Food Patterns

`Food patterns' are a unique part of each of us. For instance, my family ate `things' (the pot that came to the table contained assorted tidbits that when put together formed one main `thing'; like stew, goulash, casseroles). From the start the food resembled leftovers.

My husband's family had a different pattern. They ate `chunk' food (roasts, ham, chops). You never came to the table and had to ask "What is it?" The chunk next to the meat was always the potato and the chunk next to that, the vegetable. The vegetable chunks, if left, were immediately discarded as if they posed a threat to the refrigerator by their mere presence. The meat chunk became the leftover and was usually eaten that night as a cold sandwich — clearly recognizable and perfectly harmless.

My family also had rules about the food. We had the four-day rule. Four days after `creation' any meal was automatically spoiled and discarded. It was as if the food knew something we didn't. If the fifth day was the spoilage day naturally the fourth day was the `verge of spoiling' day. If we ate it on this day it was with caution, alerting our taste buds for the slightest trace of a foreign flavor or texture lurking in the depths of the most innocent looking potato.

Now, when a `chunk-sandwich' person marries a `thing-leftover' person, you have a basic difference every day of your life. When I realized this, I knew I'd have to play it cagey. I'd make a `thing' meal and we'd eat it on day 1 (so far so good). I didn't dare try to serve it again the next day because he'd surely remember it (those first few months in the kitchen chances were the taste might still be in his mouth twenty-four hours later). So I'd try to figure out how long it would take him to forget — but always keeping in mind the 4-day spoilage rule. I could gamble and serve it on the third day and wonder "did he remember it?" or stretch it all the way to the caution of the fourth or `verge' day.

Once he accepted the basic `leftover pattern' of our life — that sandwiches would not be a part of his environment any longer, we discussed the food recycling process and settled on some ground rules:

1. If the meal was good, he would be willing to eat it again in its natural state three days later.
   
2. If the meal was not so good that he needed time for healing — that came into the 4-day verge category.
   
3. If the meal started out to be mediocre, he was willing to gamble and allowed me to perform what I call `hocus pocus' on it. Sometimes I lucked out sufficiently to enable me to slip it in again under the 4-day verge category (which technically put it into the fifth day `spoiled' category for its original state)!
   
4. The fourth rule was very, very strict. If it started out with chunks of soft hot tomato in it, he never wanted to see it again. In fact he even refused to eat it the first time around. This meant any meal I created with such an ingredient left my meal-time portion looking like stewed tomatoes because my husband ate only the other component parts, carefully avoiding even touching one tomato with the serving spoon. This practice also applied to warm pineapple — which fortunately did not enter into our life too often (mainly because by the third year of our marriage I was developing a funny acid rash).
   
5. Rule 5 took in all the side issues like:
   
   How do you decide when milk is sour?
   1. when the cap smells funny?
   2. when it forms a ring on the bottle?
   3. when four of the six people tasting from the same glass, with their mouths completely empty for 1 minute, say "ack"?
   
   When you use the `squirty' whip cream you are allowed to lick off the nozzle
   1. when no one is looking?
   2. only after the last guy at the table has used it?
   3. on Christmas and Easter?

I got to the point where I would attempt anything without fear of failure. It wasn't that I was confident I could do it, I had just learned a few tricks. Like: bake early in the morning so if it flops you can throw it away, and he'll never know 'cause the afternoon garbage will cover it up completely. Plus, baking early gives the garbage time to cool off, so it isn't still steaming when he comes home.

Yes, I would attempt anything now. . . so I made an old fashioned apple strudel...the kind where you stretch the dough over your entire table. My dough was so thin and delicate I could read the recipe I forgot to remove from the table right through it. I sprinkled it with clarified butter, tiny bits of triangular shaped apple, freshly ground cinnamon, rolled it over and over 4,000 times, shaped it into interlocking hearts and baked it twenty-five minutes, four and one-tenth seconds — to the moment of absolute perfection. I sliced it while warm, sprinkled it lightly with powdered sugar, served it on a china plate with a silver fork to my husband who tasted it and made only one suggestion..."Next time could you make it taste more like a Twinkie?"

It hasn't all been for naught. Somewhere between the soft hot tomatoes and the expertise of apple strudel the four children arrived and went from my arms to high chairs to places at the table. And our mealtime pleasure came not so much from without as from within. Little hands that once smeared the food in their hair now helped in its preparation, then joined in thankful prayer not only for the food but for the love that surrounded it.

Lord, when I approach your table help me to be mindful of the love that went into the preparation of its holy food. I am grateful for my little family, for through them I grow in understanding God's love for me. I feel most blessed.