When I was a teenager, anything XXX would have delighted me to no end. Now I am much older, one X short, and not thrilled at all.

I work in information technology. We get free t-shirts regularly. It’s a way for us to recognize each other without having to go around sniffing everyone’s breath for caffeinated mints. Recently I got another t-shirt, an XXL because that’s all they had left. I put the t-shirt on the stack and didn’t think much about it. Just the other day, I finally popped it off the stack and put it on. My first impression was that it was a nice, well-fitting shirt. That’s when it hit me. It’s an XXL shirt.

I haven’t really had a problem wearing an XL shirt. To my mind, that is pretty much the size that every man wears. Men’s sizes smaller than that are just a marketing ploy to force you to pay adult prices for your kid’s clothes as they start to grow up. But now I have gone from extra to extra extra, more than more, jumbo.

All sorts of things have gotten me to this point — two weeks on steroids, eating to cheer up when I was depressed and single, eating to celebrate life now that I am happy with my squad. Still, I am the one who has gotten me here. Extra extra read all about it. I’m fat. (I could be PC and say overweight, but I’m saving bandwidth just saying fat. And it’s about me anyway and I know I’m fat.)

I have a good friend and coworker who is in a similar situation. He is unhappy to be buying new pants seemingly more often than he buys new video games. You have to give him credit though. He has just quit smoking after many years. The weight is not healthy for him either, but he has taken a big step by quitting smoking. I think he will take the next step and work off the weight.

How does one take that step though? And how does one keep on stepping? Dinner of a sliver of boneless, skinless chicken breast, brown rice and a broccoli floret is all well and good, but if later that night you are scarfing down cheese dip or the next day it’s pepperoni pizza with extra cheese for dinner, it’s just not going to work.

Man does not live by bread or boneless, skinless breast alone. I am certainly not going to give up variety and excitement in my diet, and I’m not going to ask the squad to. I know that I can create healthy, delicious meals. What I can’t do, so far, is do it regularly. What does it take to stop saying, “man, I don’t feel like cutting up fruit this morning. I’ll just drive thru for a biscuit.” What does it take to keep dinner from being a knock at the door?

I think the key is to keep my eyes on the prize. First I don’t want to outgrow all those t-shirts I have hoarded. How will my geek compatriots recognize me without them? What really matters though is Squirrelly, Jr. I want him to grow up healthy. Plus I want to be healthy during my time with him. Best of all I just may add years to my life and be around that much longer to torment him. That should be motivation enough.

It may be that the next entry will come from the sewers of Paris (Tennessee of course, we’re not buying groceries, so airfare is probably not gonna be in the plan now is it?). However, instead of cradling a loaf of bread a la Jean Valjean, I will be clutching a fistful of tea bags pilfered from the workplace. Only two days into our quest to live off the fat of the pantry, we have discovered that we are out of tea bags.

For those of you out there who can’t comprehend the crisis of a lack of sweet iced tea, I’m not sure how to even begin to explain to you. Surely there is something in your life that is a parallel. If not, my only suggestion is to try holding your breath — for two weeks. I have discussed the dilemma with my one truly southerner coworker. He agrees that a meal just isn’t the same when drinking anything other than iced tea. He did suggest that we might try iced coffee though.

Some digging in the pantry revealed enough Crystal Light pink lemonade for perhaps a week. There is also maybe a six pack worth of random beers. We have some cabernet, including a spectacular 1991 bottle. There is a bottle of calvados and half a jug of sangria. And now there is a fistful of pilfered tea bags to get us through. Honor and experiments are all well and good, but this is sweet tea we’re talking about. Now I just hope the rationing plan works.

When you receive an unexpected bill while planning a foodie pilgrimage, what is there to do? You have to pay the bill. You can’t really cook well when the ceiling leak is dripping on the stove, and if those termites keep going, the refrigerator will end up in the basement. On the other hand, there’s that big trip coming up — four star restaurants lined up one after the other. There’s no skimping on that. So what to do? Cut back of course.

Now, where does one cut back? Most financial experts say that you shouldn’t let anything interfere with your retirement planning. That’s fine with me. I’d hate to stop buying my lottery tickets. Most of the other bills are pretty important too. Car — too far to walk to work. House — too hot to sleep outside. Utilities — too hot to sleep inside. So what if the foodies cut back on food? Can we survive two weeks on just what we have in the pantry, the refrigerator, and the freezer? Can we live without going to the grocery store or to the great new farmers market downtown?

Luckily we just made a quick trip to the grocery store so the first dinner was easy — paninis. At Schnucks we bought ham, swiss, and really nice olive oil and rosemary bread from La Brea Bakery. There were only slightly scary first-effort homemade pickles, too. What really made the meal (and qualified it for our pantry cleaning) was a pre-Katrina jar of olive relish from Central Grocery in New Orleans. Bordeaux has vintages. Bordeaux ages well in a cool dark place. Olive relish? Well, this jar hasn’t aged at all fortunately. When we removed the seal and opened the jar, the aroma was an immediate transport back to New Orleans.

After our good first effort, the next step was inventory. Just what’s hiding in the dark recesses of our food storage? Our vegetable basket still has a few tomatoes and some garlic from the market. The pantry has parsley garlic linguini and olive oil. Tomorrow will be pasta pomodoro, nice, simple, delicious.

Next was a tour of the freezer. Right away there are homemade tamales made by a Honduran woman living in Southaven. All they need is a gentle steaming and maybe a bit of cheddar and diced onions. Another layer down in the freezer reveals a pork loin. Combined with the masa in the pantry, maybe we could make our own tamales. On second thought, maybe I should just grill the pork and make corn tortillas instead. When one is experimenting with the alchemy of randomness, the experiment should probably be kept as simple as possible. Besides, there’s no lard in the pantry.

Digging down more layers in the freezer, so many layers as to go from archaeology to paleontology, we found a turducken. This one goes so far back that it is from the time before Turduckenus terribilis went extinct and cajuns had to start deboning and stuffing three different birds to make a substitute. The turducken, it’s history and our experience with this prehistoric example, will have to wait for another entry, assuming we survive.