A Sweet Surprise

It's been a long week.

This past Friday I found myself staring at the oven for a good 45 minutes while I baked a 7" yam . I immediately unraveled the aluminum foil (scorching my fingers with steam along the way) and started removing the burning hot skin from the pasty-orange loveliness that lied beneath.

Using a fork I mashed the yam with cinnamon, milk and just a touch of honey. I then preceded to devour the entire yam caveman style.

Needless to say, I needed sugar...

But here's the weirdest part about this whole experience: I originally went into this thinking that my inevitable downfall was bound to be my lust for dessert. I thought, "life without ice cream and cupcakes, are you nuts?" And I am nuts, but that's beside the point.

What I'm trying to say is that the hardest part of quitting refined sugars is not being able to eat the little things. By little things, I mean ketchup, barbeque sauce, any sort of mixed alcoholic beverage, juice, jam and pretty much any condiment you can think of.

Actually, now that I think about it, I don't miss dessert at all.

In fact, in only a couple of weeks I've come to appreciate just how incredible a yam really is -- its luscious flavor is downright sinful. So in the end, I leave you with this...

The sweetest things in life are often the things that we overlook. So next time you reach for that cupcake or cookie, take a look across the counter at that poor little deformed-looking yam and say to yourself "what the heck." I promise that that sad little orange paste will satisfy you far more than any cookie ever could.

Oh, and you don't have to say "what the heck," you can ad-lib that part.


Ciao,
Me