Written By Sherwood Kohn
Poet T.S. Eliot claimed that April was the cruelest month, but he neglected to include May; not just because those months herald the arrival of spring, and some of us who are long in the tooth have stopped budding along with the rest of nature, but because they are the times when our diets go out the window.
Easter, Passover, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day: Spirituality, love, reverence and respect mean a lot, but don’t kid yourself: Those are food days, days of our pounds, days when we will all eat ourselves into Weight Watchers come June.
Easter seems to have become a time of chocolate bunnies, eggs, and anything else that the purveyors of confections can think up. (Does it seem as if chocolate is more in evidence this year, or am I just craving it more?) Passover has matzoh balls (which in themselves are worth a couple of pounds apiece) not to mention brisket, kugel, and all the rest of the heavy fare that weighs the Seder table, and later one’s midriff.
And Mother’s Day-well, have you ever tried to get into a restaurant on May 14?
But Memorial Day, which used to be a time of respect for the soldiers who gave their lives for our country, but is now a holiday celebrated by car sales and backyard cookouts, is the biggie. Everyone is off work, the grills are fired up, and the hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken legs and great slabs of steak, supplemented with heaping bowls of potato salad, are sizzling with oozing oceans of artery-clogging cholesterol.
It’s as if, having hibernated during the long, cold winter months, we lumber from the lean lethargy of the lair to eat our ways back to something resembling well-being.
Food, after all, can be comforting; but watch out, too much can make you mighty uncomfortable, especially when you can’t squeeze into last fall’s pants or next summer’s bathing suit.
And don’t forget, Independence Day is just over the horizon. Everyone’s off of work then, too, and I can just smell the barbecue, not to mention the steamed crabs, fried oysters, roasted ears of corn, clam chowder, chicken wings, French fries, Polish sausages…
Wait a minute. Did you just let your belt out a notch?
