Jiggs Dinner
Given the theme of my last post, it’s ironic that I can tell you about what happened to me just one day later - a prime example of dealing with traditional unhealthy foods. I was working at a client’s office today, they are a not-for profit organization and it just so happens they were having a fundraising event, serving a Jiggs Dinner over the lunch hour.
What is a Jiggs Dinner you ask? It’s probably the most popular traditional meal in my province, it’s a weekly tradition in many households in some form or another. A full blown Jiggs Dinner includes a roast chicken or roast of beef, savoury dressing, and boiled up together in a big pot, potatoe, carrot, turnip, peas pudding, cabbage and salt beef. All the food on the plate is smothered in gravy. The one being served today was scaled down to just the salt beef, cabbage, potatoe, carrot, turnip, dressing and gravy.
The Office Manager kindly invited me to join him for a Jiggs Dinner. It would have been rude for me not to accept and instead sit there eating my sandwich, the Manager and the volunteers who made and served the food would have no doubt been offended. So in the interest of client relations I accepted BUT I politely asked to have a couple of things left off my plate. I took a pass on the salt beef and gravy, the saltiest and fattiest parts of the meal. I had a couple of odd looks and I just said I don’t like those two things. So I ate basically a plate of boiled vegetables and a small scoop of dressing. More importantly I participated in a little social and cultural eating without doing too much harm to my diet. I feel really good about how I handled the situation, it’s a little thing I know but it is part of my philosophy that a lot of little lifestyle changes applied consistenly add up to big changes in the body. It’s working for me.
