The Eating Game ...

If one thing is blindingly obvious in this life, it is this ... I really suck at blogging!

And also, I still really pine for Mediterranean countries, and all that the cliché entails!
Well, news just in: (or rather, news received a week ago but I am only just getting around to making it newsworthy!) – another trip to Italy looms. For real, for honest and for true! It may be 10 months away, but my next lot of Long Service Leave has been approved, and I am off to continue binging on melanzana con prosciutto and ragu.

Oh God I miss food!

In a nutshell, the difference between pretending to reside in Europe and living in the real world comes down to calories. Forget language barriers, Italian men, and the ultimate killer heels; between Google translate, the Northern suburbs and ebay, those things are still within reach. Ish. (Sometimes I feel like I’m dislocating my shoulders to get them, but you get my drift.)

But calories? No WAY!

There are NO Calories in Australia, and the streets are NOT lined with cheese!!!

Calories, instead, are the devil. They are publically shunned! They are ostracised and condemned and much maligned throughout all good society!! They rot more teeth; they break out more on the skln and they have a higher tendency to convert as fat on your arse in Australia – possibly because we’re in the southern hemisphere and therefore they naturally migrate further south. (I’m no physicist, but to me that makes sense.) They also have a higher incidence of causing bloating and fat around the jowls.

In Australia, calories are evil.

But Italy meant stuffing my face every day. It meant cornetti for breakfast, pannini laden with pork and potatoes and god knows what kind of cheese, for lunch. It meant biscotti and Baci kisses and nutella torte and calzone dripping with strings of mozzarella. And who can forget those little olive and sausage ball things? Manna from heaven, they were!

Mmmm. Saliva-fest. My stomach is making “want” noises.

And then there was dinner, after having pizza for afternoon tea. Dinner meant four courses that had any combination of beans and chocolate and beef and pasta and bread and oil and custard and gelato and FUCK ME, WHY AM I ALWAYS SO HUNGRY IN THIS COUNTRY?!!

Australia equals I am starving. Australia equals No sugar. No excess fats. No bread. No butter. No Pudding. No chocolate. No snacking. No yummy, but plenty of blah.

In Australia e' uguale ho fame! BLAAAAAAH!

Obviously these are rules that I self-impose. If you want to be an outcast with fat migrating to your bum, or you carry your love handles with finesse because you’re not a five foot midget, or you simply just don’t give a shit, OR you’re lucky enough to have one of those metabolisms that subverts my fat-migrating-to-your-arse theory, then you probably think I’m a tool who should just dive into a bucket of cake. AND you should probably go fuck yourself! (I kid. And am jealous. And go fuck yourself!) I mean, I eat, but where’s the fun in it without Chips and Chocolate and Cheese, oh MY!! The three “CH’s” – my dessert island foods, with a rather healthy dose of mayonnaise. Or unhealthy, as the case may be! (And I just wrote dessert instead of desert; an honest to god Foodian slip that has everything to do with erotic day dreams about what I would like to do with that little red smart-arse MnM.)

GET IN THE GODDAMMN BOWL!!!

I know, I know; everything in moderation and all that – and I do moderately eat my favourite heart attack inspired goodies. (And then I have to run for about six hours to make sure my bum doesn't wobble any more than it already does.) But fuck moderation. I want chocolate cake all the time! I want cheese all the time! And Italy equalled all the time!!

And somehow, with far fewer consequences than such excesses would ensure Down Under.

So, the long and the short of it is that I am going to have to use my leave to go back to Italy every year. I figure once a year will allow me to feed my face; indulge in a few weeks of culinary orgasms, and then come back and "starve" for long enough to make any weight I put on mere collateral damage. I'll probably wreck my metabolism, sure, but what can you do - sometimes, tirimisu can be THAT good!

So, going back to Italy.

To eat. And love. But not pray - except maybe to the gypsies, who've been surprisingly good to me this year! Who knew karma could really work for you?!

Amen.