Fat Kid

Fact: I wait tables.

Fact: 90% of the time, I like my job. Not in the way that I want to do this forever because it’s my calling like my job, but like it better than a lot of other things I’ve done like my job. I get paid to socialize. And I get paid more when I socialize well. 90% of the time, I socialize well, reading my tables with ease and delivering a satisfactory experience that facilitates a good time and good tips.

90% of the time. The other 10% of the time, I’m having the kind of night that makes me want to ball up my fists and stand in the middle of the dining room and scream at the top of my lungs. 10% of the time, I’m enduring an 8 hour stretch that has me desiring a good session of throwing glassware at a brick wall. 10% of the time, I’m contemplating striking a match and letting the entire establishment burn to the ground.

Last night was one of those nights.

I was thrown off of my game early by a group of bubbly blondes. Given our $10 martini prices and heavily European wine list, we’re not the kind of bar that typically caters to Boulder’s sizeable college population. I wasn’t exactly expecting, then, the entire senior faction of Alpha Chi Omega to reserve our large table for a birthday party.

I smelled them before I saw them. The heavy cloud of intermingling expensive perfume wafting up the stairs announced their 5:30 arrival, and then they emerged: straight crispy hair, orange skin, white teeth, and cleavage strapped into tight white shirts with strategically placed ruffles and lace.

“I hear if they explode they leave glitter and Diet Coke in their wake,” a co-worker whispered to me. The backwaiter was hovering. The kitchen staff offered tours. I handed our bartender a fresh bottle of Smirnoff and took stock of the lemons and limes. They were Boulder’s fabulous freshly 21-year-olds, and they were all mine.

Plastering on my shiniest smile and flipping my hair a few times to “empathize,” I interrupted discussions of which girl was the most “naturally smart” of the bunch (I thought about suggesting an inverse correlation to natural hue, be it skin tone or hair color, but I thought better of it) to round up a drink order (11 vodka sodas with limes, 3 with lemons) and dinner requests (the vegetables and hummus were the most popular, the lardo pizza the least).

In the end, though, they were the least of my worries, content to blather on without attention unless they required more alcohol. They weren’t eaters, so after every girl passed on a course two and then dessert, they were splitting their auto-gratted check 14 ways and ducking out for the rest of their night, which I expected would include young men with spiked hair and tight abs and a dramatic fight or two.

In the meantime, a couple of tables away, I had a different kind of gaggle of girls, this one comprised of brunettes wearing sweater sets and orange lipstick. One of them was incredibly confused about the concept of the wine flight. Is it 3 wines mixed in one glass? Or 3 3 oz. glasses of the same wine? Why wouldn’t we just pour 9 oz. of wine in one glass? The entire conversation was upsetting her, and she ended up ordering the wrong thing, sighing in surrender, plus a basket of that “bread stuff” (bread, actually).

As I navigated the confusing world of women, feeling like a masculine amazon amidst the feminine qualities that comprise the elusive mystique of girlishness, I found myself picking up some of the ladies’ traits on my table of old school businessmen. Brain filled with the vodka soda lime or lemon dilemma, I nailed the Balvenie one rock order, but butchered the man’s man’s Ketel One tonic with an orange request, serving instead Ketel One and soda with a lime (apparently my mind is not complex enough to grasp twists on classics). Luckily, their brains were equally addled by the cloud of scent that hung over the restaurant like a dense fog, so they spent a few moments winking in commiseration before tucking quietly into the garlic fries and calamari.

I couldn’t quite recover after a start like that. I’d been reduced to my elemental human form, romancing some tables and alienating others with the brutally honest inner personality that, like a phoenix, was trying to rise from the ashes. I was off, and I was comping a lot of desserts to make up for it.

Service is an art.  Unfortunately, last night, I was a cheap Mac photobooth imitation of Andy Warhol.

“We go under.”

I was staring at a locked door, expecting Tal to relinquish a key and remove the barrier that was the only thing separating me from a hidden greenhouse. No such luck, but there was a small gap between the bottom of the door and the ground, just large enough to allow an adult to army crawl on their belly into the inner cavern. It was raining and muddy, but all I could think about was produce. If I wanted the goods, I was going to have to get dirty.

