All posts by Eve Ogden Schaub

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About Eve Ogden Schaub

Serial memoirist Eve O. Schaub lives with her family in Vermont and enjoys performing experiments on them so she can write about it. Author of Year of No Sugar (2014) and Year of No Clutter (2017) and most recently Year of No GARBAGE (2023). Find her on Twitter @Eveschaub IG or eveschaub.com.

A Year Of No Sugar: Postscript 10

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The weirdest thing happened to me the other night. Greta just turned twelve last week, and as part of the festivities she requested the very same chocolate cake as she had last year for our No Sugar monthly dessert: my Grandmother’s Sour Milk Devil’s Food Cake with Buttercream Frosting. I’ve always loved this cake; Greta, for her part, seems ready to pledge allegiance to it.

But the night of our family celebration I found I couldn’t finish my piece- it just wasn’t appealing to me right then. I didn’t think anything about it until a few days later, when half the cake still languished in the fridge, and I hauled it out for us to finish off. The girls had no trouble with that assignment, but I… I didn’t like it. Huh? How could this be? I wondered. This was my Grandmother’s cake, after all- one of my very favorites! Why was I behaving as if I were a reluctant kid eating her lima beans?

So, again, I didn’t finish it. In point of fact I went so far as to throw away not only my piece, but the final remaining piece into the trash as well. I’m trying ever so hard not to give my kids an eating disorder (or myself, for that matter) but what that seems to mean is that sometimes I eat sugar when I don’t even want any- just to be “normal.”

What a strange turn of events. Another similar example came when we recently attended a fundraiser at our local library and the inevitable Bake Sale table was there. The first thing my friend Sue said when she saw me was: “Don’t blog about this!!” But I was actually impressed- sure, there were gummy-worm-encrusted cupcakes and a “fruit punch” that somehow was colored both green and orange at the same time, but a small portion of the table was devoted to paper plates of grapes and sliced cheese. And kids were buying them… not that they weren’t buying the cupcake liners full of frosting too, but they were buying them. This, I thought, is progress.

Too bad my kids vote fell on the frosting side of this equation. Ilsa proudly emerged from the fray bearing an oatmeal cookie larger than her outstretched hand (bad enough) and frosted thickly in an unnatural pink (worse yet) before being showered in rainbow sprinkles (seriously?) Then Greta surfaced with what were billed as “Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Truffles” or balls of cookie dough dipped in chocolate.

Have I taught them nothing? I wondered. What happened to all of last year? Despite the fact that I usually manage to keep a pretty good lid on the sugar-treats at home, sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one in our house who remembers last year. Then again- after such a long absence, should I be surprised if they value the ability to have a sugary snack just like all their friends all the more?

Greta gave me one of her two “truffles” which I tried. I had that same weird sensation as with the birthday cake- I felt like I was supposed to like it. All my senses were telling me I would- the texture, the smell, the appearance- and yet… I didn’t. I just didn’t. I was utterly confused. It was sickly sweet and left a bad aftertaste lingering on my tongue. Once upon a time I would’ve had a hard time not going back for more of these funky little concoctions, (cookie dough anything? I’m so there!) Now? I was pretending to enjoy it. I was relieved when it was gone.

So, is this weird yet? It’s not just for my family’s benefit that I’m pretending to enjoy things that I once would have loved- it’s also me trying to fool myself into thinking I’m no different than I once was. But I am different. Maybe that means I won’t enjoy the desserts I once looked forward to. And for all my thousands of words and hours writing about the evils of added sugar- I can’t help but admit that I feel ambivalent about that. Does this mean no more homemade Rhubarb Pie? No more afternoons canning my favorite Sour Cherry Jam? No more (and I hesitate even to type these words) Chocolate-Peanut Butter ice cream?? I’m teasing, but I’m also a little serious- picking cherries, making pie from rhubarb just picked in our yard, all these things are rituals which have come to define, in some ways, who I am. Heck, I ate a Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream cone the night before each of my two girls were born (now there’s a selling point for Ben & Jerry’s: It’s cool! It’s delicious! And it may induce labor!)

In his book Sweet Poison David Gillespie described this very phenomenon- that as he and his family shunned sugar they gradually began to lose their taste for it, preferring instead much subtler treats: whole fruit, as well as desserts and snacks made with dextrose. The answer- at least for me- seems to be pretty clear: if I want to enjoy desserts I’m going to have to make them myself, with dextrose. I’m not so sure how the rest of my family is going to feel about that. But you know what they say… you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

A Year of No Sugar: Postscript 9

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Easter hit me like a ton of bricks last week. It shouldn’t have. After all, I had it all planned out. It was school Spring vacation and we were going to be traveling, so in anticipation of the holiday I had picked out a host of items that would fit easily into my carry-on: pretty tissue paper, tiny pencil sets, little boxes of origami paper, and brightly decorated cloth bags to serve as the “baskets”… To all that I added one small stuffed animal each, and then stopped to consider the inevitable question: should I buy a sugar-added treat? Just one?

