that minty taste
I got to thinking about ice cream sitting in the early recliner yesterday, coffee rushing through my bloodstream which apparently is still working just fine. An aside – I once asked a guy named Dick M to explain to me exactly how “the program” worked, and he smiled and answered, “Just fine.” Which falls well within the milieu of keep it simple, stupid. Anyway, I think I was thinking about Keto and what I would eat Sunday and what I’d eat the two days with the kids and then on Wednesday, you know, say the creek don’t rise and there ain’t no meltdown and I’m still here for Wednesday. And almost inevitably, thinking about Keto brings the pangs of (cue the Supremes) ‘Baby, Baby, Where Did My Ice Cream Go?’ And here’s another aside. When I spent three days in Encinitas a few weeks back I found a diner on the 101 which let me purchase for breakfast just eggs and bacon. It was wicked good and not too expensive and I could bow to myself for being a real good Keto cadet. My last morning on one of the stools close by the short-order cook, the conversation of Keto came up with the waitress and a lady sitting on the next stool, and at some point the lady asked me what food I missed most by following a Keto diet the last nearly four years. I assure you not a single nano-second passed before I answered, “Ice cream.”
So, it’s early Sunday and I’m thinking about ice cream. Point of interest, my favorite ice cream the last 10 years or so has been Trader Joe’s Mint Chip, which comes in pint containers. When I was happily married, Susan and I would sit on the couch and watch something on the tv and share a pint between us, not that we polished off the whole thing, though sometimes we did. We would take turns, hand it back and forth, each with our own spoons, and both of us would sneakily look out of the corners of our eyes (my left, her right) to see how much the other one was taking in their turn. It was either extra spoonful’s or spoonful’s piled as high as Mount Hood. Susan’s trick was the extra, mine the mountain.
So, there I am yesterday, having had the TJ Mint Chip only once in the last year, thinking about ice cream and missing it wicked bad and wanting some right now, which while that isn’t every moment of my hungry/being entertained life, it does manage a fairly regular appearance. Here’s the thing. Eating any ice cream, between the added sugars and the carbs, kicks me (or anyone) out of Keto that day. It just does, and then the body begins its well-known ancient routine of burning sugar and carbs preferentially and letting other fats remain to hang around and show their stuff. So, the way to slide out of Keto only once a week, which is maybe a reset and not a bad thing from what I’ve read, is to eat the whole pint in one sitting. And to be honest, that’s easy. Maybe funky. But easy.
And then an “Aha moment”. Buy a pint of Mint Chip and eat half for breakfast – like a totally fabulously wicked great way to start my day. Scrambled eggs, a spicy jalapeno chicken sausage, and half a pint of Mint Chip. Then eat the other half after a healthy dinner of, say, frozen meat balls and olives and an avocado. Brainstorm, baby. So I say to myself, Dude, hi thee over to the Hillcrest TJ’s real soon and score four or five pints, there’s room in the lonely freezer, and right then the kid still in me – age 12 again – gets to run all around the Wareham backyard, laughing and playing, singing out loud, and eating ice cream with the world.