I’m an exceptionally tall human and not particularly good at contorting my body in a nimble way that allows me to adeptly maneuver within small spaces. I hit my back a couple of times, giggling nervously as I struggled through the opening, and I emerged in a room full of disorganized garden tools and scattered seeds. Tal’s bag slid underneath the door, and then he was pulling himself through the space slightly more gracefully. He’d obviously done this before.

We still weren’t where I wanted to be, blocked by yet another door. Luckily, that door was opened by a code and required no further flexibility to overcome. As I brushed the dirt from my pants and hands, he opened the threshold and beckoned me forward.

Tal and I had bonded over a love for food, but we came at it from different perspectives: mine was meal bolstered by process, his was process bolstered by meal. Foaming-at-the-mouth Michael Pollan fanatic that I am, the sources mean less to me if dinner tastes like crap. Tal, on the other hand, couldn’t even get into dinner if he hadn’t been intimately connected to each part of the creation, ideally from planting to consumption. My happy place is New York City, where great restaurants are inexhaustible; Tal’s is a vast open garden of produce.

We met in the middle at the greenhouse.

After bouncing around the Boulder Farmers’ Market during an early Saturday morning in the season, Tal had casually mentioned his access to a wealth of edible plant life to supplement our purchases of eggs and mushrooms. I’d had a strong nostalgic moment, remembering lazy afternoons of munching on the strawberries plucked from my mother’s backyard garden, and fixated on gaining admittance to the secret spot. Excited about my newfound interest in playing in the dirt, my friend obliged, and that brought us to the greenhouse door. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that grazing, rather than admiration of photosynthetic processes, constituted my ultimate motivation.

The greenhouse inhabited a small space, not much bigger than a walk-in closet, but it was teeming with life. Tal was an excellent guide, pointing out the mint, basil, and arugula, and showing me where beans and tomatoes would soon blossom. He focused on filling a tray with goods to take home while I posted up on a wooden planter, chewing leaves that I pulled from within and using the camera on my phone to take pictures of vibrant purple flowers. Tiny slugs were snacking on the same food, gliding across the greenery slowly, leaving a trail of slime in their wake. I’m not the biggest fan of insects, so I tried not to look at them too much, unless I had to flick one aside to avoid swallowing it.

Once I’d had my fill of arugula, I moved on to chocolate mint, noshing on the leathery plants and thinking about the various ways I’d incorporate it into dessert (hi, homemade ice cream… hello, cupcake). In the end, though, I have to admit that I was fairly content to sit and eat it straight, no processing or sugar necessary.

Despite my desire to hear his wisdom on the function behind the form, Tal and I didn’t speak much in the greenhouse, choosing instead to confine ourselves in our own experiences. I’ve no doubt that he was thinking about soil type, climate, and how to make the systems better while relishing what the earth had produced, hording it and saving it for future consumption. I was content to lie there and eat, marveling at flavor, staring at the environment without questioning why it worked. The greenhouse had afforded us both a happy place, a food geekdom that satisfied both types of chow nerdiness.

True to form, when we crawled back under the door, Tal had an armful of lettuce, and I was full but empty-handed. My brain was racing, contemplating the opportunities an urban garden affords a restaurant or a cook: a salad comprised of elements lightly dressed, flashed crisp green beans, carrots picked and roasted to order. There’s no denying that produce that hasn’t spent time in a refrigerator simply tastes better, and that’s something in which I want to partake, ergo uber-local sourcing for menu creation is a concept I could get behind, though I’ll likely never plant my own window box garden.

There’s also a special kind of simple pleasure tied to the instant gratification of eating things straight from the ground. My greenhouse lunch was a deviation from what I usually pursue for sustenance, but on that rainy afternoon, there was nothing I would have preferred.

Meal meets process. Delightful.

I love dinner. I also love dating. I hate the combination of these two things in a first romantic rendezvous.

