Our friend Elle was just talking about how people eat on vacation. “…I took it for granted that visitors would always enjoy something sweet for dessert or as an afternoon (or midnight) snack. Now I assume that guests won’t want such things around because it seems that many people are watching what they eat, even when on vacation. That’s sad. Vacations seem to me to be a time to ignore our every day assumptions and let loose a bit.”
You know, the sad thing is, we used to be perfectly happy to enjoy whatever we wanted on vacation. And then, we heard a dietitian speak, and he went on about how food isn’t the same as love, and when we go and see our families, they try to “love us” with food, and we eat more than we need, and we should set boundaries and request that they express their love in other ways.
Okay. Yes. One the surface of it, that is true. But, sometimes wielding psychology (as a club) is not the best way to deal with people. People simply love you the way they love you, and express it how it comes to them. We probably have all been guilty of letting someone stuff us full of food when we could be doing other things like “interacting” with them — but also, sometimes it’s easier to just keep one’s mouth full, and leave the psychologically approved interacting for another day.
Also? There comes a time to say “No” to guilt, and especially other people burdening us with it. Maybe it would be nice to give our “shoulds” a vacation while we’re on holiday and sleeping in.
We are all about eating well every day, and eating very well on vacation — without guilt, and without overdoing, either. Elle’s recipe for Dumpy Blondes — blonde dump brownies — would be an excellent salty-sweet, golden chocolate rich bar to enjoy with a big cup of tea on a vacation. Our guests today enjoyed a tasty Danish-style pastry with breakfast (sadly, not with tea; they’re a little suspicious of our love of the stuff). One of our eaters is fairly conservative with trying new foods, but said she “loved pastries and Danishes and croissants of all kinds,” so this was kind of a requested treat.
Cranberry Cheese Danish-style Pastry. Yeah – the name is clunky, but a.) we’re not Danish, and b.) laminated butter pastry with cranberry cheese filling sounded even worse. The first time we attempted this, we used Benecol olive oil spread for the butter. It turned out really, really well — delicious and tender. This time, because of our audience, we used real butter.
It made the flakiest pastry we’ve ever created. It changed the whole dough — made it frighteningly tender to handle when raw, and when baked, made it light and crispy, yet toothsomely tender as well. We liked it both ways, but know our guests were really excited about us using real butter!
Home from riding trains and touring castles and shopping for gifties and slogging for miles and hours in the rain (it’s 57°F/14°C what’s wrong with this picture???) and and listening to lectures on tapestry and taking pictures, pictures, pictures, pictures, we are hunkering down with soup and rolls and good company –or, some of us are. Some of us others are bogarting the pastry as a dinner option, and ignoring the soup. We are conversing about that.
::sigh::
Fine. More soup for the rest of us.
Ah, vacation.
This looks fantastic thanks for sharing.
This looks fantastic thanks for sharing. 😀
I don’t care what anyone says; divine pastry must include real butter. Amen.
I have been guilty of doing the whole food for love thing. It counts that we spent Christmas last year on the East Coast with my sister’s family and bought and cooked several holiday dinners while we were there. She doesn’t like to cook, and from the looks of her — eat. Oh well.
But that pastry? Oh my. It’s exceptionally gorgeous. Brings back memories of my Daring Baker’s Danish braid and that lusciously gorgeous cardamom laced dough — with butter — right before we went on vacation to Italy. The way we vacation, we work off the calories, so what the heck. I say dig in. With love, of course 🙂