I tend to have salty cravings more often than not. These always lead me to picture things like fried chicken, bacon, french fries, ham on rolls and those little orange hard cylinders you get in salty snack mixes. Nothing like seeing THAT floating in the air before you.

What this means is that one of the things I don’t like about macrobiotics is my tendency to cheat.

There I was today, faced with chicken cordon bleu in a puff pastry, 2 pieces for $5 (!), and despite knowing that I didn’t need chicken cordon bleu, I wasn’t starving for lack of chicken cordon bleu nor was I thinking of chicken cordon bleu before I saw it, it suddenly seemed like a remarkably fine idea.

It was lunchtime. It was a festival. A Bastille Days festival within walking distance from work.

That was some damn fine chicken cordon bleu.

Okay, so my latent tendencies aren’t really up to the macrobiotics.  And I don’t succumb all that much; I haven’t had a hard orange cylinder in over a year. But the thing is, am I just experiencing hidden spite against choosing macrobiotics, thumbing my nose at its whole grains and miso and bountiful goodness?

Or is it something deeper — am I depriving myself of essential nutrients and I don’t even know it?

I’m not sure what good you get out of fried chicken, bacon and the rest, but it’s got to be something. And since most of my life has been very un-macrobiotic, when these cravings come up I naturally picture foods I know versus their macrobiotic equivalent.

Macrobiotics is about balance. The last thing I want is to be putting myself out of balance.

How do you get past crazed cravings?

Bastille Days: Mr. Eiffel!