F*** the “healthy” version.
So we had pancake day on Tuesday (yay). And I love pancake day. When I was a kid, I used to get so excited for my tea of pancakes with dozens of toppings. And then my eating disorder came along and ruined that. Pancake days were now stressful. I was culturally obligated to eat an “unhealthy” (see: forbidden) food. I remember how I would starve myself and over exercise all day just to “earn” my pancakes ( I don’t recommend doing that, it always leads to binging and hating yourself)
Even after going through the recovery process, I still got stressed about pancake day. For the past few years now, I have spent every pancake day making “healthy” pancakes out of blended banana and oats. And every year they are fucking terrible. They are NOT GOOD. They always burn. They taste like fried porridge (cos that’s all they are really). Every year I expect them to taste like real pancakes, and every year they disappoint.
This year, for the first time in a few years, I had REAL pancakes. My girlfriend’s housemates expertly made some delicious pancakes with butter and sugar and egg. And I covered them with every topping that would have terrified me two years ago. Nutella, biscoff spread, whipped cream, more sugar, syrup. And it was the best pancake day I’ve had in years.
Today I baked cookies. I’m going on a walk tomorrow and the plan is to stop and eat a small picnic. But yet again the disordered voice in my head said “ooh, maybe I should try to make a healthy version”. I was halfway through typing “healthy cookie recipe” into the search bar on my phone when I stopped myself. I remembered pancake day and how much fun I had had eating proper pancakes. So I baked REAL cookies, with REAL sugar and REAL flour and dark chocolate chips instead of fucking cacao nibs. And I’m really excited to eat them tomorrow because they’re going to be delicious.
And when I was picking up my ingredients for my real cookies I also bought some real Ben and Jerry’s instead of halo top. And all the other “unhealthy” treats I wanted because I’m hungry and my period is due and I want them. And also because there is no such thing as healthy and unhealthy anyway.