Lunch time: Post a picture or 'smack your granny'?

I’m trying my best not to write about politics and viruses. One is painful and the other is tiresome. I have been fascinated by politics most of my life, but if I am feeling fatigued, my guess is that I have lost a few of you folks long ago. I have already written articles about my dog and my cars, which is largely the sum total of my earthly existence, so that leaves one obvious topic of discussion: food.

I have always had a fetish for Asian food, so naturally, I was delighted when Gary’s grocery put in a maki bar. Good call. Long overdue. I am and will continue to be a customer.

When I was a city dweller, I had access to Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, and the many varieties of Chinese foods. As much as I appreciate living in McCook, I miss the variety of foods that were available to me in the city.

The one that I miss most is Japanese fast food. I used to frequent a tempura joint in a bad neighborhood that was fantastic. They weren’t generous with the proteins. A fast-food tempura bowl would only include a couple of prawns, but there would always be plenty of rice, plenty of veggies, a fantastically sweet, gingery sauce, and of course, a big bottle of Sriracha on every table.

In McCook, we have a generous number of Latin-American restaurants, which is nice. It’s also nice to have a choice between them. We have one on the east end of town that builds a killer breakfast. One on the south end of Norris has a great menu and great presentation and is my choice for a sit-down dinner. The one further up Norris is less formal, but they lay down a good meal and can get you in and out quickly for lunch. They all serve their purposes.

We also have a fast-food place that’s run by a good guy who sits on our city council. I don’t go there a lot, but it’s a guilty pleasure. I usually pick it up, drive down to Barnett Park and knock down a couple of thousand calories. Then I go home and sleep like an 1,800 pound Walrus on the Discovery Channel.

One of the odd offshoots of the social media culture is that we take photos of our food. This should be very interesting for our great-grandchildren when we pull out the family photo album and tell them that “Back in 2021, this is what I had for lunch.”

Reviewing some of these photos, it becomes clear that not all of us take note of the presentation. I am a firm believer that we eat with our eyes as well as our noses and mouths. I have a few friends on social media who haven’t gotten the memo. A lady I know recently posted a photo of a brown, viscous, lumpy sludge that looked like something that would dribble down the shirt of a homeless person in chronic pancreatic distress. She was quite proud of it. Remarkably, she received a great deal of approval from her peers. Amazing.

I had a thorough religious education as a youth, and if it were not for the casserole, I might have become more involved in church life. I’m not one of those people who are afraid of food touching; quite to the contrary, but I like to know what I’m looking at. Casseroles violate that rule, and too frequently, lack texture.

Casseroles, however, have now been upstaged by the crockpot. I appreciate the crockpot for soups, stews, chili, etc. They are a godsend to busy parents who are on the run between school pickups and evening extra-curriculars. The problem with crock pots is that they have been pushed beyond their limits of capability.

Meatloaf is dodgy enough to begin with. It’s home-made mystery meat. But in a crockpot? Seriously? That just traps in the grease. Another friend of mine recently baked bread in a crockpot. That violates the laws of nature, and when Dante described the circles of hell, he apparently overlooked crockpot lasagna.

What fascinates me the most about food is how recipients describe the experience. A wine connoisseur will describe a wine as being “oaky with spicy notes like cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon with a backdrop of burnt marshmallows.” When we eat food, we say that it’s “good.” A waiter suggests a tomato consommé with smoked ricotta tortellini and sautéed asparagus, but bright, educated people who can recite Mickey Mantle’s batting average from 1955 will say that a meal is “good.”

The key here is not the extended vocabulary, but the intonation. “It’s Guuuuud” seems to convey compliments to the chef. Of course, I have some southern roots where good food conjures up images of domestic violence. I grew up hearing about meals so good that they would make you “smack your granny.”

Of course, they were not. They were brown, lumpy, and viscous and not worthy of a photo on social media.