TravelLunacy.Eat

When the Captain and I travel, it’s more like a study of modern art than a road trip. Nothing on the map looks like it does in real life, and I’m so busy staring at the lady in the Hummer painting an extra eye on her face every time she hits a bump, I don’t notice that the route I’ve chosen to follow ends in an intricate sculpture composed of exit ramps, clover leafs, and left turns that lead directly down the Highway to How Did We Get Here?

Cap doesn’t understand the trouble I have with maps. To him the whole thing is as plain as the two noses on your face.

Another difference in our traveling styles involves pit stops. He doesn’t make them. I brake for anything with a handle, just in case. I once wheeled into a car repair shop because their sign said, “Flush for winter.” I thought I wouldn’t get another chance until July.

Floating past a slow moving Buick like Picasso’s paintbrush, he sighed contentedly and pondered aloud, “Which exit do we take?”

Flipping the map over in an effort to locate the northern hemisphere, I figure I can answer this question two ways: multiple choice or essay. Either way, I’m pretty sure I can see the end of the marriage superhighway looming in the distance.

It’s times like this I should whip a U-turn in my thought processes. But when my mouth goes into overdrive, somehow my brain always seems to yield to the traffic flow. My kids say it’s been parked in a tow away zone for years.

“Does it matter?”

He clutched the steering wheel until the bones of his knuckles broke through the skin. He looked like Wolverine.

“Not if we don’t care whether we end up at David’s house where we can have supper, or the Emerald City where we can choose between brains, courage, or little red shoes.”

Personally, I’ve always been partial to red shoes, but as usual eating wins out. Maybe my priorities are out of order, but given the choice, I’ll sing along with the Burger King instead of humming “If I only had a brain” any time.

“I always take that road that goes past the Japanese steakhouse that’s been there since we were dating, and then I go up and turn at the intersection that goes past the milk shake place. You know you’re on the right road when you pass the hot doughnut sign.”

Just thinking of Bavarian Cream gives me happy trails.

Cap travels using road signs. I go by major food group. I can’t read a map, but if I can find a route that covers everything from gooey to gourmet, I can find my way by smell.

On the other hand, he can track anything. If we’d ever had a child together it would be an Indian scout named Paula Deen.

He sighed. I’ve noticed that the longer we’re married, the more he sighs. In a couple more years it’s going to be like living in a wind tunnel.

“According to the map, where do we turn?”

“According to the map, we’re already two creases and a wrinkle past his house.”

“Let me see.”

“No. The last time I gave you the map while you were driving, it took us two hours to go half an inch.”

“That half an inch was a 150 mile path through a rock slide in the mountains.”

“So it’s my fault you didn’t get four wheel drive?”

“Those rocks were bigger than your. . .never mind. Just tell me when we pass the Jamestown exit.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because we passed the Jamestown exit when you were giving me the geology lecture.”

Before he could finish up his lesson plan a transfer truck packed from tail lights to tooter with gourmet ice cream blew past us headed toward the next exit.

Without a second thought, the Captain of my Dessert Cart winked at me and whipped in behind him.

We might not agree on the best way to get there, but sometimes the best part of the trip isn’t the easy way.

It’s the Rocky Road.

Sushi Night

In an attempt at a successful catch and release program, the Captain and I went out for sushi last night. I don’t mind telling you that the release came quite soon after the catch and was, by itself, a splendid success.

We’d been whiling away the afternoon watching the local canines compete for obedience honors at the city dog show. It’s amazing what a human will do with a liver treat to coerce three pounds of fluff and drool to run after a glove they’d give mad chase for at home getting ready for an evening out.

Such a display of sterling cooperation between man and beastie is hungry work, so we stopped afterwards at the nearest restaurant, whose façade smacked of Japanese food of the non-slimy kind.

The menu came—I am not kidding—in a three ring binder. I didn’t know whether to order dinner or study for a test on rice. I made notes of several key items on the palm of my hand in soy sauce in case I was quizzed on condiments later in the evening.

I’d never come across any of the notebooks’s offerings at church potlucks, but I found an annotated item at the bottom of page three that mentioned ingredients I had heard of previously. I selected the annotated chicken teriyaki on the theory that at least chickens draw heat from global warming. All of the rest of the selections looked to be bottom dwellers.

The Captain of my heart and Master of the bill gestured boldly at an item that began with the letter N. N apparently stands for “Nothing I Would Let the Children Eat.” Or perhaps, “Never mind, just bring the check.”

