Totally Office Party

Every place of employment has its good and bad qualities.  One of the good ones about mine is a thorough enjoyment of the holiday season.  We had two office parties this year; the first was catered for us by the wife of the owner who is a very, VERY good cook.  The second was today, a pot luck affair, and my fellow employees are no slouch in the culinary department either.

I made hot baked artichoke dip.  Very easy, very good, very bad for you.

Hot ‘Choke Dip

Drain and dice two cans of artichoke hearts

Add 1 & ¼ cups of mayonnaise

Add 5 oz. of small crumbled parmesan cheese

Mix, spread in the bottom of a baking dish, and bake at 375 for about twenty minutes or until it bubbles and makes your house smell amazing.  Eat with crackers.  Try to share, it’s a bit like crack – once you get a bite you kind of keep thinking about it.

In addition to all the office partying they also exchange gifts.  I’m not all that into gifts so the first time people started giving them to me I was a little mortified.  Over the years, I’ve adapted so that now I just make home made chocolates for everyone.  People are impressed by them and they always get eaten so it seems to work out well.

The whole season is, of course, a complete cataclysm for anybody who is trying to loose (or just not gain) weight.  In addition to the parties we’ve got customers and distributors constantly dropping off pretzels, cookies, chocolates (I’m guilty of course of contributing to that one), etc.  There’s one company that sends us fresh Florida oranges too, those are really popular.

We’ve got a number of folks who are attempting or have successfully managed to sacrifice their fat on the altar of Weight Watchers, so there’s always a fair amount of food related anxiety to go along with our merriment.

People speak in ‘point value’ for pretty much everything edible, if you didn’t know what was going on you’d think we were all playing some kind of food related RPG in the office.

I don’t mind Weight Watchers – as they go I think it’s a decent enough program since they encourage people to eat real food in the real world rather than salt pickled substances from boxes and cans.  I think I can say with definition though that their program does not, in fact, work for me personally.  I’ve been on and off WW at least ten times since the age of fourteen.  Each time I fail, the rebound weight gain has probably been worth another ten extra pounds so.  Ten WW fails in a lifetime, ten pounds each, well… you do the math.