Sunday 7 May 2017

Fudge and Food for Thought

Dear Reader,


                                                                                           Fudge


I have always had problems with keeping slim.  Since I was a teenager I have battled with this difficulty, but unfortunately I haven't really won the war.  It seems enormously unfair to me that some people can eat a gigantic amount of food,  chomp their way through large meals three times a day, and not put on a pound.  Whereas I only have to eat apples, lunch of lettuce and tomatoes, and a small supper and am plump, if not fat.  And now, at the time of life I have reached, I think it will always be so.  God knows what I would have weighed if I had lived in Tudor times.

A lavish festive meal prepared for Henry, Duke of Richmond (1519-1536), the illegitimate son of Henry VIII, would have consisted of something like this: a first course of pottages, boiled meat, beef and mutton, four green geese, three roast capons, a quarter of veal, and custard; then a second course of half a lamb, six rabbits, fourteen pigeons, one wildfowl, a tart and trenchers.  Apparently trenchers were flat, three-day old loaves of bread used as plates, and when the feast was over these plates were given to the poor.  Four gallons of ale, two pitchers of wine, and a selection of fruit were also on offer.  Even had I been poor, just eating a trencher would have done for my trying to keep slim.

                                                                               *

Fudge and Food for Thought

In the night, captive,
I think of all the fudge I ate,
all the feelings of guilt I had
in my teens, my middle age, my old age,
all the sadness at my weakness
my inability to resist temptation.

Tossing uneasily in my bed
I think: would I be more comely
if I had resisted,
more desirable, prettier, more amusing,
would I have had a happier life
without fudge in it?

I mean isn't fudge made largely
of butter, sugar, all things not allowed?
Not prescribed by those in the know,
the dreary food police who warn us
every day about something
we must not do, or eat, or say?

At dawn, I think what the hell.
Now in my seventies, does it matter
what I ate to make me fatter?
Because now I am where I want to be
plump, happy, peaceful, and guilt-free.

                                                                                *

With best wishes, Patricia

3 comments:

  1. So many of us, including me will recognise your plight! Thank you for another great blog and a delicious poem - bring on the fudge feast! Xx

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  2. I agree with every word - and one of the great sadnesses of many in our modern world is that women everywhere are blighted by their relationship with food and body image, young and even old. It never leaves them. I myself have fretted since the age of three and next month I shall be 53. I know I will be battling even when I am 103! The good news for me is that I have always hated fudge; the bad is that I love to eat anything and everything else!

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  3. This is great! What a way to end - happy and guilt free!!

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