I realize that this is likely baffling. After all, restaurants are my game. They’re my one great talent. Choosing an eatery for a first date should be my chance to hook, line, and sinker some sexy male for at least a round two. Exposing a potential lover to a mind-blowing meal should be my infallible way to make an incredible first impression. But the stress of the actual event is enough for me that I instead suggest coffee, drinks, or even, god forbid, ultimate Frisbee. Anything to take the focus off eating. Of course I’m going to tell you why.

I’m a modern enough woman. I don’t subscribe to the old adage that ladies should order salads and eat but one crouton on a first date. I don’t think any man out there is begrudging me my appetizer-entrée-dessert. And I don’t think ordering fatty pork is a deal-breaker for many guys (and as for the exceptions, well, I don’t think it would have lasted long anyway).

It’s not so much that I fear my lack of adherence to an old dainty girl societal norm will kill romance (uh, let’s face it, not even my left pinky is dainty, so I’m not getting asked out for that in the first place), it’s more that I acknowledge that my eating habits can be, well, frightening.

For starters, any place I’m going to suggest is going to have at least a weird thing or two on the menu, including but not limited to fried pigs feet, frog legs, snails, shrimp paste, head cheese, fatty duck liver, veal tonsils, kidneys, beef tongue, bone marrow, raw fish (hey, that’s weird for people who grew up on mac & cheese and peanut butter & jelly alone), whole fish, oysters, and raw beef (mmmm… carpaccio). I’m definitely going to want to order those weird things—in mass quantity—in addition to any type of food on the menu that I’ve never before experienced (odds are slim that this will happen, but I don’t want to discount the sudden rise of Asian food in the greater Denver area).

This doesn’t bode well for first date sharing, a key element for me in building romantic rapport (hey, if we can eat together, it’s gonna go a long way to my heart). This also doesn’t bode well for building respect: my new dining companion, if not utterly repulsed by my choices, will be questioning my sanity and future ability to keep my girlish figure; I’m going to be sitting there irritated because my date is focusing on the French fries and forgoing entirely the foie gras. It’s not that French fries are inherently inferior, especially when fried in rendered duck fat, it’s more the principle of a lack of appreciation for unique experience.

Beyond the weirdness of my taste, though, there’s the sheer quantity of food I can consume. This girl is an eater, especially when she’s out on the town. As such, I’ve been known to eat two dinners in one night. I’ve got a history with ordering more than one dessert for myself if I simply can’t make up my mind. And more than once, I’ve closed my check only to reopen it to let a couple more courses grace my table as accoutrements to my “after-dinner” drinks.

This is uncomfortable when I’m out with a non-eater. This is rough when I’m carrying my weight and then some in the shared appetizers game. This is awkward when my date has eaten three bites of his vegetable-based soup, declared he’s full, and I’m staring at my spit-shined empty plate, deciding whether to ask, “You gonna eat that?” And this is epically stressful when I come to the end of my savory courses, picking up steam into the sweets, and my date decides to decline dessert. I have a second stomach for dessert. When I have to skip it, I brood.

I admit there may be a psychological problem at play here, but this is why dinner is best saved until at least date 3. No use exposing the mediocre matches to my ravenous appetite and bizarre preferences. Better to let them think that I’m normal and charming instead.

And hey, my mom always told me to keep some things sacred. I think she was talking abstinence, but as I adamantly maintain that I’d choose great food over great sex (almost) any day of the week, I think it’s best to leave this, too, shrouded with mystery until we’re comfortable enough with each other to make it really special.

I will Good Will Hunting myself to Harvard to be a part of this class. I will perform unmentionable acts. I will even bribe a Harvard student to sign up and let me take their place (I will do all the work, too, and I guarantee an A, because I will be too obsessed with the subject matter to fail… interested parties please contact me). And I’m not even a science person.

Quite frankly, it’s with no small amount of jealousy in my heart that I think of those lucky undergraduates, fresh shining faces in their maroon tee shirts, spending a blissful semester in their Cambridge ivory tower being graced academically by the likes of Ferran Adria, Wylie Dufresne, Jose Andreas, and Grant Achatz. IN ONE CLASS.

