Charming, but single

I have a crush. A big crush. A crush that comes at such a terrible time for me that I just want to cry and pitch a fit about how unfair it is that my New Year’s Resolution is to get in better shape and I pick this particular moment to have a crush on a food blogger. Fine, it isn’t a real crush. It’s a blog crush. Her name is Deb, she writes at Smitten Kitchen, and she blogs the best best best food recipes and cooking tales with fantastic pictures that are just beautiful and I wish I could reach right on in through my laptop screen and take a bite. Not a little princess nibble, but a huge, hulking mouthful of yumminess – even my quasi-vegetarian self would probably eat anything, meat included, that looked as appetizing as Deb’s delights. This is precisely the problem. I am supposed to be eating green leaves with a light dusting of oil and vinegar! A properly measured serving of Cheerios with skim milk and half a banana! A small portion of baked fish with half a baked sweet potato! Not lusting after truffles and pecan bars (damn you Ina Garten!) and Bourbon! Pumpkin! Cheesecake! How trite of me to blog about overeating in early January, right? There should be a Technorati tag devoted to heavily clichéd posts about eating better in the New Year. But what disappoints me is while I never expect to be a tiny, waiflike thing, I know how to eat healthy food in a way that doesn’t cause me to gain weight (and, wonder of wonders, allows me to lose weight). And it doesn’t kill me. And it does taste good. And I do get to eat. In fact, the most successful diet I’ve ever been on allowed me to eat three normal-sized meals and two to three snacks a day. Mayo-free tuna salad. Natural peanut butter and bananas in pita pockets. Homemade blue cheese vinaigrette (yes, I was consulting my nurse practitioner about healthy eating strategies – seriously, try this, your medical professional has really good pointers and also will be excited to share them with you, promise – and she said that a modicum of cheese is okay and that she makes fresh salad dressing every day and that she’d rather me worry about cutting out tons of sugars, fried things and overeating than an some olive oil in my salad dressing) on my greens. And, ohmygod, if you have not had the sugar free Jell-o instant pudding in cheesecake flavor? Stop what you are doing and go to the store. I will wait for you to get back. Back? Good. Seriously, sliced strawberries (you really only need a few) on top of that pudding? Maybe it was because I’d cut my sugar intake down and assaulted my body with daily work outs, but that was my favorite after dinner dessert while I pondered how hot I was going to look after all of this. My point? I don’t have one. Except that I’m pissy that Monday is my “diet day.” (I always start diets on Mondays because I figure I’m already in a bad mood anyway.) Also, I cancelled my Match.com subscription. But if I happen to meet some awesome guy between now and the end of my subscription next week, I’m making this Guinness cake to lure him into my apartment, where I will lock the door and we will do nothing but eat cake all day long and never go on diets or climb onto elliptical machines. That’s my plan. Updated 1/7/06: Charming's diet discussion in the comments.