The Cold Cut of Life
I know before I write this that I will receive any number of comments and criticism for what I am about to write. This is less because I plan to write something controversial or fundamentally bad, but more because I am playing into both a gender stereotype, and what many of you have always suspected is a personal flaw of mine. I mentioned in passing that the other day I went to the supermarket with Kim, and that it was unusual for me to do that, both in terms of accompanying Kim on an errand and simply doing something as pedestrian as going to the supermarket. I am sure I have mentioned that I have a very shitty relationship with food, including shopping for it. I like to say that I have no respect for food. And that is intended less as a comment, denigrating food and more as a comment about my own personal weakness when it comes to food. When I speak of weakness and respect in regard to food, what I mean is that I am both very casual and I’m generally unconcerned about what I eat, and yet, I can be very picky about what I eat. I’m not sure what to make of that inherent contradiction, but here are some examples. My restaurant selection criteria has at the top of the list, the restaurant that is closest, quality of food notwithstanding. Yet serve me salmon, guacamole, sliced tomatoes or fresh ground coffee and I will go hungry rather than trying to eat any of those. What I have no time for is fine cuisine, even though, when served very fresh and well-prepared food, I am often taken aback by how much better it tastes. I try to remember that the next time someone asks where we should eat or what we should eat, but I simply don’t seem to have the ability to consider that with the proper emphasis when the moment of truth comes, so instead, I put into my mouth whatever is at hand whether it is at an upscale eatery or the local Circle K gas station. Sad, but true and I understand that my body has borne the weight (pun intended) of this failing. I’ve tried behavior modification techniques to correct this and here I am at age 70 still being this way except with a plastic band around my stomach entrance to regulate myself as much as physically possible.
I don’t really need much therapy to get underneath this issue. I was raised very much on the fly, with all the best intentions from my mother, but she had her own priorities to consider and I actually think she chose rather well in advancing her education and then her career in a manner that made certain that we all had what we needed to then get ourselves educated well and launched on our own careers. Even though she was the ranking home economist in the world (literally, as the Head of the Home Economics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN), the time she had to either cook a proper meal for her growing son or even discipline him in the ways of his proper diet, were minimal. Educationally and intellectually, I was well groomed, but in terms of personal eating habits I was completely ferrell. By that, I mean that I was left to make my own decisions and develop my own eating habits none of which was for the best. They say that the wounds of youth are not easy to heal, but I assure you that the habits of youth are equally not easy to break.
I have often said that if I was forced to only eat what I myself cooked, I would most likely weigh 120 pounds. Such was my lack of enthusiasm for the fine art of cooking, and thank God for TV dinners when I was a kid and thank God for fast food and takeout when I was in my advancing youth. If you want to know what made my pallet the way it is, there’s your answer. Let me not bore you with the details of how I survived during 45 years of business, but suffice it to say that over that time I did not develop any cooking skills or any considerably improved eating habits. In the 18 years that Kim and I have been together, she’s tried very little to modify or moderate my diet since she was a girl who grew up with her own eating issues. She had no interest in trying to fix mine, and I don’t blame her. I would say that her current pattern is that I fend for myself for breakfast, and she cooks dinner most nights. Sometimes when she isn’t up for eating dinner herself, she will still cook my dinner. And generally, being a people pleaser, she cooks dinners that she knows I would like so it is less about what I should eat and more about what I would like to eat. Kim is a good cook, but I think she would agree that there is very little advantage to her in either experimenting on things that I might not like or in pushing things at me that she knows I don’t like. As for lunch, it’s very much catch as catch can, and she will usually offer to make me something if we are both hanging around in the kitchen at lunchtime, and if I am looking peckish (something I have perfected over the years). The joke about the wife who says that she married her husband for better for worse, but not for lunch, is only partially invoked in our household.
There is a running joke in our house that if I ever have to go to the grocery store (which has occasionally happened, especially when Kim is away), I come back with tales of wonder at all of the things that I have discovered are available at the grocery store, but for one reason or another, Kim doesn’t regularly purchase for me. That may be because she’s trying to protect me from myself, in the most unobtrusive way she can, or it might be simply that those items hold more interest to me than they do to her. Whichever is the case, when I do go to the store I bring things home that are not usually found in our cupboard. That is exactly what happened when I went to the supermarket with Kim the other day. One of the things I get a strange hankering for once in a while is bologna. That’s right, the Oscar Mayer variety. Did I mention that I spent some formative years of my youth in Wisconsin? If you grew up in Wisconsin, you grew up knowing Oscar Mayer bologna very well, and there is therefore something very appealing about it to me. I wanted a fried bologna sandwich as the ultimate comfort food. Pretty basic, but pretty satisfying to a Midwestern palette.
The other day after we got home from the supermarket, I took my newly acquired bologna and on an inexplicable urge, I pulled out a small frying pan and turned on the front burner (was that the first time I actually fired up the cooktop?). I may not have learned much about cooking through my life, but I have learned that bologna has enough fat in it that no butter or oil is needed to fry that stuff up and make it a lot more interesting to put on a King’s Hawaiian potato bun. Kim peeked around the corner from the dining room to see what I was up to and quickly retreated back to her music work once she realized what I was doing. I’m sure she figured that it was best not to call attention to my strange actions. She did ask me afterwards if I enjoyed my lunch and I said I had. Then the next day during my Stretch-U session, I listened to a weight-lifter kinesiologist talk to his stretch partner about how much he liked doing his own meal prep, frying up a sort of hash of beef or chicken with eggs, chopped potatoes and vegetables. That must have inspired me to come home and again fix my own lunch by cutting up assorted cold cuts, breaking three eggs, ripping up some cheese and tossing it all into that same small frying pan, this time with some butter for keeping the eggs off the grille. This time Kim really took notice and even tasted my scramble lunch…a few times.
I don’t think this is necessarily a trend, but this cold cut of life is at least a small breakthrough for me. Turns out I can shop for myself and sort of cook for myself, at least at a minimal standard, one notch above making a TV dinner.