Living Retired #229 – ‘Wishful Shrinking’

Living Retired: ‘WISHFUL SHRINKING’

So, what do we have to show for enduring Covid Couple Confinement? Six months of homemade sourdough bread under our belts.

And with winter approaching, the weather forecasters are predicting 50% chance of snow, 30% chance of blustery winds, and 100% chance of more Covid Couple Confinement. So even though we have a lot on our plate the time has come to lose the remaining 10 pounds from ‘last years diet to lose 5 pounds!’

For my diet I am going to eat melba toast — that’s all! I can explain…

For starters, we already have many cartons of unopened melba toast in our pantry. It’s been there since our covid hoarding shopping spree last March. At the time Jan rolled her eyes and said, “Gary, why did you buy so many friggin’ boxes of melba toast?”

“Dear, you can’t go wrong with melba toast — it lasts forever. I mean think about it, melba toast doesn’t have a ‘Best Before Date’ because it can’t get any worse. It’s ALREADY stale!”

Jan was quick to poo-poo my melba toast diet, so I read her the nutrition facts printed on the box: melba toast is low in calories, low in fat, has no cholesterol, minimum sodium: AND if you eat the box has the daily recommended fibre intake!

About now if you’re saying “Gary, tell me more about the melba toast diet. I’d like to lose enough weight so I can be featured holding up a pair of pants the waist size of wrestler Haystack Calhoun on the front cover of Diet Digest!” — I have a recipe…

If you really REALLY begin to crave something that actually has taste to it, soak the melba toast box in a bowl of water, add some flour, and stir until it reaches the consistency of your grandkids paper mache paste. Then, instead of dipping strips of newspaper into it and putting them overtop chicken wire to make a blob like your grade 2 school art project — eat it! Yum!

To add variety to the melba toast diet I envisage Jan making up serving plates of healthy canapés.

“Gary would you like another piece of ‘sprouted-grain-with-seeds’ melba toast topped with chickpea hummus?”

“Oh, is that what I’m eating? I thought I was pigging out on crunchy garden mulch?”

The biggest winner of the melba toast diet will be the melba toast manufacturers association — whose motto is ‘Melba toast my be tasteless, but at least it doesn’t smell like your grandsons hockey equipment bag!’

Already the melba toast industry is gearing up to meet the demand and develop some new ‘exciting flavours.’ University-trained nutritionists are being hired — the prerequisite is that those with taste buds shouldn’t apply.

Anyone for gluten-free tofu melba toast? Or, how about melba toast with hydroponic-grown organic alfalfa sprouts with artisanal coastal seaweed?

I figure I’m going solo on this diet. Jan said, “Gary, if you don’t lose weight on this diet — you’re toast!”

Ta-dum-dum.