Day two of the project and the going is s-l-o-w… which is to say that we are finding sugar everywhere besides on top of the door frames, and if we suddenly found it there too I imagine we’d hardly be surprised.
At breakfast we avoided sugar with success, (hooray!) until afterwards when the kids wanted to open the “Make Your Own Gummis!” kit they got for Christmas… (awww!). That’s right: we didn’t even make it to lunch. I have decided that, by necessity, this coming week will be a “clearing” week, devoted to shedding our sugar like layers of an onion- unlike many households we have no high-fructose corn syrup to get rid of, but cane sugar? Powdered sugar? Brown sugar? Just plain sugar? And I hate wasting perfectly good, perfectly expensive, and in some cases, perfectly labor-intensive food. This doesn’t mean we’ll be consuming the leftover Christmas candy canes- those are going in the freezer- but the last of my homemade bread with maple syrup in it? We’re eating it.
At the same time I have high hopes of not traumatizing the kids too much with this admittedly way-way-outside-the-mainstream plan… Gradually eliminating the sugar in a gentle, phasing manner seems somewhat more appropriate than one day tossing half our pantry into the garbage. Which, despite our label-reading ways, we could very easily do.
So we’ll finish the last of our Bunny Grahams with cane sugar. We’ll make the Gummis today and eat them. When we go to have our grilled cheese sandwich lunch we’ll wince after realizing the organic ketchup, of course, has sugar as it’s third ingredient. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. And yet, I’m hopeful because it’s progress. After mulling this project over for so long in my head, it’s finally begun to inch forward.
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Information About The No Sugar Project
It’s New Year’s Day: the day I begin my self-imposed “Year of No Sugar.” I started it off auspiciously, of course, by having breakfast at Rathbun’s Maple Sugar House. Great idea, right? As if struck by a bolt of invisible lightning I stopped dead still, spoon poised mid-air with sudden realization before pausing, sighing, and dumping the sparkling white crystals into my coffee mug swirled with cream. Clearly, I’m still working out the details.
E.O. Schaub
Three days before Halloween this year I realized we still had half-full bags of last year’s candy in the back of our top pantry shelf and I, heaving a huge sigh of relief, finally pitched them into the trash without remorse. I have several friends who would likewise pitch the entire trick-or-treat business with similar enthusiasm. One family we know avoids the whole business altogether and just stays home, while others go out grudgingly, knowing full-well most of the evening’s proceeds will have a date with the garbage can before Thanksgiving rears its equally gluttonous head.
Eve O. Schaub 