A little plastic carrot full of jellybeans, perhaps? Or a teeny tiny chocolate bunny?

I wavered. Just for a moment. Then I thought- ah, heck with it. This is fine- more than fine. It was a pretty cute little assemblage if I did say so myself- and I love this kinda crap so I should know. Plus, I knew in the course of our travels we’d be seeing relatives- first stop Grandma’s house- and I figured, between one thing and another, there’d probably be a sugar-treat for them in there somewhere.

I had no idea how right I would turn out to be. The day before the holiday at Grandma’s, suddenly chocolate bunnies began materializing out of thin air- popping out of toasters, zip-lining in from skylights like Tom Cruise’s character in Mission Impossible. Steve appeared with two chocolate chicks; my mom had gold-foil wrapped Godiva bunnies at the ready.

For those who are counting, that’s two chicks and two bunnies, so far. Okay, I thought- there are the treats. Done.

Then we were off for the “big” part of our trip- a mini-family reunion in California. Easter, of course, was morning after our flight- so you can picture me late that first night, jet lagged and hiding in the hotel closet, desperately trying to find a way to quietly stuff crinkly tissue paper into little cloth bags. I’m pretty sure it sounded like I was trying to process ball bearings in a blender. Fortunately, after spending the entire day on the airplane everyone was exhausted and sleeping so soundly I could’ve been trying to stuff a live hippo under the fold-out couch and no one would’ve so much as rolled over.

In the morning the girls got up and -surprise!- the Easter Bunny had found us. That little guy is amazing. He must read all our Facebook posts or something.

But, as it turns out, there was more Easter in the offing. My Uncle Jim- who I adore- was incredibly thoughtful, and had arranged for each of the five kids in attendance to have their very own personalized basket with (and you knew this was coming) a chocolate Easter bunny inside, and handfuls of other candy treats. Okay.

Then it was time for the Easter egg hunt.

Now, let me just state now that I am a terrible person, and I know it. Should I be carping about the amount of sugar involved in celebrating a “normal” Easter, or should I be incredibly grateful for the the fact that my children have so many wonderful family members who love them and care enough to want to celebrate them and make them happy on such a holiday? Would I prefer they not celebrate with us? Of course not! I feel terrible even telling you about it. This, of course, is exactly the problem: love- celebration- affection, in our culture, equals sugar. Which is why I’m telling you about it.

So to sum up, our vacation week was one of sugar popping up incessantly. Beyond family and pagan rites of Spring, candy just seemed to be… everywhere! It was in our shoes! Behind our ears! Did I mention our hotel put handfuls of chocolate mints on our nightstands every time they made up the room? Did I mention that, between the Frosted Flakes, the Yoplait yogurt and Otis Spunkmeyer muffins, the hotel breakfast bar was a freakin advertisement for the HFCS industry? Did I mention that when your kid orders a blueberry waffle in a restaurant they just assume you want an entire can of Reddi-Whip dumped on top of it, in addition to your maple syrup? I thought this was California- land of the ridiculously healthy!

Sure, Californians seem a little more obsessed with antioxidants and “Superfoods” than anywhere else ( do we really need menu labels reminding us how good for us blueberries are?) but they still think the same wrongheaded things we all think: that kids somehow deserve, and even need sugar in some weird primeval way. That honey or agave is better for you than sugar. That fruit juice is good for you, and that having the occasional soda isn’t going to kill you.

But it is going to kill you. Not so very long ago no one talked about diabetes- it was considered pretty rare. Now, we all know people with diabetes- lots of them. There are enough people with the condition to support their own mainstream magazine on the subject.

People are acclimatizing themselves to this new order of things with amazing readiness- as if type II diabetes were something we just have to accept- a mysterious modern illness that everyone has a statistical chance of getting sooner of later and, to a certain extent, whaddaya-gonna-do-about-it. But people seem to forget that, although type II diabetes moves slow, it can still kill you. And they forget that we know what causes it, that it’s preventable. Heck, it’s even reversible if we catch it in time.

But unfortunately it’s easier to cross your fingers than it is to effect actual change in your life and your diet- especially when everyone around you is encouraging you to have another soda with your hot fudge sundae. Why not? What’s the worst thing that could happen?

A few years ago, my aunt died from complications of diabetes. If not for that she would’ve been at this reunion with the rest of us. I’d say that’s pretty much the worst thing that could happen.

