Tag: Food

Stuff I Learned From Food

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Humans are the only species on this planet (aside from cats) who play with their food.  We mush it, we mix it and we marinate it.  We slice it.  We spice it.  We shape it with our hands.  We do things to food that nymphomaniacs and pyromaniacs only dream about.  At various times in our lives, food is our trusted friend, our relentless lover and our sworn enemy.  Food shares the blame — and the praise — for being both our master and our slave, and we can never quite reconcile that schizophrenic relationship.  Here are just a few things I’ve learned from food.

Fast food is usually neither.

If you can’t pronounce the ingredients listed on the package, they’re probably going to kill you.

Really good soup is actually just very wet salad.

That green stuff in the back of the fridge is never salad.

Red wine hates white carpet.

You can try but you can’t really disguise something disgusting simply by saying it tastes like chicken.

Haute cuisine is a French phrase that means “a bad cut of meat camouflaged with a pretentious sauce.”

Calling Italian cuisine “food” is like calling the Mona Lisa “paint.”

Potato chips (crisps) are free.  You’re actually paying for all that flavoured air trapped inside the bag.

The biggest secret in the world is that the vast majority of consumer honey isn’t honey; it’s some kind of weird, processed corn syrup.  (Sadly, this is true.)

Even though Cheerios™ taste like cardboard, they’re actually good for you.

“Swiss cheese is only cheese now and then.”  – Mitch Hedberg

Broken cookies don’t have calories: the calories escape when the cookies break.  Sounds legit!

You can run British mud through a French kitchen and you’ll end up with something that tastes pretty good, but if you run French food through a British kitchen, you’ll end up with mud.

In North America, barbeque is the last bastion of acceptable male behaviour.

Surprise!  Perrier is just water in a cute, green bottle.

If you microwave leftover pizza and call it “Italian toast,” it tastes better.

And finally:

Forget lingerie, music and candlelight — coffee, red wine and chocolate are the Holy Trinity of a romantic evening.

Food Heretics!

kitkatFor centuries, burning heretics at the stake was a perfectly acceptable practice.  Unfortunately, in recent history (400 years or so) it has fallen out of favour.  Too bad!  I think we should resurrect this little community activity, and get rid of one of the most undesirable members of our society – the food heretic.  These are people who cause anguish and consternation among all good and decent people by refusing to follow accepted gastronomic doctrine.  Here are a few examples:

Ketchup on eggs – Mother Nature has provided her children with the perfect food.  In fact, except for that pesky cholesterol (the bogeyman of the 21st century) eggs have all the nutrients humans need to survive – and they taste good.   So why would anyone drown them in faux pas tomato sauce?  Ketchup is for fries only – FRIES ONLY!  Besides, ketchup on eggs looks totally gross – like somebody just murdered a canary.

Opening snacks from the bottom of the bag/box – There are people (I’ve known a few) who don’t give a damn which end of the package they open.  It’s as if they don’t understand that top is always above bottom.  This is a law of physics as well as linguistics.  For God’s sake!  The writing on the package is upside down.  UPSIDE DOWN!  How can you even enjoy your snack, ya damn hoodlum?

Cutting pizza into squares – Since the days of Romulus and Remus, pizza has been cut into triangles.  TRIANGLES!  Okay, if you’re in Italy, you can eat your pizza with a knife and fork (When in Rome, etc, etc.) but everywhere else in the world, circles are cut into triangles so everyone gets an equal share.  This is a basic rule of geometry.  Sometimes I wonder how we ever even got to the Moon!

Milk in the bowl before the cereal – There are people who do this to children.  CHILDREN!  I have no words for this godawful habit.

Buttering toast with a sharp knife – Sharp knives are for cutting things; dull knives are for spreading things.  If you absolutely must, you can cut your toast with a dull knife, but never, under any circumstances, stick a sharp knife in the butter.  NEVER!  People who are capable of that are capable of anything – theft, arson, extortion, socks and sandals, Hawaiian shirts with lederhosen?  There’s just no end to it.

But the worst:

Randomly biting a KitKat™ — Since 1935, first Rowntree’s and now Nestle have been making KitKat bars to a specific standard.  In those 80 plus years, this cute little snack has spread all over the world and mutated into a plethora of flavours — including soy sauce, sake and banana.  And every minute of every day, someone, somewhere is carefully breaking a KitKat apart and eating it properly.  Yet, every once in a while, a wild-eyed anarchist will rip open the package and just take a bite.  A RANDOM BITE!  And people are surprised that some religious nutbars are calling these The Final Days?

 

6 People At The Grocery Store (Plus 1)

shopping-cartI’m not a shopper.  I don’t have a philosophical problem with shopping. In fact, I’m a huge fan of our consumer society. It’s just that I’m too many civilized generations removed from The Hunt to appreciate the joy of finding that perfect item — on sale.  This doesn’t mean I don’t shop — I do.  Every week, like my Cro-Magnon ancestors, I go out into the urban wilderness to claim my rightful place in the food chain.  It’s called grocery shopping, and in North America, it’s a mutant hybrid of a scavenger hunt, an obstacle course and a futile battle against stupidity.  Here is just a sampling of the moronic forces arrayed against us every time we venture forth to buy food.

My Real Name Is richard.petty\943 — Even before you get into the store, there are the people who think that, just because they have a video screen in the dash of their car, they can drive as if the parking lot is a RealTime simulation of Nascar Heat 2 from Playstation.

Where Am I? — These are the folks who enter the store and stop dead –as though they’ve just broken the Time/Space continuum and have no idea what dimension they’re in.
“It’s a grocery store.  That stuff on the shelves is food.  You came here on purpose!”

Me Go Here Now — There are the people who have no reasonable sense of direction, nor any concept of organization.  They stop in the middle of the aisle; back up, turn around, start again; think about it, stop, turn, bash into the cart next to them; stop, try again and then nonchalantly head off in the direction they started with.  And even though you get stuck behind these idiots three or four times, when you see them at the checkout, all they have in their cart is a frozen pizza, a package of disposable diapers and two cans of dog food.

Me Stop Here Now — These are the folks who stop their cart sideways in the middle of the aisle, tying up traffic in both directions, while they contemplate the pickles.
“It’s a condiment, for God’s sake — not the Bayonne Tapestry!”

There’s A Reason I’m Lonely — These are the people who ambush you into listening to a long-winded monologue that starts with the price of sugar, goes through the hurricanes in the Caribbean and finally fades away — somewhere between the guy next door who won’t cut his grass and the drug dealer across the street — but only because you quit being polite and just walked away.

OMG!  I Haven’t Seen You Since Tuesday — These are the friends who meet at the congested intersection of Dairy and Frozen Food, or in Produce, or — oh, hell, it doesn’t matter — because they invariably launch into a protracted conversation about how much they loved their vacation, how much they hate their vocation or Henry’s hemorrhoid operation.  You can’t get past them, around them or over them without pulling out a gun.  And on particularly bad days, Henry and his proctologist are standing there, as well.

And finally, just when you think it’s over:

I Forgot You Have To Pay —  These are the people who stoically stand in line at the checkout for twenty minutes; then, when it’s their turn, wait patiently while the cashier beeps every item — until, at the very end, they suddenly realize they’re in the middle of a financial transaction and start fumbling for their money.