of garlic

1 tablespoon dried tarragon

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon coarse pepper

2 teaspoons honey

3/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil

Mix together the first 9 ingredients in a food processor, blender, or by hand. (I use a blender because I don't own a food processor.) Then, gradually mix in oil olive while blending or whisking.

Favorite QI: Quite Interesting Guests

My apologies for not posting over the weekend. I thought about backdating posts but after some consideration I decided it wasn't worth the effort. I wasn't feeling particularly well (sore neck) so I was resting. Resting for me involves watching a lot of beloved old TV episodes like QI and, since I love to make lists, I thought I would do a silly post while I am recuperating. 

                                 

I love British comedy panel shows (do we have any current panel shows in the US?) and QI is probably my favorite. After many repeat episodes of QI, I have come up with my favorite guests.

                                     
1. Alan Davies (Not really a guest, but he is THE panelist so he deserves to be mentioned first.) 
2. Jimmy Carr (I have never found his stand-up particularly funny, but I think my love of him has to do with his dead-pan vulgarity. His episodes are always the naughtiest and my favorite for that reason.) 
3. David Mitchell (Every show needs a Mitchell-style rant about something or other.)
4. Bill Bailey (I have adored him since Black Books, he is the perfect blend of hilarious but knowledgeable.)
5. Phill Jupitus (Sometimes he tries too hard to be funny, but his flirtation with and mockery of Stephen is priceless.)
6. Rob Brydon (Utterly endearing.)
7. Sandi Toksvig (Witty-- almost a female Fry but without the acumen.)
8. Sean Lock (Plucky, humorous, jovial.)
9. Dara Ó Briain (Smart, funny, but my favorite thing about him is his facial expressions and pretend outrage.)
10. There is no number 10. There are more like (Lee Mack, Danny Baker, and Andy Hamilton)  but I don't love any of them enough for them to make it onto the list ( I didn't want to have to choose based on their mere 3-4 appearances). There have been single guest appearances I have loved (Emma Thompson, Daniel Radcliffe), but one episodes is not a large enough sample size to make it into my favorites. Likewise, there are comedians who I adore like Eddie Izzard,  Vic Reeves, and Graham Norton who just didn't make a large enough splash on the show (maybe their comedy isn't suited to the format).

Travel Dreams

Who coined the term "travel bug?" While I certainly agree with connotation, the term falls into the category of sayings that I don't care for like baby bump (and most pregnancy words), underdog, or hubby. In my mind, I am fanatic about travel but I have never done much of it so I can't say that for sure. I don't even own a passport. Maybe I just like the romanticism of travel? 

It was incredibly hard to rule it down to the top places I want to go since I haven't been most places and secondly I often read about a location and then become obsessed with traveling there. Currently, I am in love with Saint Petersburg but I tried to think about this list subjectively. Where have I always wanted to go, where are most of my pins from on my travel board, and what places am I most disappointed that I have never been to?

1. United Kingdom (I debated even mentioning this on the list. Travel is different from feeling a connection to move there since an early age. However, even if I did live in England, then the top place on my list would probably still be Scotland, Wales, or one of the British Isles.)
2. Ireland (Not surprising based on my first choice.) 
3. Italy (I have no desire to go to the major cities like Rome or Florence, but there are many smaller areas I would love to see like the states of Liguria, Puglia, Calabria, and Sicilia.) 
4. Nova Scotia or Maine (When I think of travel, I tend to focus on more exotic locations. However, if I could take a small (4-5 day) trip right now I would probably choose Maine or Nova Scotia if I had a passport. I just love cold weather, the sea, and seafood.) 
5. Greek islands (I want to see of all of Greece but first I would love to be out in the Mediterranean Sea. This location gets my vote for best food.) 
6. Chile (At university, there was an exchange student in one of my Women's Studies classes from Santiago. She talked so lovingly of the nightlife in Santiago that it fueled an interest in going to Chile. By coincidence, a lot of my travel pins are for places in Chile.) 
7. Turkey (My list seems to revolve heavily around the Mediterranean sea, which is surprising because I hate hot weather and my boyfriend says the humidity there is the worst.) 
8. Norway (Specifically, Ålesund is my top honeymoon choice.) 
9. France (Again, I have never wanted to see any of the major cities like Paris but the French countryside looks amazing.) 
10. Austria ( Hallstatt or Vienna to be precise.)