Easter Boombalatta
Resting between Hot Cross Buns
I love, love, love Easter. Mostly for the subtle change in the weather, the smell in the autumn air but also for the chance to spend time with the family and as my kids say, a spot of chillaxing. For me there is always a slight frisson of fear that accompanies Easter as some years ago I learn’t a lesson that returns each year with EB. Most people wouldn’t consider Hot Cross Buns and beer to be a winning combination but as a newly minted Dietitian they were gold. Behind my odd eating habits there was a carefully crafted strategy. But lets go back to the beginning….
When I graduated from uni, work for dietitian’s was thin on the ground in Perth and my only true hope of a job was someone falling off the perch. Time was of the essence so it seemed like a fine idea to put all my worldly belongings and my prized green Gemini on a truck and send it across the Nullabor. The lure of my very first grown up job took me to Cootamundra, a tiny little sheep and wheat town in NSW. I found myself in the Nurses Quarters in my single room overlooking a parched paddock inhabited by three lonely sheep wandering around. As sad as they looked I did note amidst a bucket of tears that at least they had two friends. And therein lay my first problem. I was a no mates with not a single prospect in sight. Enter the Hot Cross Bun. Their comfort was immense and my love affair was immediate and oh so enduring. I am thankful that way back then, the little fruity delights didn’t appear on the shelves on Boxing Day because the collateral damage would have been quite literally enormous. Whilst comforting myself with the Easter goodies (and perhaps a few other food delights) I set about formulating a plan to gather some friends. Cootamundra, like many other country towns had a happening pub scene and with ten of them in a 500m strip catering to 5000 thirsty townsfolk they were clearly the path to friendship. I managed to gather some lovely friends and we had some hilarious times (I think). After six months of swilling beer and a concerted effort at eating every Hot Cross Bun that wasn’t nailed down, my boyfriend at the time started making comments about the extra ‘bits’ I had acquired. I was indignantly upset. How dare he tell such lies! More time passed and unbeknown to me, more bits tacked themselves onto my body. In hindsight I think the beer may have affected my vision. I can only imagine the shaky confidence that the locals had in their new and only Dietitian who was advising them on losing weight while she was fattening up like a little pig. Eventually the evidence became too great even for me and in a pivotal moment when getting out of the bath, I had to face the fact that I had morphed into something like a Shar-Pei dog, the ones with many folds of skin. With a successful deposit of 10kg of heavy duty weight, the golden run of beer and Hot Cross Buns was over. Its fair to say that the road back was long and arduous and the vision of the first hot cross bun on the shelves each year never fails to remind me of what could have been. Anybody else out there hiding a love of hot cross buns?
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