The Clam Rampant

Kasia February 24th, 2009

Why, oh why, did I walk into the sacristy?

Never mind. I know why I walked into the sacristy. But why did there have to be three boxes of paczki there?

Brief explanation: my office is housed at a Catholic church. The downstairs fridge, where we usually keep our lunches and surplus food (i.e. leftovers from a funeral luncheon that didn’t get taken home), is broken. Needs a new part. As I found out yesterday when I went down to retrieve and heat my lunch, only to find it room-temperature…anyway.

So today I am making the transition to eating less food more frequently. It was recommended to help with my acid reflux, which has been bothering me of late, but given that we are not trying to predict when and if a little Clamuck might appear, I am trying not to take my prescription and to correct it through diet and calcium-based antacids. Pop is the most obvious culprit, so I’m trying to keep that to a glass or so a day, and nothing after work (quitting cold turkey has been a mistake in the past), but my diet overall isn’t very conducive to minimizing reflux either.

So today at breakfast I had an instant oatmeal (hey, it may not be as wholesome as regular oatmeal, but it sticks with me better than Fruity Pebbles do), and then Canuck and I browsed the fridge and cupboards to find what might be a not-too-awful, multi-meal-conducive combination of foods. We settled on: some muffins (home-baked but from a mix), a few slices of American ‘cheese’ (that’s ‘processed cheese food’ on the package, thank you very much – I’d have preferred real cheese, but we only had a little and it was bought for a particular recipe, so we’ll go shopping later. That plastic-y Kraft singles stuff is really only good for grilled cheese sandwiches), a can of pears, opened and dumped along with their juice (yes, juice, not syrup) into a Pyrex dish, and the last helping of a spinach-noodle casserole that tends to be our Friday staple.

Since the fridge is broken, I left the insulated lunch bag in the car. Love Michigan in February – God’s refrigerator!

Well, around 9:45 I started to get a little peckish, so I retrieved the bag had a muffin and a slice of ‘cheese’. Since it was an insulated bag and I was feeling lazy, I kept the bag inside, figuring (correctly) that it wasn’t going to be terribly long before I was ready for some more food.

Around 11 or 11:30 I was getting outright hungry, so I took my casserole downstairs to heat up. Yum! And I decided it would be nicely offset by some canned pears. There was an odd number of pear halves in the can (seven, I believe), so I had three and decided to save the rest for later.

But did I really want to traipse back out to the car? (I know I’m lazy…but in fairness, I did take the stairs when I went to heat the casserole…yeah, I know that’s not a big deal…hush…)

So I thought to myself, “Self – Monsignor often puts extra cans of pop and whatnot into the little fridge in the sacristy. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I put my pears and cheese in there too.” So I did. It felt more than a little strange to be putting my pears and cheese into the fridge that holds the unconsecrated Hosts (once the package has been opened, they’re apparently supposed to be refrigerated for freshness – makes sense once you consider that they’re basically just flour and water, no preservatives), but I did it.

And I turned around to leave.

And I realized my folly.

The sacristy, for some inexplicable reason, is the place where everyone puts food they might have brought in to share. Doughnuts, or quickbreads, or cookies…or paczki.

Eeek! And all because I didn’t want to pig out on my pears!!!

So I had one. Mmm. Either cherry or strawberry. I congratulated myself on my restraint.

Fifteen minutes later, one of my bosses walks into my office with a different box of paczki to offer me one.

What could I say?… (innocent look)

It’s custard.

And here, dear friends, is the trap: in order to eat anything other than paczki (my poor little pears and cheese), I have to brave the room with three boxes of paczki.

I could try a blueberry one…blueberries are good for you…

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