Food Mood

With Thanksgiving coming up, let's talk about food, shall we?

Things I Believe About Food
(Caveat: I know some of this is totally irrational. But if you wanted rationality, you wouldn't be reading this blog right? This is the blog where I talk about my Celine Dion nightmares and argue about the difference between pajamas and leisure pants, after all.) So here we go.

1. I grew up in a house where I seldom ate the same thing for dinner twice in a row, ever. It was all about variety in our house. To this day, eating the same food twice in a row (pizza? AGAIN???) seems wrong to me. I am always amazed at people who can make a huge batch of something and eat it all week. I am a very non-monogamous eater.

2. Oh, you know what? BioGirl has a friend who knows Doris Day. IN PERSON. FOR REAL. I adore Doris Day so being two degrees of separation away from her is more than I can BEAR. This totally has nothing to do with food but I just thought about it and it was so thrilling that I had to tell you. Ok. Moving on.

3. Processed, packaged food was doled out very sporadically in my childhood house. This has had some strange repercussions. Like, the only time we ever had pop in the house was when we were sick (7-Up for a yucky tummy) or on holidays. My parents would serve us Faygo Red-pop (that reference is for all you Michiganders out there) in wine glasses to make us feel all grown up on Thanksgiving and birthdays. And we could have a Coke when we went out to this Chinese restaurant in our town, which was like, maybe twice a year. Even now, I like Coke with Chinese food but hardly ever any other time, and I think of red soda as a Very Fancy Beverage, akin to a nice Merlot.

4. The lack of packaged food also had the result of me coveting certain things as if they were gold in my youth. I had an aunt that didn't have anything against packaged food and I would go to her house and gorge myself on frozen pizza and Keebler Fudgestripes until I was blue in the face. It was awesome and felt so SPECIAL. To this day, sometimes I walk by Funyons in the grocery store and stop and go "wow! Funyons! Can we have that??" Who am I asking permission from? I am an adult, I can bring some goddamn Funyons into my house if I want to. But I hardly ever buy them. It seems too special for just me. Funyons are like, food for company.

5. We were a very sit-down-together family when it came to eating. I still do this and have never, not once, EVER, eaten food standing over a sink. In fact, I find it hard to believe that people actually do that. I half-convince myself that this is just something that people SAY they do, like go to the gym every day or bake their own bread in the morning or something, but that no one really, truly does it. I know I am wrong about that, but I can't help myself from doubting.

6. I miss Blue Moon ice cream so bad sometimes that I think about planning a trip back to Michigan just so I can have some. Does anyone out there know about Blue Moon ice cream? If you do, can you please describe the taste for me so I can explain it to Nordic Boy? Thanks.

7. I don't know if I could live if I couldn't have hot, spicy food. It's like an addiction. Certain foods just don't taste right unless they are burning the skin right off of your skull. You know what I mean? The kind of hot that is so good that while you're eating it, you're all "whoo!" like Cher? Come to think of it, maybe that's why she was always "whoo"-ing and sticking her tongue out like that. Maybe she had a mouthful of Tabasco or something. Whoo!

8. I was always a kid who brought lunch to school, and never bought lunch. I was always jealous of the buyers. When I think back to the nasty food that I was so frickin' jealous of, I want to smack my former self across the back of my head. I mean, the rectangle pizza with that kibble meat on top? What was the story with that? And the taco meat that seeped orange oil? Gah.

9. When I was growing up, we had tea time in my house every day after school. Sometimes my mom would make these crepe things that were basically like little pancakes that you put jam on. Tea and snacks. It rocked and I miss that.

10. I believe that Necco wafers are an evil plot to try and get kids to eat chalk. Who, you might ask, would want kids to eat chalk? And for what purpose? Don't bother me with details, people. The Necco company is chalking our children!

11. When I was in high school, I thought the Olive Garden was WAY FANCY.

12. I shop at small markets. I went into a large chain grocery store over the weekend (I couldn't find fried crispy onions for the top of my green bean casserole any where else) and I almost cried with the magnitude of it all. 8 million aisles! Surgery-bright lights! Aisles the size of, well, something huge! Where the fuck is everything? How many types of cereal can the world POSSIBLY NEED? Aaaaahhhhh!

I'm out,
Librarian Girl