In a land where we deep fry dessert items to make sure the shortbread is not capable of brandishing a butcher knife behind our back, a plate full of uncooked sea creatures the color of sunburn on parts that should never see daylight can be a bit unsettling. Each piece perched on a small hill of rice, resembling an anthill when the worker types are trying to fit a juicy earthworm down the chimney. One morsel looked alarmingly like a flesh wound.

Finding no weaponry but a damp napkin and a pair of wooden stakes, the Captain gave a fairly convincing impression of a man about to eat dinner. If I had the savoir faire he has, I could eat in a dozen languages.

“Are you going to eat that?”

“No, I’m going to hold it over the candle until it gives me its name, rank, and expected date of demise.”

I watched in shock and awe as he dipped a shrimp fillet in a lovely green dip known to sushi professionals as “Wasabi”.

A secret among sushi professionals is that “Wasabi” is a Japanese word meaning “the devil is dancing the hotfoot rumba in your underpants.”

“I guess it’s hot.”

“What makes you think so?”

You drained the wishing well in the lobby.

“You’re exaggerating,” he retorted, spitting out a quarter.

“If you sneeze, we’ll have enough for the tip.”

While the Captain fished for minnows, I consumed a lovely helping of teriyaki chicken. Teriyaki is a Japanese word that means “not eating bait.”

The waiter appeared at the table. “Would you care for dessert?”

“I guess not,” I said, surreptitiously checking my palm for data. “I passed the test. I'm afraid to try for extra credit.”

Happy Valentine's Day, Captain!

Dating for Baby Boomers is a lot different than dating for teenagers. Teenagers may say they're hanging out, but Baby Boomers really do. I should know—these days I spend a major portion of my life trying to cover it all up. To me, a belly shirt is something that rides up in the front when I pull the shirttail down in the back and is more an item I would wear to ward off would-be attackers than out to a seven-screen cinema on Saturday night.

When teenagers say they’re going to see a movie, they mean an action flick where the main action is blood loss. Baby boomers experience blood loss when we stand up too fast and all of our platelets stage an intervention around our ankles. Teenagers go to a Counting Crows concert and play air guitar. Baby Boomers count crows feet and go to see the Eagles farewell tour. (Unless we can find it on HBO. Then we watch it from our recliner, wake up at the end of the show and say, “Now THAT’S music,” as we gather our pillows and head up the stairs to bed.)

The younger generation thinks midnight is the new sunset. By the time the clock on the mantle strikes 12 at my house, I’ve been in bed long enough to have pillowcase creases on my cheeks. I realized the difference in mindset one wild weekend when The Captain of My Love Boat and I planned an adult extravaganza to keep the current flowing to the old spark plugs. Both of our teenaged sons were gone for the weekend, so with a hot date in mind and free access to the car, we headed out with high hopes and no curfew. Friday night we went to Wal-Mart and bought a box of those nose strips you put on at bedtime so you don’t sound like an asthmatic mountain goat.

We were going to go out to eat, but we were both so tired from the Wal-Mart excursion that we went home, had a peanut butter sandwich and went to bed, where we slept soundly until 2 a.m. when we passed each other in the darkened hallway during bathroom breaks. Thus rested, we were able to venture out to the mall Saturday night where we shared a combo meal at the food court, got a smoothie for dessert and walked to the electronics store to see if the batteries were on sale. Then we went home and went to bed. I woke Bill up about an hour later trying to put one of those nose strips on him without turning on the light. My aim must have been a little off because when I got through, he wasn’t able to close his eyes for the rest of the night.

So let the teenagers have action-packed movie dates at the mall. As for the two of us, we’ll always have WalMart. And a relationship where we stick together like a no-snore nose strip.

Squashed

My plan for the New Year was to introduce a wholesome influence into the family’s diet, but it’s impossible to provide healthy meals when one child thinks eating tofu is a Fear Factor challenge and another child only eats food that is covered in pizza sauce or stays crunchy even in milk. They rejected whole wheat bread like it was liver loaf, and the time I bought skim milk at the grocery store, I got voted off the kitchen island. Cooking healthy meals for the family shouldn’t be like an episode from Survivor: Spinach Casserole.

My kids are convinced that broiled chicken is a bird that stayed in the farmyard without SPF 30 and died from exposure. Their idea of fine dining is to supersize their fries. I can’t imagine where they got this attitude. Sure, I believe the road to down below is paved with exercise videos and sugar substitute, but that’s just geographical fact. I haven’t eaten a dessert in six months that wasn’t presorted into 100 calories packages.

