Food

I was going to start this thought process off by saying I have an eating disorder. But, I’ve reconsidered in the event that I trigger someone somewhere who has a food problem that ends in vowels.

I don’t think I have a psychological problem that’s determining my food intake. What I do have is food resentment. The resentment comes from the fact that our perpetual need for sustenance drives our everyday behavior, and that I’m forced to participate in that behavior. Back in the day that participation meant a sharp projectile and either stealth or running. Now it means navigating your way around assholes with SUV’s in the Safeway parking lot, or assholes with carts in the Cost-Co dairy aisle. I understand that having to decide what to have for supper each day isn’t exactly demanding. I further grasp that annoyance while acquiring sour cream isn’t life threatening, but I think the older a person gets the more fucking grating the process becomes.

When I first detected this annoyance over an innocuous what do you want for supper query from my wife, I thought that the remedy might be variety. Spice things up a bit. Try some new shit. But we were only partially successful. We managed to add some new fare to our daily ingestion but there were problems transitioning to an international menu, and so we were only somewhat successful.

For starters food is expensive, and unless you’re Gordon Ramsey there are limitations on how much is available and how much you can store. Your average Canadian kitchen doesn’t have the ingredients to be inventive each and every day, and so we have staples. Staples and variety aren’t great dance partners, and if square dancing is your staple then you’re probably not going to be a great ballerina if part of your routine is dosey doe your partner.

I think variety is part of the reason I won’t even consider a vegetarian diet. The whole process is hard enough with meat involved, and I’m not inclined to make things more difficult by limiting my options. Plus I find all kinds of meat much more attractive than vegetables or fruit. Broccoli is like push ups. It sucks but it’s good for you according to the experts. Meat does not suck. Except liver. Liver sucks and my experience with that so called food can best be described as akin to eating a sponge full of blood. Also protein, iron, creatine, magnesium and omega 3 fatty acids make my list of things to ingest if I’m compelled to gormandize. It’s like getting exercise from a sport you enjoy as opposed to those fucking push ups I mentioned earlier.

And I’m compelled. It’s not optional. If you don’t eat then you die

I also have the luxury of not eating anything I don’t like. So, when an experiment goes wrong then we’ve wasted food, time, and money, because I’m not forcing myself to eat something that tastes like shit. I have a hard enough time eating food that I like, and I’m not inclined to turn the experience into gagging induced trauma.

That’s not going to help with the obligation for future nourishment requirements.

Another reason that I’ve developed a distaste for nutrition needs is that eating is predominantly a social event. The effect that food has on seemingly rational people is a horrifying experience for me to witness. One moment you’re talking about music or string theory and the next moment you’re looking at a Neanderthal guarding their plate and struggling to use utensils. It’s unnerving to see how quickly we regress to caveman as soon as food enters the equation. It’s like an unspoken competition as we watch other people load their plates and debate the option of killing them if they take too many chicken wings.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating either. If you’re doubting my assessment, then observe how quickly we demonstrate our tenuous civility in a buffet line. I have seen some ugly shit in buffet lines. If I blink a couple of times, I can envision a buffet as a tribe of troglodytes eating with their hands, snarling at the people next to them to keep their distance. Like kittens at a bowl of that wet shit cats seem to like. Maybe I’m too sensitive but there are a couple of other buffet behaviors that make me Owen Wilson wow.

Grazers.

Why in the fuck would you think it’s even mildly appropriate to eat directly from the serving trays? I don’t give a shit if you used your fork or not. Show some discipline for Christ sake, and save us the spectacle of a piece of chicken ball and some spittle falling from your mouth back into the vicinity of the rest of the chicken balls. I was at a Chinese restaurant once but was avoiding the buffet and ordering off the regular menu. This guy in the line actually lowered the buffet bar with a feat I’d never seen before and haven’t seen since. He had a Styrofoam cup of sweet and sour sauce on his tray and for some reason he picked it up and drank it. Then he refilled it and carried on like he was a normal human being. It was absolutely amazing.

Gluttony.

I’ve seen some spectacular engineering feats accomplished with a plate at a buffet. Everyone has their own strategy but there appears to be some commonality. For starters you need to disregard salad. You can come back later for that. There’s likely going to be some left. Then if potato’s or pasta are involved you try and build a wall on the extremity of your plate to contain everything else. Then you just start piling up the stuff you prefer until the center is filled. Then you look around for cheese sauce or gravy or syrup. Some sort of liquid to fill the gaps but not too much to breach the mashed potato bulwark. Ideally, you end up with a pyramid. Stable and functional.

Then you go to your table and congratulate yourself on a job well done, followed by throwing half of your prize away because you couldn’t manage to stuff anything more into your gullet. Still you reason, it’s better to throw it away than let someone else get it. I thought it would be a great idea to leave doggy bags at the tables at buffet’s. Then people could scrape off what they didn’t eat and take it home, leave it in the fridge for a week and then throw it away. But then I realized that to make this sensible that the doggy bags would have to be placed at the end of the buffet line. If you left them at the tables it’s only a matter of time until some genius takes it with them to the buffet and fills their bag and plate with prime rib and shrimp.

For later.

Now that I think about it, this friend of mine told me a story that confirms the above hypothesis. He had two relatively wealthy aunts. Each year they would support a charity by purchasing tickets for lobster fest. Lobster fest was just another name for high end piggery because once you had a ticket the prize was all you can eat.

Lobster.

So one fall these aunt’s convinced my friend to join them. On the drive to the event he was confused because both Aunts were talking about the correct attire. He understood the clothing choices because lobster and butter tend to be messy if you treat it like a hot dog eating race, but he was confused by their emphasis on the correct purse.

His confusion was resolved shortly thereafter when the latest tub of crustaceans were wheeled by and his Aunts loaded up with as many as their plates would hold. Then after tub guy moved away both Aunts glanced around furtively and then opened their purses and filled them with lobster tails.

Turns out they had specialty purses lined with plastic just for this event. And that’s fucking amazing to me. And to my friend. He said he tried to shame them but they gave absolutely zero shits. His story made me wonder how many other people were exiting with full purses or lobster tails in their pockets. Somehow I’m confident that his Aunts weren’t the only ticket holders to have discovered this lobster loophole.

What I also find kind of perplexing is how easily people conform to this behavior. But perplexed or not, I realize I’m in the minority, and that my reluctance probably isn’t the best survival strategy. Still, it’s fascinating to watch an immaculately dressed and bejeweled human disregard any pretense of comity as lobster juice and melted butter run off their chin onto their Rolex.

It’s like they made a conscious decision that, fuck it, I’m going in and I don’t give a shit if my shirt is silk. I can get another shirt but there’s only so many lobster tails.