Seriously? Seriously?

Rumor has it that Adria plans, among other things, to open a culinary academy once El Bulli closes, so it’s no surprise that he might want to perform a practice run in the meantime… but damn, skippy, way to pull out all the stops.

Science of food aside, the chance to geek out with 12 of the world’s most prolific and interesting chefs is an opportunity most members of the INDUSTRY will never get to experience. Leave it to a place like Harvard to trot this epic lineup out to a bunch of burgeoning engineers. I hope they get to eat their lessons, and I hope they enjoy them more than the equations they solve to create the end product.

Hey, Adria, if you’d like a non-science brain to give you an opinion about the effectiveness of your teaching, I’d be happy to provide my services.

Duh.

Ok, admittedly, part of the reason I like this article is because it validates my choices on Saturday night, which included, among other things, a decision to eat 13 different dishes, including 2 desserts, 2 (different) preparations of bone marrow, and at least 2 elements of deep-fried goodness. What’s the opposite of low-fat? Yep, yep, my Saturday night.

Slate’s not exactly breaking news here, what with Michael Pollan, patron saint of all things naturally raised and sustainably grown, having spent the last several years telling the story of villainous processed food in the form of New York Times columns and best-selling books, but they bring up an apt point: there are policy implications of this newfound food fervor.

Low-fat had its day in the sun only to be replaced by sugar-free. Now, there’s no denying that America’s diners are looking less for subtraction of “evil” than asking about the origin of food on their plates. Robert Kenner’s “Food, Inc.” came out this year to critical acclaim and took the next swing at the processed foods empire in the war started and fought by Pollan with the help of people like Eric Schlosser, Morgan Spurlock, Joel Salatin, and Alice Waters, among others.

The repercussions of this trend run deep. Suddenly, “natural” has supplanted “fat-free” in advertising catch-phrase land, and diet literature preaches whole foods instead of low cholesterol.

As for the USDA, the supposed leader of the nutrition pack and the agency responsible for setting the tone of how our country eats will have to choose whether to change its approach or stay the course when they revisit dietary policy recommendations this year. Regardless of what that particular group of people decides, the fact that they’re making a decision over whether or not to toe the low-fat line is a testament to the fact that this bureaucratic organization, like most of government, is painfully behind the times.

Seriously? Low-fat? That was at least two trends ago. On the other hand, aren’t these supposed to be scientists and nutritionists? Are they really only going to change policy because suddenly the public is swinging a different way? I’d rather my government agencies not make their recommendations by the polls, everyone’s-doing-it-so-it-must-be-right style.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in eating real food, period. Lots of it. Not only because I believe it’s better for me, but also because I’m a sucker for stuff that tastes good, and there’s no denying that a succulent cut of pork belly is 9000 times tastier and more indulgent than even the best crafted Snackwell’s 100-calorie pack of cookies (god forbid I call out Snackwell’s, by the by, did you hear Ruhlman got fired from his Restaurant Industry column for calling out Kraft in his personal blog? I speak the truth).

I’m not advocating that everyone eat like me, and I’m not begging Washington to condone my choices. Truth be told, if I had my way, I’d rather Washington butt out altogether, relying instead on other sources to propagate nutrition information to America’s masses, which is exactly the kind of forum the warriors in the food dialogue are attempting to create. But while I’d rather not listen to the government when deciding what to eat because I’m a foaming-at-the-mouth food fanatic intent on charting my own course, I know not everyone out there feels the same, choosing instead to abide by the questionable food pyramid because the back of the cereal box told them to do so.

Unfortunately, because they’ve clearly not kept up with contemporary food thinking, the USDA is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to preserving its credibility. Staying the course has obvious problems, but so does adapting to the whim of the year. No matter which way the low-fat sugar-free or organic whole grain cookie crumbles, it doesn’t change the fact that making this choice at all demonstrates that a clearly inept organization is telling the American masses how to eat.

