Ruminating on Food

I was allergic to chocolate until I was twelve. I used to break out in a rash. It was probably a peanut allergy. I had the lame white chocolate Easter bunny every year, but I bit its ass off with gusto, laughing and showing my brothers the teeth marks where the butt used to be. I just took it for granted that I would just have to live without chocolate for the rest of my life. I was struck by how both adults and children reacted to this fact with horror and pity, as though some grave injustice had been committed or as though I had said that God didn't exist. But one day when I was twelve, I went to the drug store and bought a Three Musketeer's bar for fifty cents and took my chances in the name of science. The experiment was a success; I was cured. I had some catching up to do.

So why am I writing about this? Because in the last year I've had experiences of receiving care in both a non-profit hospital and a for-profit hospital. In the former, you get generic snacks; in the latter, name brands. I went for an infusion at the for-profit hospital and I got Oreos and Fig Newtons. I started to wonder what some good off-brand names would be, as inspired by Wacky Packs, the packs of stickers satirizing household products...Oreain'ts (also Ore-no's and Oreoids in some markets)...Fig Noughtons...Twonkies...Rung Dungs (sort of like Ring Dings, but weirdly shaped and kind of tough to chew)...Faux-Hos...Pastykakes...Woozy Q's...did I miss any? My mind goes down dark alleys like this all the time but I'm powerless to stop it. I also started to think about my evolving relationship with food.

We had a walk-in pantry when I was a kid. It had a louvered door. Dry and canned foods were kept in there, including old lime flavored gelatin nobody liked, saltines, oatmeal cookies, instant mash, salad dressing mixes, canned soup, fruit, veggies and Spaghetti-O's, you name it. And all name brands. It was like a showcase on The Price is Right, except the items had realistic price tags on them. The only vegetable matter was in two bins side by side, one with onions and one with potatoes. I was often sent in there to get packs of cigarettes for my parents. We kept the vacuum cleaner and the broom in there, too.

There were no generic food products. It was all name-brands in our house. Apparently that was important. She didn't buy soda because having four caffeinated boys would be madness. She was much more lenient about breakfast cereals and one-molecule-away-from-pantyhose snack cakes, though. I remember a line of the most sugary garbage cereals ever made on a shelf at eye-level. I was hardcore; I ate them dry, no milk, every day and had the cavities to prove it (Apple Jerks...WeariO's...Rice Krusties...Grope Nuts). I experienced sugar intoxication to the point where I reached higher sates of consciousness and could move things with my mind. Today. that pantry would need a hazard warning slapped on a lead lined steel safety door.

That safety door might not have survived the morning that a giant can of fruit cocktail celebrated the third anniversary of the passing of its expiration date by exploding while I was watching cartoons. I didn't know what the hell had happened. They tried to blame me as they usually did when something exploded, but they soon shut up when they saw that a glucose and alcohol bomb had sprayed a thick ectoplasmic slime over every neatly aligned shelf full of premium grocery products, most of which were thrown out, the shelves repapered, the walls repainted, the old cereal replaced by new cereal, the saltines, the potatoes and onions, the vacuum cleaner and the cigarettes and the instant mashed potatoes were seen on the shelves again. Only the lime gelatin from 1972 was finally thrown away for good. That pantry was a diorama of the expansion of the universe reset after the big bang.

My mother didn't like to cook and didn't keep it a secret, but we had decent food well prepared. Her lasagna was very good (whole milk ricotta cheese was the secret). My parents were not adventurous eaters. Lots of Shake 'n Bake, mostly meat, potato and veg. Packaged and processed foods. Nothing spicy. I ate frozen TV dinners when varying schedules mad it difficult to have family meals. I can still taste the Salisbury steak and apple cobbler served in an institutional aluminum foil cooking/serving tray. Cheese pizza on Fridays in Lent (I disliked fish) served on paper plates in shallow basket-like paper plate holders. Sometimes she just couldn't cope and sent us to McDonalds, my oldest brother at the wheel of the station wagon and Earth, Wind & Fire in the cassette player on a beautiful sunny day. Mom liked Champale (later 7-Up) and True Greens. She didn't like Chinese food.

My dad's superpower was macaroni salad. He also made meatballs. We had an indoor barbecue grill in our kitchen so we could cook out in all seasons, and Dad was in charge of the meat. He made scrambled eggs too, but he used milk and I prefer to cook them dry in butter. He loved red Delicious apples only so I never knew about the existence of other varieties of apples I would like better. He loved liver and onions, but the rest of us disliked it so he rarely ever got it after my parents started having kids. My dad was the only one I've ever known who didn't like pizza. I remember cans of Miller (later Fresca) and packs of filterless Pall Malls by his chair.

On weekends, I could have a can of soup, Spaghetti-O's or a couple of hot dogs for lunch. Somewhere in my childhood lurks the trauma of eating the hot dogs with cheese injected into them, the culinary equivalent of seventeen years of Freudian analysis. I remember a New Years Eve that fell on a Sunday, which meant I could stay up to midnight for the first time and would see Monty Python on public television and at least try to make it to midnight. Every year we had little frozen egg rolls and "pigs in a blanket" with tiny forks and  cocktail sauce and my brother Chris made popcorn. Happy 1979!

I didn't start eating generic food until I left home. I was running a band so I certainly didn't have any money. It's good that I didn't have a craving for great food because I found precious little of it. I learned that in the absence of milk, you can crack in an egg to the cheese powder mix in a $.25 box of macaroni and cheese and stir it in to the pot of macaroni at medium heat so the egg cooks. It was very passable. I cooked ramen noodle and added ground turkey and generic creamy Italian dressing. Sometimes it really hit the spot and I felt like a king. I would get together with friends and make large pots of pasta or soup. One of my roommates and I would always buy big sacks of potatoes. His superpower was gumbo.

Every Friday, the band I was in would go to a bar in the suburbs for free happy hour eats. The room was full of musicians lining up for pizza, hot wings and toasted ravioli. It kept us alive in the summer of 1993. I remember several pot luck affairs for starving musicians and made good friends and connections I wouldn't have made if we were all well off. All-you-can-eat places are soup kitchens with beer for area musicians.

As an adult, I learned that food could have more flavor from professionals who worked in kitchens. I would often be fed by whatever venue I was performing in because food is all you get for a night's work sometimes. That's how I first tasted Ethiopian food. I had a mystical experience eating a Jamaican jerk rueben on black bread with sweet potato fries after I came offstage on night. It really knocked me out. I developed a passion for hummus and all middle eastern dishes. I found that I liked asparagus. I appreciated food more. After all, it was at least partly responsible for keeping me alive up to that point.

My now passed-on, sort-of-father-in-law was an artist and knew a thing or two about starving to death. Until relatively recently, St. Louis was affordable and he praised the city as a great place for artists to hide out under the radar and be able to afford food and rent so they can do their work. He was right about that. He also told me that Hostess fruit pies were "the perfect food". He wasn't so right about that, but the eight-year-old me was on board with the idea, especially the apple pie.

I learned to eat better and stopped abusing my body. Like a lifelong scoundrel who resorts to prayer and reform late in life in the hope of deliverance, I too renounced my ways and stopped being a human garbage disposal in my forties in the hope that I might prolong my life past the point that I can afford to maintain myself, which is just as American as...well anyway, that's a good place to wrap it up.