The day started out so well... oats and berries with almonds, drizzled with maple syrup and sprinkled with cinnamon, and a home-brewed chai latté.
Rode with W out along Point Grey Road past Jericho and Locarno to Spanish Banks and took him up steep, deserted Spanish to the secret trail (a fun, rooty little romp with a couple drops and a log a-frame, which I breezed over even on my slicks*) and ripped through a few of my favourites, before heading back down to Spanish Banks to watch some beach volleyball and dig into the trail treats.
Treat number one - an organic satsuma mandarin - sweet, juicy, intensely tart.
Treat number two (and here starts the downhill slide) - my new favourite trail mix bar, the Nature's Valley Sweet & Salty with a sweet peanut-butteresque coating. Chock full o'nuts, carbs - and Palm Kernel Oil. Mmmmmmm, trans fats!
After the ride, a quick shower and a quick piece of Spelt toast drenched in butter and slathered with sour cherry jam, then out to pick up the moms for a Mother's Day outing.
The downhill slide continues in my mom's kitchen. While she gathers purse and glasses, I raid the cupboards for chocolate (at any given point in time, my mother has at least one - but normally 3 or 4 - unopened boxes of chocolates that she will never eat herself). We head out the door, me with a handful of macadamia milk chocolates.
Next pickup is W's mom, who brings along a giant bag of tortilla chips, one of my absolute weaknesses. They're guacamole flavour. I eat 30 chips before we've even left Coquitlam.
I munch all the way to our destination - White Rock. As we walk along along the pier and boardwalk, W's mom points out all the places we can stop for ice-cream later, while my mom looks for her favourite fish and chip shop and happily reminisces about the summers she spent camping with her family, right here by the beach, as a little girl in the 40s.
The walk and the summery beach smell of fish and chips gets my appetite roaring again. Favourite fish and chip shop found and dinner ordered, I douse it all in sea salt and malt vinegar, load up on tartar sauce and ketchup, and mow through 2 huge pieces of Alaska cod and 5,000 calories of fries in 5 minutes flat.
I drown it all with Diet Coke (a bit like fighting an inferno with a garden hose).
We waddle back towards the car and stop for gelato - cookies'n'cream, in a waffle cone. No matter how full I am, I can always squeeze in some ice-cream, although all I can manage is one scoop.
Then it's a race to get the moms back to Coquitlam and me home to Vancouver so I can make a cake for tomorrow, for a baby shower at work (what was I thinking?). At 10 pm I start mixing - PC Organics white cake mix, with a half pound of butter substituting for the vegetable oil. I try a few spoonfuls of batter. I lick the beaters, the bowl, the spatula. I always make 2 cake mixes, so that there's enough batter to make cupcakes. I eat half a cupcake, still warm from the oven, then slather the other half in chocolate frosting and eat that too.
I practice writing Best Wishes Stacey in chocolate icing on my hand, and lick it off. I draw a chocolate flower and lick that off too.
I chase it all down with a glass of milk... one step back up the healthy ladder from today's nutritional wasteland.
* Banged up the rear shock on my sweet Stumpjumper yesterday, and it's leaking a mysterious fluid. Fingers crossed that it's covered by warranty, and that it can be fixed before I leave for Moab in 19 days. Meantime, I'm back on my little cross-country bike for now, which is all slicked up for commuting.