That said, there’s still a sizeable sect of society that listens to lawmakers over experts while perusing shelves at a grocery store, something Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution” is proving over and over again. Maybe it’s the idealist liberal arts grad talking here, but I’d like to think there’s a way to rescue the USDA from obsolescence while still making a solid positive impact on America’s health.

I’d like to see the agency take a new tack, telling us less about exactly what to eat and more about how to find information when we’re trying to make that choice for ourselves. I recognize the importance of brief messaging, but since when does the government care about being brief? There’s a bevy of information out there, and the food debate is nothing if not an ongoing evolving conversation. If we can harness that, we’ll rescue ourselves from food ignorance and eat much more delicious food as a result.

I went for a jog yesterday. And by jog I mean trot. And by trot I mean I spent twenty minutes moving in a strange fashion, kicking my legs out to the side a little bit as necessitated by my thighs, the size of which requires some compensation, a little compromise of movement that makes me look like an awkward duck or strange horseless cowgirl. I’m not a graceful jogger no matter the shape of my body. I lumber down the street at a slow pace, wheezing and getting red in the face. When you add in the fat thigh compensation, though, I’m the person you pass in your car, looking in the rearview mirror and wondering with no small concern whether you should stop and give me a ride to my house or the hospital. Whatever it was, it was my first exercise of the type in about a year, so I spent 20 minutes trotting and the rest of the night nursing severe hip pain most people only experience when they’ve joined the geriatric ward.

I’m subjecting myself to this pain because I feel like a big ball of pizza dough, ready to be squished flat and stuck in the oven. In an apparent attempt to be different from everyone in Boulder for the last year, I’ve taken a long hiatus from exercise and healthy eating. Much to my chagrin, I think my days of pretending like my metabolism can handle this are coming to a close. A couple of days ago, I noticed my belt was chafing my love handles. I just don’t think my self-esteem or pain threshold can handle those little raw red marks. It’s time to pull the inner fat kid back from the brink of becoming a real fat kid before I join the growing obesity epidemic.

I tried to start slow. What I really wanted was to gingerly elliptical my way to Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. Unfortunately, I lost my gym pass somewhere in the last year and a half, very likely when I was still living in New York. This wouldn’t matter in most cases, what with technology allowing the friendly gym staff to merely look up my phone number and cross-check it with my name, but 24-Hour Fitness is a fascist organization that yells at me every time they have to do this and asks if I’d like to BUY a new piece of flimsy plastic with my name on it for $10. This is an outrage to me. That card costs 2 cents to manufacture at most. The fact that my gym wants me to pay $10 for it when I already pay (donate) my gym dues is something I simply refuse to do.

I use avoidance tactics to get around it.

“Do you need to order a new card?” the desk girl asks.

“Erm, no… I think I have mine somewhere. I mean, what does it matter to you? Who are you to tell me I need a new card? Does it really make your day that much harder when I don’t have my card? This is an outrage.”

(Backing away in fear) “Okay, I was just asking.”

Unfortunately, my inability to keep cool under pressure and my memorable features ensure that most of the staff now knows exactly who I am. I know the day is coming soon when they will force me to purchase a new token of membership. So each day I have to weigh the costs and benefits of using the gym yet again card-free. Stressful.

I thought maybe if I was training for something I’d be more motivated to work out. I decided to pretend I was going to train for a triathlon. Two toned beings at my place of work are in the midst of training for an ironman tri and are looking for sponsorship. Naturally, I suggested they write a blog about the trials and tribulations of immense physical challenge and get local businesses to give them things to test/write up (I hear money-savvy bloggers do this kind of thing instead of waxing poetic on the thoughts in their brains all day long). Then I suggested they take on a beginner triathlete (ie me) who would ghost write for them in exchange for daily ass-kickings. All that talk was great until the moment of truth, about 12 hours later, when I realized training for a triathlon would mean having to expose my cottage cheese body at the CU swimming pool as I attempted not to drown. Fun image though that was, I think, realistically, the only triathlon I’m training for is appetizer-entrée-dessert.

