Thursday, January 07, 2010

Food Freaks

Let's talk about eating weird stuff, shall we?

Do you eat weird stuff? I am not so much talking about exotic foods like crickets sprinkled over your salad or shark's balls or what have you. I am just talking about something that you like, or maybe a combination of food that you invented, and anyone else that looks at it might think what in the hootenanny is that all about?, but you love it and no one can stop you from loving it.

Take, for instance, my dad. My dad is known for mixing foods in a most original way. One of his favorites is the spaghetti and salad sandwich. If we had spaghetti for dinner with a nice side salad, you bet your lady lumps that the very next day he is going to take two pieces of bread and put a scoop of spaghetti between them, along with a scoop of salad. Viola! A sandwich! No matter that the spaghetti and salad sort of drips out the sides uncontrollably. He loves it.

Nordic Boy does this thing where he heats up Boca Italian Sausage. Let me stop the story right there and say that I am not a picky enough eater to say that I think that Boca Italian Sausage is gross. I rarely think foods are gross; rather I just feel a mild preference away from certain things. One of the things I have a mild preference away from is spicy hot dogs of any variety. I know, I'm from the Midwest so this is sort of sacrilegious, but it's just not something I would get excited about eating. Pair this with the part of me that wants to get Nordic Boy's goat, and you will find that I consistently try to taunt Nordic Boy about his Italian Sausage (that sounds dirty) by calling it dog food. Totally unfair since a real meat sausage/hot dog could be said to share some ingredients with dog food, but a Boca Sausage? The dog food name-calling is sort of nonsensical, unless you have a soy-eating dog, which perhaps you do. Anyway. Nordic Boy is an expert at Not Paying Me No Mind when I taunt, so I don't know why I persist, but I do. He is just easygoing enough to have adopted the taunt for his own self, which is totally disheartening when you are trying to taunt someone. He will just up and say, before I can, "I'm going to have dog food for dinner!" which really takes the taunting wind out of my sails. Dang him.

That was a tangent and a HALF, you guys.

ANYHOO. He takes the Boca Sausage, heats it up, chops it up, mixes it with fettuccine noodles (no garlic, no butter, nothing on them noodles), mixes some peas in there too and then douses the whole thing with Chipotle Tabasco sauce and eats it. And I find that weird. It's weird, right?

More than finding it weird, however, I find it makes me green with envy. I don't know what it is, but when people have quirky things about themselves, I want to have the quirky too. I feel left out of the quirky! Not that I don't have many of my own quirks. Believe you me I do. However, when I don't, (like when I couldn't find a word that I couldn't pronounce, or when I found out that I didn't talk to myself when alone but everyone else did), it kind of makes me crazy. Which I suppose is a quirk in and of itself.

Last night, I made Nordic Boy sit there and try to help me come up with what my crazy food combo is. What is it? Where is it? What has he seen me eat that would make someone else cringe? I want a crazy food combo love affair!

I couldn't think of one. He admitted he had never seen me covet anything weird either.

I am so disappointed in this, I don't even know why. It's just so...vanilla.

The only thing I can think of is that when I was a little kid and we would go back to Fiji to visit family, my cousins there thought it was the weirdest thing on planet earth that I would spoon out a spoonful of peanut butter and just eat it off the spoon. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING" they would yell at me. It was like I was eating mayonnaise straight from the jar or something like that.

That, in terms of weird food loves, just doesn't cut it in America. Eating peanut butter off a spoon is just a red white and blue sort of thing to do, even if it is cuckoo for cocoa puffs in Fiji.

Tell me, what food combo do you love that other people give you grief for?

16 comments:

Cabbage said...

I don't think I'm a food freak, but my husband does weird things now and again. Like he'll take one of those small York Peppermint Patties and break it in half and put an oyster cracker in each half. He says it's like eating a thin mint. I say it's weird. When I worked at a traditional Japanese restaurant (where i was the only person working there who wasn't born and raised in asia) I used to eat apples and peanut butter and all of my coworkers thought that was COMPLETELY BIZARE. The sausage/tabasco/spaghetti thing sounds weird to me but I bet my husband would think it was genius.

Anonymous said...

In my pre-veggie days, I once ate a hamburger with peanut butter on it. And liked it.

Jen Robinson said...

I love eating slices of really sharp cheddar cheese w/ some peanut butter on top. That's all I got. Sky eats like a goat (i.e. anything) so he's constantly suprising me with what he'll put in his mouth. Yeah.

Valerie said...

Lays baked potato chips and ketchup. Yum!

Michelle said...

A bowl of vanilla ice cream with Nestle's Quik POWDER generously sprinkled over the top. It makes the most delicious grit in your teeth. 8-)

Miss J said...

Coke (as in Coca-Cola) sipped though a straw made by biting the ends off of a black licorice twist?
Cottage cheese with crunched up potato chips on top? Wheat thins spread with cream cheese with a half a grape on top? Oh, and my dad used to make me a dinner that consisted of a can of chili, mixed with a can of Spaghetti-O's that we would eat with Fritos as spoons.

I'm surprised I'm still alive....

Anonymous said...

As a kindergartener/first grader, I was obsessed with peanut butter and bologna sandwiches. The mere though brings on dry heaves as an adult.

Claire said...

When I shared a house with an Australian guy he introduced us to jam and cheese sandwiches, which shouldn't work, but really do! And when we were kids my gran used to give us Weetabix with butter on - I have to confess that I still do that now though!

Btw, go Nordic Boy! Anything with tabasco is good for me, I splash it into all kinds of meals!

safstar said...

When I was little I LOVED peanut butter and mayonaise sandwiches, only the mayonaise was Miracle Whip... The owner of my local pub said his favorite food is a peanut butter, fried onion, and fish stick sandwich. Rumor has it it was on the menu of the last pub he owned.

Sauntering Soul said...

I don't think I eat any super weird combos so I'm vanilla with you.

However, I have a co-worker who eats really weird stuff like a gigantic bowl of cheese grits mixed with ramen noodles. And she'll get on a kick and eat something weird every single day for months. Her last kick was a can of green beans with a can of chicken on top all covered with a chunk of melted mozarella cheese. Every single day for a year and a half. Shudder.

ulterior_modem said...

I've lurked for a while, I have to say I love your blog. Also, I love to dip cinnamon and raisin bagels into potato soup. We were out of bread one day and there was one bagel left in the fridge, so I thought "Why not?" and have been hooked ever since.

Jenny said...

I love fries dipped in a chocolate milkshake. I recently demonstrated this at a burger joint and the people with me thought I was smoking crack.

MAP said...

finally I can post!

Ali and I would put together some incredible mashups in her mom's kitchen. Doritos stuffed in a pita was one of my faves.

MAP said...

By the way, Jenny -

I love fries dipped in milkshake. Dipping in a Wendy's frosty is pretty great too. I must be smoking crack with you.

SAVanVleck said...

Oh, mayonaise on a spoon is wierd?

Mine are not real exotic but all seem to involve bread.

American Fried potatoes on buttered bread.

mayo, cheese and potato chips on bread

peanut butter, mayo and bananas on bread

Unknown said...

MAP and I used to also eat frosted flakes in pita bread.. just all dry. I used to like a pita with butter warmed with cinnamon sugar on it. Mmmmmmmm. Oh! And my brother totally puts spaghetti sauce on his salad.. not quite a spaghetti salad sandwich, but not too far off.