Are You Really Going To Eat That?

Ohhhh Yeah! There's some good eatin' goin' on that you just don't understand! It's true in the mind of the masticator and certainly not in the eye of the beholder. I mean, how can you eat that?

I must admit. I do have a few food things I have concocted over the past few decades that might seem a bit strange to those lacking my particularly honed and well-practiced taste buds (and these buds ain't for you, man). It isn't just me. I know of several delights of others that you couldn't get me to touch. However, over the years I have had my mind changed about a few food items others find delectable.

Let's take that Southern staple, grits. You may scoff but I always thought grits could replace drywall cement and be used to repair doorknob holes in drywall after that little springy thing broke when you flung the closet door open in the hallway. In the raw, it has the consistency of half ground corn kernels after suffering a power failure at the flour mill. I hated farina when I was a kid and grits was a chunkier version. So many friends kept extolling the virtues of grits and gravy or grits and butter with molasses or shrimp and grits or grits with butter and melted cheese. That did it. That was the one. There were grits in the cupboard. I didn't put them there. But they were there and my curiosity along with being out of eggs led me to boil up a couple of servings. It looked awful so I added light butter and melted two slices of cheese as I stirred. The grits turned a buttery orange color and it was love at first bite. I ate both servings. The floodgates opened. A fan was "growed" as was my waistline.

There are the strange ways folks deal with peanut butter and bananas. I do like a peanut butter banana sandwich on white bread. I have been known to add a little dash of sweet to go along or a bit of light butter to make the p-butter smoother but I was privvy to a blasphemous concoction that left me speechless.
P-butter, banana, with mayonnaise and sugar on white bread. What...mayo and sugar? That flies in the face of PNBBWB tradition! It was hard enough watching the crime being committed, then seeing the consumption of the abomination rendered me speechless. It was the end of a classic. To be fair I have been known to enjoy a p-butter with American cheese on white and in my youth, I discovered that p-butter, cheese and Genoa salami on a cracker were quite tasty. Don't judge me. I broke no laws. Sheesh. It's only peanut butter.

I had a friend in grade school named Clifford. Wait. Maybe I ought to start at the beginning and come back to Cliff later.

My Mom always took the time to pack our lunches for school. We had a sandwich, a piece of fruit and every once in a while a cookie or something sweet (milk was bought in the cafeteria). You gotta love that, right. Thank you, Ma. The only thing is...the sandwich. It was always the same sandwich. White bread with a slice of bologna (or baloney), a slice of American cheese and mayo. Every day for five days a week the same thing. (She says she used to send PBJ's too but I can't remember eating those...it would have been such an event I don't believe I would have forgotten.) It got to the point that I was afraid of opening my brown paper bag just knowing that nitrite filled Oscar Mayer mystery meat was lying there waiting for me.
One day one of my classmates traded lunches with another kid and both were happily enjoying the others brown bag special. It was amazing. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it. At that moment I made up my mind to try and do the same.
Now enters my friend Clifford who sits at my table and has his brown bag in front of him. He doesn't appear to be in any great hurry to pop it open and rummage for any goodies. I boldly ask if he would like to trade sandwiches and he said he better not and he was sure I wouldn't like what his mother made for him at least once a week on that day. Unconvinced, I told him it couldn't be that bad and asked what he had. Cliff explained his mother was German and how once a week she made him a sandwich on Deutsche black bread of ham gelatin and brown mustard. Uhhh...at that point bologna sounded pretty darned good. We ate our own lunches in silence each feeling the other's pain. Cliff will probably live to be 100.

My wife and my youngest eat seaweed paper. Yup. Dried seaweed. Now I have tried it and it tastes just like low tide in the swamp smells. On the other side of the globe, it's probably some type of staple, but it reminds me of a fish tank needing a good cleaning. Speaking of the fish tank, lots of folks love to eat sushi and sashimi (myself included), however just as many find ingesting raw fish taboo.

To each his own I say. If you want to eat pickles and ice cream go for it. Just be sure to stop at a pharmacy for a pregnancy kit next chance you get. There is no accounting for someone's taste (to paraphrase a phrase) so why try? My mother almost divorced my father when first married for putting catsup (or ketchup if you swing that way) on his eggs. I never thought of that. It's kind of like that grape jelly on a sausage biscuit thing. What's with that anyway?
With all the craziness going on in the world today celebrate your uniqueness! Experiment! Enjoy life! Be Free! Smear your pop tarts with pickle relish. Have it your way!

Just no ham gelatin, ok? I just don't think I could handle it. Sorry, Cliff. I do wish you well.