food!

I'm belching, and the halitus is foul. It's been this way for a day or two—I belch, and what comes up is the stink of an empty stomach. Be happy you're not me.

As you might imagine, I spend my time thinking about food. This isn't so different from when I was doing the Newcastle diet. Back then, at 800 calories a day (at least in theory), I was hungry all the time. Now that I'm fasting (almost 5/7 of the way through as of this writing!), the hunger has returned. Fasting is, of course, not sustainable in the long run, and pretty much every expert I've read and every video I've watched on the subject says that a seven-day fast ought to be done no more than maybe once to three times a year. I can see why. For a food lover like me, fasting just makes me think more about food. And it doesn't help that I keep watching food videos on YouTube. I can guarantee you this: I won't be doing any more seven-day fasts anytime soon. Jesus.

That said, I'm not as weak as I thought I'd be. I just did an 80-minute walk home, and later tonight, I'm going to attempt my building's staircase, which I hope to do at least once. Twenty-six floors. Good God. I'd better not faint. That would be embarrassing.

I'm thinking about Thursday and Friday this week. Thursday, I visit the doctor and then break my fast. By that time, I will have fasted 7.5 days. That will be the longest I've fasted since high school. If I plan to stop fasting before the doctor's appointment, well, tomorrow is the last day I can do that because I have to fast all day Wednesday before my appointment (blood work and all that). In the meantime, our boss has canceled his Christmas party, so I'm planning to make and bring food to the office on Friday: another megaquiche for the boss's wife, and a mess of pulled pork for my coworker's wife, the pro chef.* She apparently loved my pulled pork last year (just as my boss's wife loved my megaquiche). We'll eat half of the quiche and half of the pulled pork in the office on Friday, and then my boss and coworker, respectively, will take home the other half-portion of quiche and pulled pork. My Christmas gift to their families. No Christmas gift to my Korean coworker, unless he wants to take home whatever leftovers remain. Maybe I should make him a pecan pie or something.

So while I'll be breaking my fast on Thursday after my doctor's appointment, I'll be eating hearty on Friday, and quite possibly on Saturday as well, depending on what the leftover situation is. Oh, how I dream of food.

The megaquiche will be like last time—big and mean and obnoxious—an American take on a French delicacy. The pulled pork will be served as sliders, so I'll have toasted buns, pickles, and homemade coleslaw for the troops. I'm making the coleslaw tonight, actually, and I'll be slow-cooking the pork tonight as well; that slow cooker will run through the night, and the pork will be ready for pulling and saucing come morning. Bun-toasting, quiche-baking, and other prep won't happen until Thursday night so that the food can be as fresh as possible on Friday (nothing worse than a toasted bun that sits around for several days before you eat it).

I looked for my usual KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce when I was at Costco this morning, but Costco switched it out for some brand called Stubb's—specifically, Smoky Mesquite Legendary Bar-B-Q Sauce. (Yes, that's how "barbecue" is spelled on the label.) I won't be able to sample the Stubb's until Thursday; I have no idea how good it is. Costco normally sells decent products, so I'm not too worried. I thought about making my own BBQ sauce, but I'm feeling kind of lazy, so Stubb's will have to do.

That's the meal plan for Friday: quiche and pulled-pork sliders. Kind of an awkward meal; these two foods don't normally go together. But, hey—this is an Amurrican thing. We Yanks can make anything work, and I'm sure my boss and coworkers will appreciate whatever I put in front of them. Meantime, while I can't eat anything yet, it'll be good to spend time making food. Normally, a cook is supposed to taste as he goes to make sure things are properly salted, sauced, etc. But I've done pulled pork and coleslaw loads of times—and quiche, as it turns out, is hard to mess up as long as I remember not to do any blind-baking (where you pre-bake the pie shell; it's an unnecessary step).

Expect photos of the goods later this week.

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*Technically, December is my coworker's wife's month to make food, and she's apparently going to do another round of beef on Weck for Christmas week (see my post about it here). So this Christmas, it's a one-two punch of food on the 17th and the 24th.