My whole life, I have been a skinny. On occasion, I've been teased about it or told I should probably gain some weight. But, to be completely honest, I love being skinny. To me, skinny is beautiful and getting fat ranks up pretty high on my list of fears. Growing up, I could eat however much of whatever I wanted and wouldn't gain a pound. Unfortunately, those days are over, with the sedentary life of a desk job only making things worse.
In order to avoid picking up extra pounds, I've changed up my diet quite a bit recently. Meat consumption is waaaay down, often swapped out for seafood or excluded all together. Veggies play a huge role and I've even taking to eating salads on occasion (I think I just heard my mom gasp on the other side of the Pacific). Snacks and desserts are rare, bordering on non-existent. Portions are generally just large enough to get me through to the next meal (which, to be honest, is probably the appropriate amount, but certainly not what I, or most people for that matter, am used to). And you know what, it absolutely works. The calorie count is probably too low, but I don't feel like I lack energy and I'm confident that I'm getting the necessary nutrition.
There are times, however, where I worry that I'll do a Michael Jackson: develop an ideal image and go too far pursuing it. Michael Jackson was a cool guy way back in the day. But he decided he wanted paler skin and a thinner nose. At first, he lightened up a bit and trimmed the nose down a little, and that was ok. But then he kept going; paler and paler, thinner and thinner. When all was said and done, he'd gone too far and it just didn't look right anymore.
I don't want to be like Michael Jackson's nose, ending up so thin that it's not cool anymore. So, in the midst of all my dietary control, I allow myself some indulgences, one of which is weekend breakfasts. I do most of my grocery shopping for the week on either Saturday or Sunday morning, but since nothing is open before 10am and I wake up at 7am, I've got some time to kill so I try to make something a bit more luxurious than my weekday granola-and-banana breakfast.
My latest undertaking in weekend morning indulgence was based off of a recipe discovered on one of the food blogs I regularly follow. French toast is one of my favorite breakfast foods and snickerdoodles also happen to be delicious, so how it sounded like win-win to me. Plus, I'd recently bought a bunch of cinnamon sticks, so I was able to use fresh ground cinnamon to make the cinammon sugar (yes, I do indeed have too much free time on weekends). I mixed together an egg and some milk (I think I used about 100ml, but really wasn't paying too much attention to the details) and tossed in some bread for a little bath. For those who are into sticking to a recipe, the original can be found
here.
From there, I melted a bit of butter in a pan over medium heat, added two slices of bread, and gave it a healthy dusting of cinnamon sugar. After a minute or two, I flipped the bread and gave it another dose of the sweet stuff. I used up most of the amount in the picture above, probably about a tablespoon and a half (again, didn't really measure) between four slices of bread. Was it a lot? Yeah, but damn was it delicious. If I'm going to indulge, I like to get the most out of it.
After the bread was good and coated, I left it to brown on both sides, then repeated the whole process with the other two pieces. Since clearly this wasn't enough sugar for one day, I finished it off with a healthy sprinkle of powdered sugar and the remaining cinnamon sugar. It probably would have been good with some syrup on there too, but that stuff is stupid expensive in Japan and my heart might have exploded with that extra sugar anyway. It doesn't really matter as it was freakin awesome just as it was. I figure I can get away with letting go like this once every week or two and it's an absolutely wonderful way to celebrate not having to be in the office!
