posted by Matt W on July 1st, 2015

First of all, I would like to say the 4th this year was very nice. The weather was perfect. We sat out on our porch in the cool summer breeze and played games pretty much all day and ate all sorts of wonderful foods. Very relaxing and tasty.

In the morning, I made perfect scones. I have truly perfected the recipe, and we all swirl honey and butter together like my grandfather used to. I whipped up a few eggs for those in need of protein, and personally just gorged myself on Americanos and scones.

Next, came the different dips part of the day. Guac, cowboy caviar, a nice spinach dip, and a really nice hummus recipe we stumbled across. A variety of crackers and chips were also involved so my son wouldn’t just eat the dips like a barbarian.

Later, came the brat part of the day. While I am a fan of brats, my wife is a vegetarian. So I made her some sort of rubbery hot dog shaped vegetarian thing that she felt passed as a brat so she could pretend to partake with the rest of us (And people think I’m the crazy one). I love potato salad, and our family’s homemade potato salad is the best. Beautiful fresh berries, corn on the cob, broccoli salad and so on and so on to infinity. It was a great spread.

Then came the dessert portion of the day. My daughter has been making German Chocolate cake lately and whipped one up for the 4th. Truly amazing! But because German Chocolate cake seemed weird by itself on this most American of holidays, we also threw together a peach cobbler. While partaking in multiple rounds of leftover food and dessert we finished the day on the screen porch watching all the firework shows. Nice.

Over the course of the day’s courses, there were many times that I stopped myself from taking the extra helping, or just waited an extra hour before starting the next course. I’ve lost some weight this year and I am trying to do a better job of watching my calories. As it was the 4th, I ate a lot but far less than normal.

I stepped on the scale July 5th and had gained 5 pounds. Hokey Fritz, 5 pounds? I stepped off the scale and tried again. Sure enough 5 freakin pounds!

Now, I have always heard that 1 pound equals 3,500 calories, so in order to gain 5 pounds I would have needed to gorge myself with 5 x 3,500 calories or a whopping 17,500 calories. Just to get your hands around that number, it would take 32 Big Macs to equal that many calories. And while I admit to copious quantities of food ingested, the amount was nowhere near 32 freakin Big Macs. What type of sadistic caloric math is my body doing these days?

When I was a kid, every 4th of July, I gorged myself from dawn until fireworks and never stopped eating. My gosh, there was even the after fireworks s’mores. While I’m sure I had a little food baby those days (my daughter calls her stomach bump a “food baby” whenever she eats a huge meal), I had burned it all off by the next morning. These days, when I actually appreciate the quality of the food far more than I ever used to, apparently I gain weight just by looking at the food.

The 4th of July was better when I was a kid; I had a metabolism.

 

Originally published July 9, 2014



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