Later on in our trip my seven-year-old looked at me. “Mommy, the Easter Bunny will still come at home, won’t he? Our regular baskets will be waiting for us at home, right?”

For a moment I was speechless. I was bewildered by the mere thought of yet another basket of candy. Potentially a fourth chocolate bunny…? (I guess they aren’t kidding about how they multiply.) I was still strategizing how I was going to make a whole lot of this stuff disappear without the kids noticing too much. Seriously???  I thought. Is this not enough candy for you!?! But then I realized that she was asking a different question. It was not so much about sugar treats per se, as much as it was about home and traditions we have established as a family. She just wanted to know the rules.

“No honey” I said. “The Easter Bunny only visits us in one place.”

Thank God.

PS- The Easter Bunny giveth, and the Easter Bunny taketh away. Although some of the Easter chocolate was enjoyed in California, the majority of it was left behind in our hotel room. I hate any kind of waste, but the trash can seems to be one of our primary lines of defense in the war to avoid frying our internal organs with fructose.

A Year Of No Sugar: Postscript 8

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Here’s my situation: currently, I am somewhat frantically pulling together a book ( a fascinating book!! Soon-to-be described as “unputdownable!!” Coming to a New York Times Bestseller list near you!!) about last year, our family’s Year of No Sugar. In the book I am spending lots of time writing about spending more time cooking food at home from scratch, the direct result of which is that I have officially become busier and less available to cook food at home from scratch than ever before.

You have to love irony.

Dinner from the Food Fairy!

But the time has come, I suppose to put my money where my mouth is- or at least my cooking where my free moments are, which is to say, few and far between. I know that the conundrum of being torn between commitments to work and wanting to feed my family well is hardly unique, but if I thought last year was a challenge, this year is certainly proving to be even more so.

I’m not sure if it helps that I feel terrifically guilty about our new state of being, about the fact that we’re eating out on average two or sometimes three times a week compared to only once a week previously. It’s not even that we’re suddenly eating lots of sugar in doing so… we’re not. In fact, we’re still eating at the same we-really-do-make-it-ourselves establishments we found refuge in during all of our No Sugar escapades last year. We’re still being incredibly moderate when we do indulge in a dessert- rather than ordering three or four desserts, ordering one dessert and three or four spoons instead. We’re still avoiding soda and juice as if it were rat poison, still packing school lunches at home, still even making my own bread and tomato sauce from scratch.

So what’s my problem, exactly? For one thing, I’m too lucky. I know that there are lots of people who couldn’t afford to eat out this much, and certainly not at the nicer kinds of places that are likely to have cooked their meals from scratch. I’m also incredibly fortunate to have discovered Kate- the talented caterer who lives a mile from my house and who offers wonderful home-cooked soups, quiches and biscuits once per week for pick-up straight out of her kitchen. Out here in the country- where we like to brag that you have to drive half an hour to buy a carton of milk- her appearance on the scene with fresh, homemade, convenient take-out made with local ingredients is nothing short of a Food Miracle… if I have a Food Fairy Godmother I think it might be Kate.

Is it okay that I’m this lucky? Somehow it makes me feel like I’m cheating. Other times it’s still hard to get the dishes done, the piano practicing complete, the homework read, the activities attended and the children showered and in bed before we have to get up and do it all over again- even with those crutches. There’s some weird, control-freaky part of me that is reluctant to give myself a break and remember that we’re all human and to -as they say- take it one day at a time. Reminding me of those things is one of the things my husband is here for, apparently- because he’s awfully good at it, even if he does have to repeat himself a bit. As he points out, I can’t spend all morning making a homemade lasagna and then beat myself up for not accomplishing any writing, and neither can I write all afternoon and then be annoyed at myself that I didn’t make every item on our dinner table from scratch.

But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? We can’t have our cake and eat it too (if you’ll excuse the sugar-based proverb.) When I was pre-teenager my mom began law school: I remember it well- it was the same year she started buying Swanson Hungry Man dinners. There it is, right? The modern day trade-off- the liberated woman bargain, if you like- in a nutshell.

We can’t eat like crap because it’s convenient and then be surprised when our health suffers. Neither can we spend our lives grinding our wheat berries by hand and churning our own butter, and ever expect to accomplish anything but the relatively thankless and quickly forgotten job of getting ourselves fed for one more day. Somehow we have to prioritize the things we care about. How do you choose between your ambition and your food? Your life’s work and your family’s health? You don’t, of course, but maintaining that balance is excruciatingly hard; a highwire act on rollerskates. In a rainstorm. I’m trying my hardest, but still, like any mom- I question myself. I wonder… could it be better?