Day 4

My husband cheated on me. Yesterday, while I was home with our tiny children and he was at the pool. There she was—hot, cheap. I guess he’s only human. He succumbed to the foul Temptress, Li’l Caesars. His excuse?

“I didn’t have the cake.”

“I thought we’d agreed no white flour.”

“Well…” Did he not see the hoops I had jumped through only the day before, to save Pizza Night for our children by magically procuring sugarless whole wheat dough and sugarless tomato sauce? Well? And wasn’t he coming home before 7 p.m.? When he could have eaten perfectly healthy food here?

“It’s a lot better than I remember it being. I think they put garlic in the crust.”

Yeah, along with the bleached flour, the crack, and the sugar.

In his defense, Dr. Awesome, PhD, (brilliant husband, father, and reader of PhD Comics) was responsible for taking Bear to two birthday parties yesterday and multiple times refusing free cake, marshmallow cake pops, and shakes at the BK Play Place he took Boo to while Bear was at the first party and I was eating bacon and eggs in DC. (Burger King. On second thought, I’m pretty sure he cheated with a Whooper bun hours before he succumbed to that poolside pizza.) Flash forward to Sunday, Day 4, our Parish Picnic catered by Red, Hot, and Blue, and I spy Dr. A with a giant, BBQ-sauce covered brioche bun, furtively avoiding my glare. He may be onboard about eschewing desserts, lemonade, and beer, but I think he wants to see some solid data to back up exactly why he should eat dry brisket with a fork.

Well, my husband was not alone. I tripped and fell once, landing flat on my mouth on two mini corn muffins. But otherwise, I was quite pleased with the day. I drank water, took my meat plain, and loved it anyway. The weather was beautiful, the kids played (mostly) nicely, and my sugarless dessert was enjoyed by many people and two honeybees. I realized Sunday morning that I was supposed to bring a dessert, so I decided to make a less-sweet version of Eton Mess. I mashed about two pounds of sliced fresh strawberries with a teaspoon of vanilla extract and a sprinkle of sea salt, and folded in a pint of heavy whipping cream whipped in my stand mixer until it was stiff enough to support a sliced strawberry. Zero added sugar, of course, but certainly not fructose-free. All I can say is, my kids ate it and I thought it was great.

I will also mention that after this picnic, unlike usually with these sort of family-days-out, I never crashed. Really. I had more energy. At this point, while watching my hopes for the kids’ low-sugar living unraveling completely in a pile of cheap grocery store cupcake liners, that’s about all that is keeping me going.