Seriously??

Have you ever gotten in a food rut? I do. Sometimes I eat the same foods over-and-over again, mindlessly, without thinking of either the calories or nutritional value. Usually though my old staples include The Italian Store in Clarendon where you can get a relatively healthy sub sandwich for about $7.99 with tax. I always order a large "Milano" on a hard roll, with everything, but lately they always run out of hard rolls! Sadness. The soft roll isn't as good because there is SUCH an abundance of meat, lettuce, tomato, hot peppers and various acrutrements (plus a heavenly dressing which is both sweet and sour) that the bread always ends up soggy at the end.

Maybe this is why I'm growing bored with The Italian Store ... they don't have what I what ... or they have what I want it's just so easy to get. What's the challenge there? Isn't part of being a foodie finding something exclusive and delicious which no one else knows? It's an adventure of sorts.

Frank Bruni with The New York Times is pretty good at this. I enjoy all of his blogs and articles. He usually has an excellent stand alone article in The New York Times' weekly insert "Dining and Wine in New York."

I think I also like him so much because he isn't a thin foodie. Much like Paula Deen (my hero), he has some heft and I like it. It makes you believe them more -- as though their girth justifies their gastronomic critiques. Thin people talking about food makes me think they are just being estoteric because, really, SERIOUSLY, who can eat so much good food and be so thin!?!? Like Giada De Laurentiis with her show on The Food Network. She's so thin and tiny -- notice she never swallows her food just chews -- you wonder if her receipes are actually good. (Some are, but I'm sure I'm just being a Mean Girl since she is so beautiful, very talented and married to the style director of one of my favorite stores Anthropologie.)

Frank had a great article this past Sunday in The New York Times magazine (I do read other newspapers ... I read pretty much all the national ones, I just favor The New York Times the most) about being a "baby bulimic." Check it out. Fascinating.

Which brings me to the best article I read yesterday from USA Today talking about how obesity is being considered in South Carolina as child abuse. How does one get a 14-year-old child to 555 pounds ... is that abuse? Too much cheap food?