I have always been a little finicky about food. I have all kinds of rules about different foods and when they can or can’t be eaten.
For example, I absolutely, positively can’t stand food sweat. Food sweat is basically the little droplets of condensation which form on containers when microwaving food. As a general rule, I believe that any food which sweats like Brittany Spears on the dance floor should never be eaten (Food Rule #1).
And whenever my wife cooks a turkey, my kids always come up with lots of appetite-killing questions, like:
“Where did the turkey’s head go, Mom? Don’t turkeys have heads?”
“Why isn’t the turkey talking? What’s his name? Is that the same turkey we saw on TV last week?”
“Make sure to save the skin for me. I only eat the turkey’s skin. Do turkeys get warts just like human beings?”
Now, questions like that make me never want to eat another turkey for as long as I live. They have the ability to entirely ruin a Thanksgiving Day Feast. So Food Rule #2 is a very simple rule that my children can understand: “Whatever you do, don’t ask me any questions about the turkey. And no, I don’t know where it was born or who its mommy is.”
Which brings me to Food Rule #3.
Because I have an hour and a half commute home each night, I don’t usually get to eat dinner until after reading stories to the kids, saying prayers and tucking them in.
By the time the kids are in bed (usually around 7:30), the dog is starting to look like an awfully tasty meal and I wouldn’t be opposed to eating a profusely sweating dancing turkey at that point while at the same time talking about the peculiarities of turkey anatomy, which are clearly in violation of Food Rules #1 and #2.
So you can only imagine my anticipation the other night as I sat down to a meal of orange chicken with rice prepared by my wife, who has this amazing ability to cook a five course meal in less than five minutes using nothing but a microwave oven. She has single handedly exalted the art of microwave cooking to an art form. My only concern with all of this is that if some day a scientist discovers that the practice of “nuking” food makes people glow in the dark and grow five heads, then my nine hundred heads would most certainly shine with the brightest of them.
So there I was, eagerly digging into a meal that even Emeril Lagasse would be proud of, when my eight year old daughter MaryKate, who had gotten her ears pierced several weeks back, came down the stairs with some fateful news to share.
“Mom,” she said. “There is green stuff oozing out of my ear.”
Now that statement certainly slowed the pace at which I shoveled the steaming orange chicken into my gullet, but given the level of starvation on my end it wasn’t enough to stop the food parade.
But then, for some inexplicable reason, my wife decided to do her best Howard Cosell impression as she described in minute detail each of the steps involved in cleaning my daughter’s ear lobe.
“Wow, there sure is a lot of pus in there! How much pus can a single ear hold? Where is all this pus coming from?”
OK, that slowed me down a little more.
“I never knew pus could be so many different colors. Honey, would you look at this? How could it be green and grayish and kind of maroon like that?”
Now I was crawling to a halt, having to think twice before going back for another bite. This was a contest of mind over ear pus and in this case the multicolored ear pus was clearly getting the better of me.
“Wow, it’s almost like her ear lobe is one big giant zit. I wonder what will happen if I squeeze it?”
That did it. I gave up. My hunger had suddenly evaporated, a casualty of Food Rule #3:
“Never talk about Ear Pus while Daddy is trying to eat dinner.”
Seems so simple on the face of it, so much like common sense, and yet some people just don’t seem to get it. I guess one day I will have to publish a book of my food rules for all to follow, most especially my entire family who seem to take great delight in spoiling my appetite on a daily basis.
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