Fairly Exhausted

Posted: October 20, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: | 2 Comments

IMG_3448

 

The annual State Fair Horse Show weekend has come and gone, Thank God.  It is Carter’s big weekend and one that Russ and I barely endure.  Yes, we love watching our daughter do the thing she loves so much, but no we hate the standing around waiting, the late nights, the judging and the packing up when it is over.

 

Carter had a fairly successful weekend.  Her best class was Hunter Seat Equitation where she was being judged on how she was as a rider and not how her horse was.  She came in third in a class of fourteen in Equitation.  On the under saddle classes we were happy when she ribboned since she does not own a horse and is at the mercy of a horse she is lucky enough to get to ride.

 

Ridding is a money sport, the more money you pay the better you will do and we are not a money family, especially when it comes to horses.  So good for you Carter, for doing well without your parents buying it for you.  There is a lot of character building that goes on at horse shows.

 

I consider this my state fair diet weekend.  I ate nothing there.  I waited until I was home each day for any meals.  Yesterday that was not a big deal because the showing ended early, but tonight we were not home until 8:30.  Besides not consuming any frozen cheesecake covered in chocolate or a fried candy bar I got plenty of exercise.  I counted my trips between the barn and the arena at 37, just today.  That had to be at least six miles of walking.  Add to that the trips to the car in loading today and that was worth two more miles of walking, with the extra exercise of carrying stuff.

 

So no more state fair diet for at least another year.  I am happy to stay home and walk my dog and carry stuff around my own house.  At least it does not smell like horse poop and my teeth don’t feel gritty from dust flying around.

Catering Flashback

Posted: October 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

When I was in college I started a catering business that I kept running for ten years after college.  My late college roommate Lauren Roberts, who went on to Coke as the first woman VP of advertising, brilliantly named my business “á La Carter,” the play on the word cater since my last name was Carter.  Catering was my side business to my main gig of hawking mail opening and extracting machines.

My friends used to ask me why I did not quit my real job and just do catering since they clearly thought it was a more glamorous job and they liked the leftovers.  I had two reasons.  The money in the mail opening business was too easy to give up and catering was physically exhausting.

Today, twenty years after I gave up catering, my body had flashbacks of my catering days.  My daughter Carter is riding in the State Fair Horse Show this weekend and somehow I was given the task of providing all the meals for the riders and their families for the three-day events.

It is a crazy week so I only had this afternoon to prepare three main dishes for 30 plus people for lunch and dinner each day.  The real kicker is that the meals have to be fully cooked so that I can reheat them in a brigade of Crock-pots in a horse stall turned food service area.

I chopped 15 pounds of onions, five heads of garlic, 5 pounds of carrots, 10 peppers from my garden and 20 pounds of chicken.  I browned ground meat, opened endless cans of beans, and stirred giant pots boiling away on the stove.  After 6 hours I had enough Ham and Black Bean soup, Chicken Chili and Spaghetti Casserole to keep the giant brigade of horse crazy girls, their bored brothers and exhausted parents fed all weekend.

Beside the pain my in back the most familiar catering feeling was one of lack of hunger from cooking such large amounts of food.  I had forgotten how cooking so much in such a short period of time completely made me lose my appetite.  My thought now is that if my back could hold out I should go back to catering just until I reach an ideal weight.

If you are crazy enough to visit the North Carolina State Fair this weekend and tire of looking at the ride operators who are missing their important teeth or eating deep fried butter, stop on by the Jim Graham building and watch the horse show.  They have chairs where you can sit a spell and if you find me I might have a nice bowl of soup for you.