None of the exercise woes even come close to the sadness I feel over getting back on the healthy eating wagon. I work in a restaurant. Delicious dessert and garlic fries abound. Bread is available by the fresh-baked loaf. The macaroni and cheese flows like a river of gouda pleasure. This is not fair.

I know what the skinny girls eat. They eat 3 celery sticks, maybe with a little hummus if they’re feeling peckish. They eat salmon and vegetables. They skip breakfast. They drink club soda. I, on the other hand, sometimes have 2 desserts. I drink beer and wine and cocktails full of delightful sugar. My meat of choice is pork fat. My breakfast of choice is the chocolate croissant.

It’s a long painful road ahead, but it’s one I’ve got to walk (or awkwardly trot). The weapons of ass destruction are cunning, but my vanity knows no bounds. Here’s to the upcoming swimsuit season and space between my thighs.

A friend of mine and fellow server recently turned me on to an article in the New York Times complaint box on tipping.  I encourage you to read it before reading my response, but for my lazy friends, Daniel Sax, self-admittedly cheap, never leaves above 15% gratuity and hates the custom of tipping.  The title of his rant is “Hey, Waiter!  Just How Much Extra Do You Really Expect?”

I should preface my response to Mr. Sax with this: About a year ago, I’d never had a service industry job in my life. Now, I spend each and every night catering to the requests of diners in a chic Boulder restaurant. But in both walks of life, I’ve never tipped less than 20% unless the service was unbelievably atrocious. And knowing there’s a lucrative end in sight to my days as a server, I dream openly of the day when I can leave lavish tips for servers who deserve it.

And so, Mr. Sax, I’d like to tell you where my perspective differs from yours.

Occasionally, a restaurant professional merely brings you a latte or pours you a beer; in these situations, industry standards for gratuity are often lower than 15-20%. But when you sit down in a restaurant, someone is going to be your personal slave for as long as you care to grace the tables of that particular establishment, and, what’s more, they are going to make you feel like they can’t imagine anything they’d rather be doing.

You see, sir, even if you are the most low-maintenance of diners (which I’m guessing you are not), there are still a number of points of service a server provides. We refill your water. We bring you food and drinks. We make sure you have a fork with which to eat your pan-roasted scallops. We indulge your disgusting habit of eating your fries with mayonnaise by bringing you a heaping side of the condiment. In essence, we do everything short of lay across your lap and feed you bits of your ordered meal with a tender loving hand.

It’s not just the basics we provide, though. We exist to make your experience as comfortable as possible. We can be your best friend, a confidant, someone who makes you look good in front of your business associates or studly to your dashing date, or we can fade into the background, providing you service without you ever realizing we’re there. If you don’t like your dish, we’ll go yell at the kitchen for you and pick up the tab for your food. If you want to let your kids run rampantly, we’ll corral them for you and tell them how cute they are when they’re dipping their grubby hands in other patrons’ ketchup. If you don’t like your beautiful Premier Cru Burgundy that we just opened for you because you were more in the mood for a cabernet, we’ll absorb the cost while smiling toothily and assuring you that we understand. If you ask us to jump, we’ll jump, and then say, “please sir, may I have another,” while whistling zippity doo dah, if that’s going to make you feel good.

How much is a personal slave worth, sir? And should the burden of that service really be on my employer? My employer isn’t asking me for a larger pour of wine. He’s not waving his hand wildly to tell me the filet mignon isn’t to his liking, after all, and ask whether it would be possible to get the salmon instead. He didn’t just shatter his glass of 30-year scotch and demand a free refill.

As for added gratuity on parties of 6 or more, the official answer is that this just makes it easier for you to divide the bill (and since most people these days actually do tip 20%, they don’t oft complain). In reality, large parties require more work because there are more of you to make special requests. After I’ve run a track meet to make sure everyone has everything they need, I’d like to have some assurance that you’re not going to take your irritation with your cheap friend (or, in your case, that your friends don’t take their irritation with you) out on me. I’ve eaten with enough groups to know that somehow, the final count of bills is always short.  My little secret, though?  I don’t add gratuity (or “auto-grat,” as we say in the industry) unless I’m pretty sure I’m going to get stiffed.  Maybe your server is better at reading you than you think.

