Monday, August 10, 2009

Let Them Eat Cake...

There's a piece of cake in my trashcan.

Ok, ok. There's most of a piece of cake in my trashcan. Like seven-eighths of a piece. Or maybe three-fourths. Definitely two-thirds of one, anyway. At least.

I didn't set out to have cake for breakfast. I was perfectly content to go about assembling my old standby meal of yogurt topped with fresh sliced strawberries sprinkled with Fiber One cereal. But as I was heading back to fill my coffee cup, a coworker announced that there was leftover cake by the coffee bar--and not just ANY cake, but leftover WEDDING cake (And seriously, is there any cake more delectable in the whole world than white wedding cake with white icing? Call me a pastry purist, but I say a definitive no!). I walked over to it, sniffed the air and took in it's heavenly scent, and then told a coworker who was busy cutting a piece for herself that I'd pass, but I'd have one later if I still wanted it. To which she replied by taking a bite of the cake and making yummy noises and saying that I really should eat a piece now because it was crazy delicious.

She had me at "Yum".

So I cut myself a small piece (and by "small" I actually mean "of diminutive size" and not "small compared to, say, a concrete block or a baby rhinoceros"), took it back to my desk, took one bite, and then set it off to the side. As that first bite melted in my mouth, my eyes rolled into the back of my head and for a moment I forgot that it was 8:10 AM and I was eating two day old dessert from a party I wasn't invited to and just reveled in the cakey-goodness. I took a sip of coffee (to cleanse my palate, of course) and then lifted another bite to lips and thought..."Hmm. Well, this is OK I guess." Bite number three settled itself on my tongue and I found myself thinking "The frosting's a little too grainy, and the cake is moist but not terribly flavorful..." and in the seconds before my fork descended to scoop up bite number four my brain completed a complicated formula that compared flavor payoff to caloric content, and I found myself laying the fork down, picking up the plate, and tossing the rest of the cake into the aforementioned trashcan.

It's still sitting there as I type this, completely in tact (less the three bites I forked out it) where it slipped off the paper plate as I tossed it in there and came to rest on the bottom right hand side of the bin liner. Nary a crumb out of place, it lies next to a banana peel, a kleenex, about ten used sticky notes, and an empty blueberry yogurt container that were all tossed it after it as the morning progressed. I know all of this because out of the corner of my eye I can see it at the bottom of the trash can, the little red rosebud perched in the center of the creamy white icing that was spread over moist white cake as it looks up at me like an angry, unblinking eye. It's been staring at me ALL DAY.

It wasn’t that great tasting, it wasn’t so tempting that I couldn’t bear to throw it away several hours ago, and it currently has a sticky note that says “stop loss” with three exclamation points on it embedded in the bottom corner of it’s frosting…and yet there’s a part of me that wants to reach down, grab it, and shove that creamy fist full of trashcan cake right into my mouth. “But Sara, it’s in the TRASH,” you’ll argue, “and that’s just GROSS!” Yeah, well, you’re right—but sadly the mere fact that a food has a current status of garbage isn’t always enough to dissuade me from thinking about eating it (or actually doing so, for that matter). Sometimes I wish that my particular brand of crazy wasn’t of the variety that had me arm wrestling with discarded confections all day, and that there were often more impressive victories to report than “Today I didn’t pick the cake I threw away this morning out of the trashcan and eat it 7 hours later!”

But for the record, I didn’t.

5 comments:

  1. I'm impressed!

    And I don't think people should be allowed to bring cake to work.

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  2. A little post-it note never killed anyone! Good for you throwing away that subpar cake :)

    Also, yay, Blogger! I'm gonna link to you in a blog soon, ok?

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  3. I say count your victories where you can and celebrate that you were strong today.

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  4. Oh boy, I could have written this post myself! LOL I’ve heard food calling my name from the trash more times than I care to remember. And I’ll even admit to the time, years ago, when I rescued brownies I’d thrown away (because I was trying to be virtuous)--and then ate them. I was clearly desperate! :-0

    --Susan

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  5. All I have to say is... Rock on with your bad self!

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