Food, Alcohol and In-laws

This post is written under the influence of alcohol, too much food and lots of in-laws. These things are all realted and I’m not sure which is more fatal.

Despite my success in losing weight, I’d always planned on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day being cheat days. I’d keep up with a token exercise habit but give in to a substantial amount of temptation.

I didn’t realize the temptation would be so substantial.

Yesterday’s supper was temaki sushi (aka hand roll or “roll your own” sushi). This is one of my favorite foods and although I horrify Mother of She Who Must Be Obeyed by spreading a mere shmere of rice on the seaweed paper, I still managed to consume more carbs than I’ve been doing lately.

Then there was the booze my brother-in-law bought me. I had to consume that, too, as we waited for the new year to arrive.

Today began with the traditional ozoni. This is a stew with lots of vegetables on top of toasted rice cakes. There was also a few ounces of sake. Later, a few distant in-laws stopped by and that meant I got to consume beer, mostly to keep the visitor from having to drink an entire liter of beer. This meant that by 10:30 a.m. I’d had a few ounces of sake and a lot of beer (a technical term) and was feeling kind of mellow.

The evening brought the full complement of immediate in-laws which meant we had a full family of serious eaters and drinkers. Although I usually resist such challenges, keep in mind I’d already been drinking, and decided to remind them why I used to be bigger which, well, yeah.

Supper was osechi, which I’ve written about before, and yakiniku, which we hand fried on a griddle in the middle of the table. I ate a lot of that whilst explaining that, no, really, I was actually watching what I ate and explaining how I’d lost so much weight. That explanation was followed by fried noodles and cheap cake. (Yes, I ate some because “cheesecake” and “weakness”.)

One of the three trays of osechi. This one includes chili squid, and

One of the three trays of osechi. This one includes chili squid, teriyaki chicken and caramel walnuts.

The second of the two trays

The second of the two trays. This one includes salmon, potato salad, fried pork and potato salad.

Along the way we went through two bottles of sparkling wine (one of which was blue), two bottles of beaujolais nouveau and at least one can of beer. Now I’m sipping some bourbon and trying to remain coherent. (Not that these posts have ever been coherent, but there you are.)

No, really, this sparkling wine is blue. (It's also a bit sweet, but not terribly so.)

No, really, this sparkling wine is blue. (It’s also a bit sweet, but not terribly so.)

Tomorrow will probably be shopping, which completes the final stage of consumption.

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