Brandee Gillham
The Cowboy’s Wife
My cowboy abruptly informed me a few weeks ago that he was going on a diet. I have never heard this four-letter word come out of his mouth. He loves food. He loves to eat. He eats when he is hungry and he eats when he is not hungry. He eats when there is a celebration or nothing to celebrate at all.
I really couldn’t believe my ears. Since I do nearly all of the cooking I quickly began to wonder what impact this was going to have on our family. I was truly dumbfounded as this is the same cowboy who has refused, for years, to let me buy low-fat anything. “The fat is what makes it taste better.”
I waited with anticipation to see what the stipulations would be. He gave three requirements. First, he was not going to be adding any sugar to his coffee. Whew! I don’t drink coffee (except for about six times a year) so this was not going to be an issue.
The second component of his diet was that he would not be eating ice cream. Now if you knew my cowboy, this would be an incredibly difficult task for him. One of his absolute favorite things to do at the end of the day is to unwind with a large bowl of ice cream.
We are not talking about a modest portion of ice cream either, but a heaping cereal bowl of ice cream. I was impressed and also thankful that I would not be required to participate in such extreme measures.
The third part of his diet was that I was not to bake any desserts until his birthday. Now, before you begin thinking that this was a tremendous sacrifice, his birthday was only two weeks away.
This was the part of the diet that carried the greatest challenge for me. I sincerely love to bake desserts for my family. I had even recently acquired a new apple cake recipe that I couldn’t wait to try out. Well, apparently, I was going to do some waiting.
In the end, I was pretty impressed with my cowboy’s resolve. The three components of his diet plan all boiled down to one rule. He was ultimately going to be reducing his sugar intake.
I decided that I could fairly easily support his endeavor. But then a strange thing happened… About 13 hours after his diet began, he abruptly quit. It had been a fairly frustrating day at work and he decided he deserved a late-night snack. He believed he was sticking to his diet by only eating a plate of nachos.
(Warning!!! Science geek alert here:) I tried to kindly remind him of the Kreb Cycle and that whether his food begins as a starch or sugar it is still going to result in ATP and be providing calories.
He firmly declared that he was not going off of his diet plan and that nachos were not the same as ice cream. “One is salty and the other is sweet. Nachos don’t have any sugar in them at all.”
I sat there simply chuckling to myself. My cowboy’s diet lasted a total of 13 hours according to me and 37 hours to him. He decided the very next nightthat if nachos were equivalent to ice cream then there was no need to diet all. I completely agree!
Brandee Gillham, her cowboy and three lil’ cowpokes, live on the family ranch near Peetz.