Comfort Eating

I’ve been battling with comfort eating for a long time, often eating family packs of peanut M&Ms or Minstrels at a time. This is seriously bad news as I have put on quite a bit of weight and of course increased cholesterol and the risk of diabetes etc.

Determined to change my ways I decided to add the amount of chocolate I am eating onto my pacing schedule,(a list of pain management tasks I have to do each day to improve my ability to live with pain). The net result is that I have managed to beat the munchies, to celebrate I decided to write this poem. I hope you like it.

Comfort Eating

Sitting alone, in the dimly lit room
the depression came to a peak.
Nothing could stop it
and no one could help
I felt like some form of freak.

Deep in my brain a chemical change
Suggested I needed to eat.
My mind tried to fight it
It knew the whole truth
It didn’t want veg, carbs or meat.

It was craving for chocolate
and not just one bar
it told me I needed much more.
A family pack might do the trick
I felt I could eat a big Jar.

For the fifth day this week
the stash in my draw
called silently from afar.
As if a link from chocolate to brain
Kept shouting; ‘John you need more’

It wasn’t true, I knew it was wrong,
But it kept on calling my name
so I struggled and fought
and battled all night
determined not to feel shame.

It’s now a week later,
I’ve won every night!
The chocolate’s calls have diminished.
I’m using this win to improve my mood
and help turn the darkness to light.

John Carré Buchanan
11 January 2012

The Cake

I have always enjoyed baking and decorating cakes, and over the years I have become reasonably competent at it.

Each year I make a Christmas cake and a Yule Log and in the past I have spent over 30 hours putting elaborate icing onto a Christmas Cake.

Unfortunately over the last few years I have not been able to sit long enough to create a really elaborate finish. That said this year I did come up with a reasonably good cake, which I took to share at church.

Whilst creating this year’s cakes I had to hide them from our cat’s and dog. I was half way through emptying a cupboard in which I could hide them when I remembered a cake my wife made for my daughter’s Birthday, and a Yule Log I made a few years ago. These two memories gave me the inspiration to write this poem.

The Cake

The baking tin was triple wrapped,
brown paper, tied with string,
when a lumpy, brown, sticky mix
was poured from height therein.

The oven had been warming up,
when the door was pulled asunder
and the tin was placed atop a shelf
not middle, but just under.

Slowly the sticky mixture baked?
and gradually it did harden,
'till tested ready with a skewer,
from the furnace it was pardoned.

Cooled in tin, and then on rack,
and bathed in cooking brandy,
then wrapped and stored and bathed,
some more was modus operandi.

The rich brown fruit cake was liberated,
and brushed with sticky jam.
Then wrapped in a golden covering
of evenly rolled marzipan.

Next came the icing. Purest white
and smoothly layered all over.
Then left to set and layered again
sheer white like cliffs at Dover.

Now for the deftly placed nozzle
a squeeze, a press and withdraw
colourful piping surrounded the base
then around the top ‘encore’.

Figures were sculptured in marzipan.
The nativity scene oh so neat,
the beautiful cake was finished,
all that was left is to eat.

The cake looked so impressive,
with its nativity scene, so unique,
nobody wanted to cut it,
So it sat on the table all week.

People hungrily admired it,
but no one dared take a slice,
then late last night for his supper,
the dog ate it all in a trice.

John Carré Buchanan
30 December 2011