I feel sorry for all you single people out there.
Oh, sure, you have a ton of freedom, and very little responsibility, and you can eat chips in bed anytime you want, and you can leave your toenail clippings all over the place, and you can heat up frozen enchiladas at 1 a.m. without bothering anybody. It doesn’t make a difference to anybody whether your toilet seat is up or down when you’re not on it, or where you put the towel when you finish drying off. Or how long you go between changing your sheets, or how full the trash can is before you empty it.
You may have all this, but you don’t have some of the simpler joys of married life. Like … like … hang on, give me a minute …
No, I’m just kidding. There are a ton of benefits to getting married. One of the biggest ones, of course, the one that everyone thinks of when they talk about sharing a monogamous relationship with another person for the rest of your life, the one that many religions focus on when they talk about “true love” and the unique bond between two people, is the special intimacy that comes from grossing out your partner with your food choices.
Regardless of how much you love another person, regardless of how perfect they appear in your eyes, regardless of how you respect and admire them, there will come a day when you watch them put something in their mouth and exclaim, “God in Heaven, are you actually eating that?”
That’s when you know you’re really a couple.
I’m not talking about eating foods that would be considered “normal” by other people. My lovely and talented wife, for example, loves licorice. Naturally, I can’t stand the stuff. So she delights in chomping on a few pieces, blowing her foul licorice breath in my face, showing me the strangely blue-green stains on her teeth after she eats it. And the worst part (which I haven’t completely figured out the physics of): Whenever she eats licorice, our kids and pets get some of the rankest-smelling gas I’ve ever experienced.
But as bad as licorice is, other people seem to like it, so I can’t really say I’m shocked that my wife eats it. It’s a sad commentary on her moral fiber, and frankly, it makes me question her taste in just about everything except men, but she’s not alone in her depravity.
No, what I’m talking about is eating a food, or a combination of foods, that you’ve never heard of before, and which sickens you to the core to even consider.
I was fortunate enough to discover just such a combination a few days ago. I had made biscuits for breakfast, with some sausage patties on the side. I wasn’t much in the mood for sausage, though, so once I got everybody else served I decided to make something I remembered from my childhood.
I took a spoonful of butter and plopped it on a plate, then mixed syrup with it. Then I scooped up the resulting goop with biscuit halves and chowed down. My mother used to make this all the time when I was a kid. Mom, who in addition to being a culinary genius was creative as all get-out, called it “butter and syrup.” But the words kinda ran together, so I knew it as “buttern syrup.” (For the same reason, I had an aunt whose name was Dora Etta, but for literally DECADES I thought it was Doh-etter. It wasn’t until I saw a letter from Aunt Doh-etter that I realized what her name really was. Pronunciation was never stressed where I grew up.)
Anyway, my wife watched me eat this for about twenty seconds, horrified, and then said “Sweet mother of Julia Child, what is THAT?” in the same tone she would use if I put a live anaconda on her biscuit.
“Buttern syrup,” I replied, happily. “Want some?”
“NO!” she yelled. “It looks like someone threw up on your plate.”
Now, I have to admit … buttern syrup isn’t the most appealing-looking concoction. It bears a striking resemblance to uncooked cream of chicken soup. But Lord have mercy, it’s good. You got to use a thick syrup, like Golden Eagle, so the resulting mash is nice and goopy. From a purist’s standpoint, you should use real butter (which is how I grew up eating it), but in the interest of better health, I’ve been substituting margarine with little difference in taste. And I’ve always preferred the bottom half of the biscuit as a scooper, because it’s not as flaky as the top half usually is, and doesn’t produce as many crumbs. But that’s a matter of personal preference, and if you want to scoop with the top half of the biscuit, be my guest.
My wife was disgusted beyond belief, and refuses to consider that other people might eat this ambrosia. She thinks it’s all because I grew up in a small rural town in Alabama, and that I’m unspeakably weird for liking something so horrible.
Naturally, as a sensitive and caring husband, once I learned my choice of breakfast food disturbed her, I’ve been careful to only eat it when she’s around, so I can gross her out even more. She usually retaliates by taking a nice big bite of something, chewing for a minute, and then showing me the resulting masticated mess in her mouth. Tomatoes are her favorite weapon of choice, but in a pinch any food will do.
Of course, all this can have unintended consequences. We got a note from school yesterday that our kids were no longer allowed to eat at the table with others. My wife blames my weird food choices for this, but I know the REAL reason:
She’s been sneaking licorice again, and it’s affecting the kids when they’re at school.
