Sweet and Spicy Calendar Card

I almost didn’t make any holiday-related design for this year. Thanksgiving rolled around and I hadn’t done anything (and was feeling rather uninspired and lazy). So I was on the fence on creating anything…but then I decided to just do it. Make something. I wanted to make something simple and useful—so I made a calendar recipe card.

I chose four recipes from blogs that I thought would be fairly easy for anyone to make (and would hopefully appeal to most palates). Admittedly, I haven’t made all of the recipes myself, but I trust that they’re delicious. I realized that they were all either sweet or spicy recipes and decided that that would be the theme for the card.

I wanted the card to be fun and have a slight retro vibe with the type and color. The only art I really did was the cover—I had to draw that by hand. It didn’t come together quite as quickly as I would have liked (it practically never does), but overall it didn’t take too long. A couple of hours here and there (and there) and it was done.

I also created a bellyband as my “tag” so I could put the recipient’s name on it. It also has a correlating message on it that ties in with the card itself.

Forgotten Sweetness

I don’t eat candy often. Gummi candies don’t really interest me. Some hard candies I like but don’t eat often. When I want candy, I want chocolate, and I’ll occasionally have it, but it’s dark chocolate. I tend to avoid the mainstream cheap candy bars that are just too sweet for me. I’ll see TV commercials for them and feel nothing (well, maybe just a bit skeptical at their claims). When I’m at the supermarket I never look at these candy bars (that are supposed to be “tempting” at the checkout line) with desire, so I don’t buy them or eat them.

A co-worker brought unwanted Halloween candy to work and left them in a bowl in the kitchen for anyone to take. These free small candy bars were sitting there and I’ll admit, my resistance was low. My brain said, “Don’t eat them. You know they’ll be too sweet.” But my stomach said, “Go ahead, have some. It’s been a long time.” And it has been a long time. I’m guessing the last time I had any of these sugary concoctions was last Halloween. [Pause.] I’d actually forgotten what a lot of these candies taste like.

So I ate some Halloween candy. The Almond Joy was pretty good because I like coconut and almonds enough that I could over look the milk chocolate coating. I’ve always been ambivalent of Snickers, but when I had them this time, I liked them even less—they’re just too sweet. As a child I liked Kit Kats, but when I had them this time I was overcome by its cloying sweetness. Luckily, Halloween candy is smaller than full-size candy bars, so I only had a couple of bites of these “fun-size” candies—which was more than enough for me. I came to conclusion that, yes, my brain was right: stay away from these overly sweet sweets. If I’m going to eat candy, I’m getting chocolate that actually tastes like chocolate, not candy that just tastes like sugar.

Nothing Looks Good. [Pause.] Good.

On Monday we often have pastries at work (perhaps to help lessen the blow of a Monday morning). The actual assortment varies, sometimes it’s doughnuts, danishes and muffins, but often it’s English muffins and bagels and sometimes fruit. I’m always curious to see what the selection is, but I rarely eat the pastries because I’m a snob. If these pastry goods are from the supermarket then I ignore them. I turn my nose up at cheap overly sweet doughnuts and mediocre bagels. They don’t look delicious. They don’t taste delicious. And any time I breakdown and have some, I always regret it because they’re just not worth it.

However, once in a blue moon there are good pastries from an actual bakery. There are flakey buttery croissants and slightly sweet muffins and scones. I know I shouldn’t partake, but good pastries are difficult to resist because they’re tasty. After careful consideration I’ll often select a pastry to eat. And while I don’t regret these pastries for their delicious flavors, I often regret my lack of restraint of eating something so bad for me that inevitably spoils my lunch.

So I always have mixed feelings on Monday morning when I see supermarket pastries. A part of me is disappointed because I want good pastries, but another part of me is relieved because it’s easy to say no to supermarket pastries. I certainly don’t need to be eating pastries and it’s rather nice to have a reason not to eat them.

I Can Only Stomach so Much Sweetness

Growing up, my parents limited the amount of sugar my brother and I were allowed—to the point that I was quite jealous of friends and classmates that always seemed surrounded by sweet options. Everyone else had the sugary, frosted and chocolate-filled cereals at home (when the sweetest cereal my brother and I got was Kix…if we were lucky). And at lunch it was no better, there were no Twinkies or Ding-Dongs or Little Debbie Snacks for me in my lunchbox. No, if I had any “desserts” it would be 100% real fruit leather (rather than the more popular yet less nutritious Fruit Roll-Ups that I would’ve rather had). And forget about soda pop. That was a luxury that I could only dream about.

My sugar deprivation was sated by going to friends houses and feasting on those sugary cereals or sweet snack cakes that were such a novelty to me; every time it was like having a mini sugar binge. Yet, perhaps my overall lack of sugar at a young age made my threshold for sugar less than the average person. Even as a kid, eating Pop-Tarts at a friend’s house seemed like a difficult task for me. (Yes, I chose the frosted Pop-Tarts, which in retrospect was probably a mistake since the regular ones are already quite sweet.) I just recall that after I ate the first one I wasn’t eager to eat the second one in the package because I’d already reached my sugar limit.

Now that I’m older I’m glad I wasn’t laden with sweets. A little sweetness goes a long way with me. And most typical low-end American sweets are too sweet for me. I don’t crave candy bars, doughnuts, fruity sweetened teas or sheet cake with that sickly sweet frosting. That’s not to say I don’t like sweet things like dark chocolate, chocolate chip cookies and ice cream—but I don’t want them to be too sweet. Thus, I’m generally more inclined to enjoy Asian low-end sweets since they tend be less sweet—which is sometimes bad because then it’s just easier to eat more of it. [Sigh.]