Rev. Sept. 9, 2013

 

 

CONFESSIONS OF A PICKY EATER

 

 

I have a confession to make.  I, Sam Charchian, am a Picky Eater.

 

It’s true!  I love mashed potatoes.  I hate garlic mashed potatoes! Mashed potatoes are comfort food.  They are simple.  They taste good.  They are easy to digest.  Garlic mashed potatoes are cuisine.  They are fancy.  They taste garlicky.  They give people acid reflux.

 

I like comfort food.  My wife, Ruth, prefers cuisine.  So do many of our friends.  This makes dining together a challenge.

 

Being a picky eater is tough.  I feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of dining.  As a picky eater, “I get no respect!” not from Ruth, not from my gourmet friends, not even from many Toastmasters—Paul Ahern comes to mind—and certainly not from the chef at the DoubleTree.  I’m sure he cringes as I order the hamburger each week.

 

But I don’t care!  I am Sam !  I’m proud of being a meat and potatoes kind of guy.  I don’t need to feed my ego by becoming a condescending culinary snob. What, exactly, is the difference between comfort food—which I like—and cuisine?

To begin with, comfort food usually has honest names—names like:  Potatoes.  Meat loaf.  Hamburger.  Steak.  Ribs.  Pork chops..  Pizza.  Eggs.  Bacon.

 

Cuisine, on the other hand, usually has fancy foreign names to disguise what you are really eating—names like:

Sushi.  Calamari.  Escargot.  Quiche.

 

Restaurants do this for a reason.  Who in his right mind would order raw, decaying fish?  Call it sushi, and gourmet wannabes like Paul Chamberlain line up for it.  People who would gag at the thought of eating squid think nothing of eating calamari—which is Italian for squid.  And only the French could consider snails a delicacy—which they call escargot.

 

I dislike eating fish greatly.  In fact, I dislike all seafood.  The idea of sushi really makes me sick.

I can’t understand you people who like fish.  Recently at a dinner a friend said, “Boy, this is great fish.”  I asked him why the fish was particularly savory.  He said, “Because it doesn’t taste fishy.”

 

Did you ever hear anyone say, “I really like these pork chops because they don’t taste piggy” or “I really like this hamburger because it doesn’t taste cowy?”

 

Speaking of hamburgers, what do some of the great thinkers say about picky eaters?

Ray Kroc of McDonalds said,

“It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun.  Yet, Is it any more unusual to find grace in the texture and softly curved silhouette of a bun than to reflect lovingly on the arrangement of textures and colors in a butterfly’s wing?”

I find this statement profound.  My arrogant wife, thinks it’s juvenile!

 

Arrogant dinner party gourmets are usually vegetarians, who can’t have fried foods or bread, are on a salt free diet, can only drink bottled water and are allergic to eating utensils. Some want to see the FDA labels on everything they are eating.  And they call me the “Picky Eater”!

 

Speaking of vegetables, why is corn OUT, but asparagus IN?  What is wrong with comfort vegetables like corn, peas, and carrots?  Why do “gourmets” like YOU prefer asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, and eggplant?

 

(I know that to many of you, I am “a catsup stain on the great white napkin of life.”)

(Let’s get this straight.  Because I pass on your breaded moth, doesn’t mean there’s no place in my life for women or soap.)

I’ve had it up to my moribund taste buds with your culinary carping.  Like anti-smokers and marathon runners, it makes you feel superior, thinking you are explorers and adventurers as you sneer through your “spinach-quiche” stained teeth.)

 

When I was a teenager, I tried an olive.  I hated it.  Since then I’ve led an “oliveless” life, yet I have managed to secure an income, father children and avoid institutionalization. 

 

Not only do gourmets despise what I eat—they also scoff at where I eat.

Here is a typical conversation at home:

“Sam, darling, let’s go out to dinner Saturday night with the Chamberlain’s.”

“Uh, sure, dear—how about we go to Famous Dave’s?  They’ve got great ribs.”

 

“Ribs?”  How can you eat the same old stuff every day?  Jan has heard great things about a new Ethiopian restaurant that just opened—I think it’s called Meng-istu’s.  Why don’t we check it out?”  Sure! I thought, Paul will love that.  Heck, he was salivating when Jimmy James Dunn gave a summer speech about eating crickets.  Jim later confessed he once ate a worm-burger…… and it was great.

 

So of course, we end up going to some weird ethnic restaurant, where we have no idea what we are eating—which is probably fortunate!  For all I know, we could be eating animal brains, amphibian legs, brandied eel, or rabbit ears sautéed in anchovy juice.  What is wrong with ribs, anyway?

 

In a normal restaurant like Denny’s or Perkins, I’m as comfortable as Morris the finicky cat—I know what I want, and I can order almost instantly.  When we check out the latest Somali, Peruvian, or Slobbovian restaurant, we sit around for ½ hour trying to figure out which bizarre entrée to order.  Then, when we finally get our mystery meals, they usually taste like worms!

 

As a Picky Eater, my philosophy of dining is best summed up in a quotation by U.S. author, Herman Melville:

“The food of thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space. But the food of thy body is meat and potatoes; feed it then on meat and Potatoes; and so shall it merit a joyful resurrection.”

 

Woody Allen once said,

“Why does a man kill?  He kills for food.  And not only food, frequently there must be a beverage.”   It makes you think, doesn’t it?