Tag: food

Monday – Funday

The best funny New Year's memes to share on social media

Why is it that when I’m sick, all that I want to do is to eat, in order to feel better? It’s like if I can just find the right breakfast combination of leftover chicken salad, crackers, a banana and a couple of Ghirardelli peppermint snowmen, and wash it down with a shot of Dayquil, I will be instantly done with my lingering cough from COVID. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll stick my head in the ‘fridge and I’ll try a new combination of wonder foods.

I wish that I were one of those people who loses my appetite when I am sick, but that is rarely the case. Unless I have a stomach bug, my body tends to scream, “Feed me! Feed me NOW! Food is the only thing that will make us feel better.” And what’s worse, it’s not like I have the mojo to walk off the extra calories. Sigh.

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Time for a Lettuce Cleanse

This past weekend I got a reminder of how much I love certain gastro-perfections that I had retired due to over-gorging in the past. On our Saturday night date night, my husband and I stopped at a frozen yogurt spot for dessert. I covered my dollop of yogurt with the equivalence of probably about three Reese’s peanut butter cups and a bag of almonds. The overall concoction was divine. We hadn’t been out for fro-yo all summer and I had forgotten what I was missing. I’m sure I’ll be headed back there . . . . later this afternoon.

Yesterday, we drove my daughter to a summer tennis camp several hours away, and she brought along microwave popcorn. I think I retired microwave popcorn after spending hours scouring my microwave and burning a hole in my stomach with Aleve, afterwards. I was trying to get rid of the soreness in my muscles that happened as I tried to remove the burnt popcorn smell from the permanent built-in fixture that our microwave is, in our kitchen. However, all it took was just one handful of the perfectly salted fluffy delight, for me to realize that microwave popcorn is going right back on to our snack menu. Immediately. Stat.

At lunch yesterday, I ordered boom-boom sweet chili shrimp. I used to get that concoction about bi-weekly from a local restaurant, for lunch. I ate so much of it, that eventually just a waft of its smell, would make me physically sick. I haven’t had boom-boom shrimp in years. After yesterday’s lunch, I think I will be getting back to my bi-weekly schedule. I had forgotten what a food-gasm, boom-boom shrimp is for me.

Am I the only one who gorges on food that I love until I hate it? I probably have eaten enough Chicken Parmesan for three lifetimes and I rarely give it a time-out. But every once in a while, I do put it on a menu choice hiatus. I believe in the statement “all things in moderation”, but in practice, with foods that I love, moderation gets thrown out the window, until gluttony sets in, and I take a lettuce cleanse. I eat so much of something that I love, that I swear I’ll never eat it again, but then I have a weekend, like this past weekend, full of delicious reminders and the cycle starts all over again.

“There is no sincerer love than the love of food.” -George Bernard Shaw

“The secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.” -Mark Twain

“My weaknesses have always been food and men — in that order.” – Dolly Parton


“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.” -Julia Child

Bread Pudding and Curly Fries

My daughter asked us to explain what “bread pudding” was the other day. In explaining it to her (I don’t serve it typically, because frankly, I don’t like it), I started to think about the origins of food and how there are certain dishes that have been around forever, but in reality, some cook, somewhere, had to make to the first version of it.

When I looked up the origin of bread pudding, it turns out that it started in the 11th or 12th century, as a frugal cook’s way to not let stale bread go to waste. It was called “poor man’s pudding” in England for centuries. I grew up in Pittsburgh, where pierogies were a popular dish. The “poor man’s pudding” reminded me of a friend who used to slap mashed potatoes in-between lasagna noodles and exclaim, “There! “Poor Man’s Pierogies!”

When I was in high school, my friend’s parents owned a restaurant and sometimes they would let us take their tickets for the local “food show.” I never turned those tickets down! It was at one of those food conventions that I experienced “curly fries” for the first time. After eating my sample, I knew that they would be a hit with me and with everyone else, for the rest of my years!

Food is such a vital part of a community’s identity. When you go to certain parts of the country you just have to eat their local specialty, i.e. Philly Cheesesteaks, Chicago Deep-dish Pizza, Texas and Carolina BBQ, San Francisco sour dough bread, etc. And then when you go back home from a fun trip, full of food breaks, you desperately try to find a local restaurant who can best duplicate the original specialty cuisine. What’s your favorite Greek restaurant, Italian restaurant, Mexican restaurant, and/or Chinese restaurant? I bet we can all answer that question.

I guess I must be hungry right now to be pondering food so much. We have been celebrating birthdays and life with a lot of caloric gusto lately, so last night I told my husband I was just wanting to feast on some salad. So we split a nice, green-y salad and then we decided we might as well split a lobster BLT with some onion straws, for good measure. (We live in a part of the country that is known for good seafood.) Oh, well, baby steps . . . . into the kitchen . . .