Guilty Pleasures

We all have at least one; I have many.  I’m talking about guilty pleasures.  And I don’t mean the kind which involve dancing around naked playing air guitar to Queen or picking your nose and eating it.  Food guilty pleasures are such a joyous thing.  Those little treats that you love but you’re kind of ashamed of admitting to eating.  For some, it may be the food morals issue.  You say you only eat free range chicken but then you sneakily have a McChicken sandwich on the way back from the shops, hoping you don’t see anyone you know.  For others it may be, the fat issue.  As far as all your friends are concerned you’re on a strict raw food diet to try and drop a few pounds but when you’re home alone you’re choccing down a Mars bar.  And for those like me, there are the just plain weird guilty pleasures. 

I don’t think this is that strange but I’ve mentioned it to friends and they crinkle up their noses and make yucky faces.  When I’m hungry and there’s not much in the house, I toast a crumpet til it’s really dark but not burnt and then spread a huge amount of butter on it, then add the very necessary Marmite and then top it with a fried egg and proceed to pick it up with one hand and scoff it!  There, I’ve said it.  I feel better now it’s out in the open.  To me, it makes perfect sense.  Crumpets are fantastic because they are essentially a butter absorbent mass, Marmite is just really, really good but no-one can explain why and eggs are the champion ingredient.  However, a word of warning.  If you are trying this at home, do make sure you practice the eating it with your hands part, it is much more pleasurable than using a knife and fork but you need to master the art of dexterity or you end up with yolk dribbling down to your elbows! 

Other guilty pleasures include putting Japanese mayonnaise on everything, you name it, I eat it with Japanese mayo.  Spanish Tortilla, chorizo, sandwiches, chips and a whole other world of things.  There are the more routine guilty pleasures like eating a whole pack of biscuits or crisps or chocolate, which I hope we are all guilty of…  but maybe not every day.  We all have our little food quirks and fetishes, some we have created ourselves, some we have been taught and some is inherited learned behaviour.  E.g. The weird stuff you eat because your family told you it was a good idea.  And in this particular scenario, it was a good idea…  In our family we have something you are all familiar with but we renamed it, not sure why…  We have, wait for it; Special Milk.  Special Milk is in fact, sweetened condensed milk and it is awesome.  If you have never had it, where have you been?  Under a rock?  In our family we have it on our morning porridge!  I have never come across anyone else who does it but i’m sure there must be others out there in the universe.  We also serve our porridge on a plate, again, don’t ask me why, ask my Dad.  Unfortunately my Dad has succumbed to the pressure of the health conscious and now has dried fruit on his porridge.  Boring!   

Anyway, now I’ve let you in on my guilty pleasures, I want to hear yours.  I find it is not necessarily what you eat but how you eat it and what you eat it with.  So please, if you’re reading this, write a comment about your guilty food pleasure.  However, feel free to skip the jelly wrestling stories and tales of chocolate body paint!  That’s a very different kind of guilty pleasure.