I've been Peeped

You've heard of Peeping Toms? I have a Peeping Mark — a former boyfriend who has for the past 13 years come by the house and hung a bag full of boxed Peeps on the front door.

I was in the basement doing the laundry today when the Peep-and-run occurred. This year it's a batch of traditional yellow Peeps. Very nice in their traditional Bartell bag. (Somehow, I don't think this would work if they weren't in a Bartell bag.)

I've been thinking quite a bit recently about the sentimental pull of food. Since very few of us were raised with treasured recipes for tofu and salad, these sentimental foods tend to be on the unhealthy side. This, then, introduces the question of how to avoid overindulging in Aunt Helen's fudge, the five-pound box of chocolate from the candy store in your old home town, and the deep-fried goodies at your family's favorite clam shack (forgive the East Coast reference).

My solution? Eat one meal of the goodies and then ask someone else to make the leftovers disappear. Face it, you will never be able to put even a tablespoonful of Cousin Guido's lasagna down into the trash. Another approach is to tuck the items into the back of the fridge until they are no longer appealing. And yet a third approach is to let someone else in your house finish them off (unless, of course, this gets into the territory of "sabotage.")

Not being a sweets person, I'm most likely to have these eat it/toss it interior dialogs in front of a bag of bagels and tub of cream cheese, or looking at a piece of fried chicken. So, fortunately, the Peeps are harmless. I'll eat a package of them today and then put the rest in a basket for the Easter bunny. He'll burn it off hopping around tomorrow.