The Power of a Cheese Soufflé in Shitty Situations
Adeline loves food, a lot and often, both at home and out and about. Usually that goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. In the series Sunday Roast, she shares her observations. This time: fuck off with your salad, I want snacks.
Do you know those people who don’t eat anything when they’re in a bad mood? I don’t trust those people. You sometimes hear those utopian stories about people losing five kilos in one week because of a shitty situation; I’m not one of those people (and I don’t have a figure like that either). When things get shitty, I triple my home-delivery orders, calories and eating moments per day. A classic emotional eater in heart, kidneys and bottomless stomach (cheese soufflé!). Which, incidentally, I think is a rather silly term, because in short it means that food makes you happy—and isn’t that always the point of eating anyway?
Shove that cucumber wherever…
The advice from the so-called expert in these kinds of situations is: eat healthily, because apparently that makes you feel a whole lot better. Never happened to me, by the way, that I turned a cucumber or celery stick into a soldier and people suddenly found me—or themselves—more tolerable. My emotions also vary considerably when people make comments like that. From ‘fuck off with your salad, I want snacks’ to ‘shove that cucumber where the sun doesn’t shine.’ How is it possible to deny the power of a Magnum or a pizza in situations like these? That reeks of sacrilege and evangelism with one foot in the (refrigerator) door.
Consume in peace
Normally, I’m blessed with a sunny disposition, honestly. I’m not plagued by morning grumpiness, I’m generally quite happy, and at parties I always want to be the last to leave, even when the host doesn’t. But roughly once a year I develop a morning mood that lasts a solid two weeks, and then I only want three things: lots of food, lots of drinks, and for everyone to let me consume in peace (cheese soufflé!)
Blissfully ignorant
Why does it have to be fatty and plentiful when you feel like crap? Something has to be transmitted in the upper chamber to make things a little happier again, and I can imagine that a radish simply doesn’t transmit as deliciously as, say, a glossy mac and cheese. Just like chocolate, which supposedly has all kinds of happiness benefits, even though scientists suspect there’s a significant placebo effect involved. Which I’m completely fine with and blissfully ignorant about, because it works, so why make things difficult?
Out of self-preservation
When those two weeks are about to begin, the atmosphere in this house changes. My companion is rather perceptive in this regard and knows what’s coming, although you don’t necessarily have to be perceptive to notice. I walk around with a permanent frown deep enough to clamp an entire plate of fries into, and every five minutes I stare long and thoughtfully into the refrigerator, then the treats drawer and even briefly the freezer, where there’s nothing in it out of self-preservation (cheese soufflé!)
A clear-cut case of cheese soufflé, indeed
Apparently, one symptom of emotional eating is craving something specific. Well, the craving was specific indeed: cheese-soufflé-specific. After two weeks of expressing my craving for cheese soufflé at breakfast, in the supermarket queue and while doing the admin, my favorite companion came home with a white bag from which a greasy aroma wafted toward me. A crispy block of perfection fried in plenty of fat that suggests cheese, but contains no cheese at all. It did exactly what it was supposed to do: make me happy. So fuck off with your cucumber and salad; next time I’ll eat a cheese soufflé on day one!
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