“What’s for supper?” Son One strolled into the kitchen licking the icing off a cinnamon bun and tearing open the paper on a candy bar so sticky it looked like it was made of library paste. This kid’s idea of healthy eating is frosting a salad with honey-mustard dressing.

“I thought we’d combine two of your favorite food groups for something new.”

“We’re having Italian and Mexican? Cool!”

“Those aren’t food groups. They’re nationalities. We’re going to have a healthy meal.”

“Did somebody give you a bushel of cast off zucchini again?” Zucchini is the stray cat of the vegetable world. It always shows up on my doorstep at dinnertime.

“You’re so suspicious,” I said, nonchalantly raking chopped zucchini into the dog’s bowl. “I thought I’d make that baked chicken they had at church.”

“You mean Death Chicken? Count me out.” He peered into the freezer and extracted a pizza that had been in limbo so long the pepperoni was petrified and the cheese came in crystals instead of shreds.

“It’s not really death chicken. We just call it that because it’s so easy to make that a lot of times we’ll take it to someone who’s had a death in the family.”

“Yeah. Ever wonder what they died from?”

“Probably from eating zombie food that was in the freezer so long all the vitamins turned to dust.” I managed to sneak a few small zucchini out of the bag under cover of the answering snort.

He peeled off the wrapper and shoveled a layer of ice from the crust. My kids think perma frost is a basic building block of the food pyramid. “What do I set the oven on for undead?”

“Very funny. It wouldn’t hurt you to try something that’s good for you.” Just then the dog wandered through the kitchen to check his dish for food molecules left over from breakfast. He picked up a zucchini slice, chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then looked at me reproachfully and spit it out on the floor.

“See, even Bo hates vegetables.” Son One plopped the pizza down on the oven rack. It sounded like he’d launched a hubcap at the dumpster.

I put my hands on my hips. It was time for decisive action. “From now on we’re watching what we eat.”

“You’ll need to spring for something with a wide angle lens,” Son One mumbled, scraping up a shred of zombie cheese off the counter with a fingernail.

“I’ll start by cleaning out the refrigerator. We’re going to throw away everything that’s bad for us.” I held up a pack of withered bologna. To me, lunch meat is the gastronomic equivalent of an Elvis painting on velvet. Everyone thinks it will gain in value the longer they save it and their children end up using it as a gag gift at a holiday party and complaining about their inheritance.

Next came a cheese product that had so many additives it no longer qualified for any of the food groups. When I finished cleaning out the refrigerator, all that was left was a mushy, brown stalk of celery left over from Thanksgiving and a frozen diet dinner left over from the healthy eating binge I launched after the baby was born.

Just then the baby trotted through the kitchen jingling his car keys, and clutching a breakfast pastry made of simulated cookie dough and synthetic chocolate frosting. Eighteen years after his first bowl of sugar frosted cocoa bombs, artificial flavoring is still his favorite food group.

“I’m late for class. What’s for supper tonight?”

I smiled sweetly and chopped the remaining squash into miniscule green bits.

“Not zucchini.”

“Good. Last time I slipped mine to the dog. He had indigestion for a week.”

So I’ll cover it with fat free cheese. They’ll never recognize it.

True Colors

My Mom never had The Talk with me. I had to find out by trial and error and I almost lost my socks. All in all, the first time I tried it, the results weren’t pretty.

I don’t know if it was the toddler size sweater I wore fresh from the dryer, or the “Just My Size” underwear clinging statically to my back as I strolled down the hall, but as people turned to stare and gawk, I felt like everybody knew that I’d tried it for the first time.

Dirty laundry. It’s a tough lesson to have to learn on your own.

A true friend would have told me about fabric softener. A few tips on Use and Care Instructions as a second language wouldn’t hurt either.

These days I’ve been doing laundry long enough to know how to handle my delicates, but I still have questions.

Exactly how do you wash a shirt that’s both red and white? If it says, “Wash in like colors” do you put it in with the reds or the whites? I’ve tried it both ways. Luckily pink is my favorite color, but now my husband won’t get undressed at the gym.

Deep down I understand why Mom never talked to me about natural fibers and the danger of shrinkage. But why didn’t she tell me that too much bleach would rot out the seat of your underwear like month-after-Christmas fruit? Was she afraid to tell me about laundry? Afraid that hot for whites would be too much for my tender psyche?

Not on your stain stick.

