Thanksgiving

While all of you (Americans) think about Thanksgiving and the food you'll eat, I'm thinking about food, too. When you are away from the food you like, thoughts turn to food. And on stressful journeys, thoughts turn to food. And when you approach the end of your journey, thoughts turn to the food you may soon be eating.

So here is some of my food thoughts:

1) Supreme pizza from Pizza Hut with a Traditional Hand Tossed or Deep Dish crust. Oh, I can't wait.

2) Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Either just by itself or maybe I'll brown some hamburger and add it to the mix and have a Kraft dinner with meat. Maybe even add some broccoli to it.

3) Sloppy Jacques. Yes, Hunt's Manwich sauce with ground beef on a meter long French baguette. Oh it will be so good. I just wish baguettes didn't cost so damn much in Seattle. They were cheap at the Safeway in Vancouver, BC, but for some reason, Seattle seeks to rip off the consumers of French baguettes. I'll spread the sloppy joe mix all down the baguette and eat the whole thing. Yummy!

4) Casseroles. Mashed potato, cream of mushroom soup, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, ground beef, chicken, noodles. However you mix them and bake them in a toaster oven at 350°, it'll be good. As long as you sprinkle cheese on top.

5) Whoppers. I confess to loving the BK Whopper. It's the reason I used to weigh 235 lbs, after all.

6) Just a nice steak. I get pretty good steaks in the Francophone countries where there are a lot of French restaurants, but I still want a good ole American steak with a baked potato or mashed potatoes and a nice salad, maybe a Caesar salad.

7) Since the holidays are coming up, I feel the need for egg nog. Not the rum laced egg nog, but the pure virgin egg nog of my youth. Perhaps I can get a nutmeg and one of those scraper thingies to draw fresh nutmeg into my eggnog. Mmmmm.... Nothing says Christmas like a cardboard milk container of egg nog.

8) If there is a McDonalds at the Detroit airport on my way back from Accra, I'm totally having a Sausage McMuffin with Egg, that Hashbrown thing, and a coffee. If all of McDonalds were to disappear except for those items, I'd be OK with it.

Of course my worst fear is that once reaching the land I know, that my weight will go back to what it was. I'm probably at 150 lbs now and I sure would like to stay this way. When I look at myself in the mirror, I like what I see. But if I eat like a pig when I return, I won't look this good when I return to Seattle. Hopefully, I have some setpoint where if I eat too much I'll stop being hungry. But who knows. I'll need discipline. Fortunately, along with all these indulgent dishes I crave, I also want to eat healthy foods. I want to eat 4664 tomatoes and bags of lettuce with a light dusting of dressing. Note that I don't eat low-fat or diet dressing. Just the real thing. Low fat and diet foods trick you and beguile you and make you fatter. Better to eat the real thing and control the portions yourself. Sometimes I slice up some green pepper on my salad. Sometimes even some red onion. As long as I put quality ingredients into my body, I don't worry about much else. That's how I got from 235lbs to 170 lbs. Travel took off the last 20 pounds to get me down to the approximately 150 lbs I am now. Now I am where I want to be. I want to stay at this weight. It shouldn't be too hard. I'll return to my yoga in Seattle--which should also keep me out of Smith, 22 Doors, and Liberty where I would just consume calories.

I look forward to my return to Seattle. If I can stay at this weight, I'll be in good shape. I have a sort of perpetual smile on my face from my experiences that should intrigue the people there. I have entered the hardcore travelers' elite. I earned my bonafides in the travel arena. In Vancouver, when you meet a new person, your place in the pecking order is soon established by your travel experiences. Not as much in Seattle, but certainly in Vancouver. This puts me near the top. And I have stories to back it all up. You can't travel in West Africa without getting a lot of good stories. Sadly, most of the best stories require a pretty bad hardship that has to be endured, but I have already endured them. I can talk about my boat trip from Mopti to Timbuktu and my sept-place trip from Koundara to Labé in Guinea-Conakry. I can talk about the hotels and hostels I stayed at with no running water, no electricity, no furniture. I can talk about my experiences trying to speak French and even getting myself understood.