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.

Anyway, I thought, tonight I’m making my “goodbye sugar” dish- Buttermilk Pie ( 1 cup sugar)- to serve for our celebratory New Years Day dessert.

That’s the problem, of course. Too many celebrations, too few ways to celebrate. Having a birthday? Have some sugar! Christmas? Valentine’s Day? New Years? Company? Dinner? A snack? Are you, in fact, breathing? Have some sugar, sugar, sugar! Like so many things, it’s one of those items we take for granted, assuming we take in so much less of it that we actually do. As I’ve been mentally trying to prepare for this upcoming year, I’ve become acutely, increasingly aware of the ubiquity not just of high-fructose corn syrup (which is bloody everywhere) but indeed of sugar itself. Cane sugar, fructose, maple syrup, honey… have some sugar with your sugar, why don’t you? For most Americans, by the time they’ve gotten to the dessert, they’ve already had a dessert’s worth of sugar in their meal… they just don’t realize it.

So tonight we have our sayonara pie and start being good. Or not. After all- this is MY brilliant idea and I have still to completely convince the other members of the household, ages 40, 10 and 5. Wish me luck. Lots of it.

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