She didn’t raise four kids without honing her survival skills. The odds were good with four kids running around, that if she brought out the laundry products, somebody would be likely to try to remove the spots from the cat.

So she kept her pre-soak hidden on a high shelf and her spray starch tucked away behind the family Bible and never worried that we’d find it.

I shudder to think what would have happened to the cat if we’d found that starch.

Also, the old woman was shrewd. Except for choosing in favor of dessert and against doing dishes, I was never a decisive child. She knew that if it came to sorting cotton blends from washable wool, I’d just give up and stay home and she’d be stuck when me forever.

Why not let dirty clothes be a little secret lurking just around the coin-operated laundry?

And drycleaning just a mess that you clean up without a mop.

Smart woman.

Swine Dining

“Let’s hit the feed trough.”
Recently I ventured out on a shopping expedition with Laudy and Quirky, my dear sisters whose lives are devoted to my best interests. In the name of fellowship, and because at least one of us exhibits the beginnings of unladylike behavior when hungry, I suggested we stop on the way for a bite at one of the all-you-can eat buffet restaurants that have spread across the country like heat rash on a baby’s behind.
“I guess we’d better,” Quirky rolled her eyes at Laudy. “Remember last time we waited too long for lunch and she called the saleslady that ugly name.”
“Yeah,” Laudy giggled. “Procreating Peanut Head.”
“I meant procrastinating,” I answered huffily. “She took forever at that cash register. You’d think there were cheese soufflés under those keys.”
“That’s because you made her check every price by hand when she accidentally charged you the extra dime for that chipped dessert plate. I’d make a mistake too, if I had you looming over my cash register like a buzzard on a dead possum.”
“Are you comparing me to an unsightly scavenger whose main goal in life is to seek out helpless prey?”
“If the beak fits. . .”
“Let’s go eat at the buffet.”
Calming words for troubled charge cards.
We whipped an emergency buffet turn, and in barely the time it takes to say mashed potatoes and gravy we were headed to our table lugging a tray covered with enough plates and bowls to serve everyone at the Kennedy family reunion.
An hour and a half later, I laid down my dessert fork, which had also served handily as my salad and dinner fork, and glanced around the table. Quirky was licking the cellophane from her coconut pie and Laudy was napping face down in her salad plate. I leaned back in my chair, caressing my stomach like it was a freshly baked creampuff. Luckily I had on trousers with an elastic waistband and did not have to resort to unorthodox clothing alterations.
“I’m glad you wore those pants.” Quirky observed. “Last time when you tried to unfasten your top button, it shot across the table, popped me in the eye and dropped into my iced tea. “I almost swallowed it and the busboy had to perform the Heimlich maneuver to get it out of my throat.” She rolled her eyes, an unbecoming character trait designed to draw attention to herself.
"You're a fine one to talk." I shot back. "Remember when you and that lady with the cane both went after the last yeast roll?" When I tried to break up the fight, you poked me with your salad fork and she whacked me with her walking stick."
“Yeah,” Quirky smiled fondly. “That was a good one. Did you see that lady in green?”
“Sure did. I used to date a man with a mustache like that.”
“Well she tried to bump me at the roast beef. I gave her a look and turned my back.”
“I’m sure you won that battle. Nobody can beat your backside."
We sat quietly for a moment, digesting our lunch and picking food from our teeth.
I belched delicately. “Wanna go to the mall?”
Quirky snorted. “I don’t even want to walk to the car.”
Laudy’s head rolled to the side as a snore echoed across the table, rattling coffee cups against their saucers. Her cheek was freckled with poppy seed dressing and a radish was stuck in her ear.
"I hate to wake her up," Quirky said wistfully, casting a longing glance toward the doughnuts.
Just as I was about to reply with an invitation for a short stroll to the dessert bar, a large woman waddled past us clutching a loaded plate in each hand. Thousand Island dressing cascaded down the side of a mountain of greenery and dropped in large dollops down the side of her housedress and puddled into her house slippers as she walked.
“You are what you eat,” Quirky observed, licking her finger to pick up the last of the coconut on her plate.
“You know, some people should take better care of themselves,” I agreed, brushing cookie crumbs off my chest.”
We watched the woman as she made the tedious journey back to her seat. She lumbered to a stop at a table in the corner where sat a man whose body was the size and texture of a piece of uncooked spaghetti. Placing the overflowing dishes carefully in front of him, she dropped with a thud opposite him where sat a delicate dish of fresh fruit.
Quirky and I exchanged glances. “Care for dessert?” I asked.
“Your plate or mine?”