Weekday Diet

It's hard not to eat (or to binge) when you are at home. I guess home will always be associated with relaxation, comfort, and enough food in the refrigerator.

I am forever on a diet (more for my blood pressure and for my cholesterol levels rather than for my weight) but these past weekends, it has been harder not to eat because of the weekend market at our parish. I hope to write about some of our weekend market finds soon.

Anyway, I rationalize by saying that a break from the diet on Saturdays and Sundays ain't too bad. So, I try to control what I eat better on weekdays.

Weekdays are very busy for me, now that I have gone back to corporate life, so eating can easily take a back seat. I take a quick breakfast, snack on bread and fruits mostly, eat lunch at the office, and confine myself to a light dinner (no carbohydrates) when I get home. Why light? Well, I need to watch what I eat and I need to watch my kids do their homework too.

We get free lunch at our office. Some food supplier shows us the list of food to choose from at about 10am everyday. My officemates and I place our orders and by 12 noon, our orders are served. The food is alright, generally although in the one month that I have been there -- I have discovered that the choices can be quite limited and the cooking style not what you expect.

For example, one time I ordered fish escabeche. What I got was fried fish with orange sauce in a plastic which I was supposed to mix with the fish. But my favorite instance was when I ordered salmon na sinigang sa miso. (Sinigang is a local dish which has a sour soup base.) What my office mates got was sinigang soup partnered with fried fish. It didn't even look like salmon. We then told one of our officemates to raise the issue with the supplier. "Bakit ganito yung sinigang nila? Piniritong sinigang?" (Why is their sinigang like this? Fried fish in sinigang?)

We all had a good laugh -- even as we enjoyed our unique sinigang but as I almost always order chicken or fish, I guess I'll be staying away from escabeche and sinigang.

Still, food is food and I guess I will be thankful that I do get to watch my diet on weekdays. Yun nga lang, sobrang hilig nila sa prito. (The bad part is they are fond of frying food.) Oh well, you really cannot have everything.

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