I’ll be honest, though, the real reason you should tip well is for entirely selfish reasons. I remember my pleasant and appreciative diners, and I also remember the high-maintenance diners that never tip over 15%. Who do you think I’m sending the new appetizer on the menu even though they didn’t order it? Who do you think I’m bringing tastes of wine? Who’s getting the table in the packed reservation list? Who’s getting styled out and looking studlier in front of their dashing date while other repeat customers are nursing their house white without the extra love?

One theory of the etymology of the word “tip” is that it’s an acronym for “to insure promptness.” That might not work the first time around since you don’t tip us until the end, but I can assure you, paying it forward reaps benefits. And for someone who’s self-admittedly cheap, I would think free stuff would be reason enough to toss a few extra dollars our way.

“Why is the bread holey?” I looked up at my mother with earnest 6-year-old baby blues. She’d just served me and that afternoon’s play date a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on two slices of stale wheat bread that resembled swiss cheese. Jelly was oozing out of every crevice, coating my fingers with a sticky film. I despised sticky fingers. It was making me nervous.

“It’s special bread,” my mom said, with just the faintest hint of a blush creeping into her cheeks. “I made it.”

“What’s this blue fuzzy stuff?” my playmate asked. My mom looked, horrified. I didn’t know it then, but that blue fuzzy stuff was a patch of mold missed as my mother had mauled the bread, scraping and cutting out the bad bits, trying to salvage the end of a very old loaf.

“Frosting. Just eat it.”

Such was the nature of the lunch play date at my house. While my friends’ parents served Chef Boyardee, grilled cheese and tomato soup, and Kraft macaroni and cheese, my mom dug up whatever looked the least terrifying from the fridge, arranged it artfully, and pawned it off on kids that didn’t know any better. My friends would turn their noses up and scamper back to the magic fairy land we’d built in the scary unfinished basement while I would dutifully eat every bite.

This was all fine and well until a little later in elementary school, when my mom’s lack of willingness to cater to the tastes of a child created some awkwardness in quintessential social interactions. Whereas the 6-year-old doesn’t know the difference, a major determiner in the cool-factor of a 9-year-old is the kind of food their mother keeps in the pantry: the leaders of the pack get their moms to buy stuff like Cheez-its and gushers, Mountain Dew and Twinkies. I’m not even sure my mother knew what a Twinkie was. Besides the aforementioned moldy bread, my mom oft had expired yogurt (“oh, come on, that stuff never goes bad”), shriveled vegetables, and unidentifiable tupperware container contents that resembled science experiments. The protocol when dealing with these foodstuffs was to open the lid, take a big old sniff, and if the smell didn’t make you immediately want to vomit, it was probably safe to eat.

At that age, it was also standard operating procedure to talk to your playground friends about how picky of an eater you were, and how you’d managed to force your parents to make a sandwich or buttered noodles instead of eating the gross adult food like foie gras and truffles. I always found myself silent and uncomfortable in these conversations. My mom had probably never heard of foie gras, but she had heard of the crockpot. And I’d no sooner get away with forgoing my chicken dinner, cooked until tasteless and leathery, than I would be allowed to play in traffic or stand on the corner smoking cigarettes.

It wasn’t easy to have discriminating tastes in my household. We were a family that was expected to eat anything that was put in front of us, edible or no. Generally, my mom did all right when she could use the microwave or draw on her Midwestern roots to create “salads” that contained very few vegetables and plenty of mayonnaise. But I remember distinctly a couple of absolute disasters, including an eggplant casserole, no doubt lifted from the pages of a diet cookbook, that caused a 3-day long bout of fake-vomiting and volunteering to be sent to bed without dinner.

The casserole looked relatively normal: A big glass baking dish filled with mush and specked with unidentifiable colors and chunks. It had a faint red hue, which we associated with lasagna or spaghetti pie, so we were expecting something of an Italian nature.

Mom cut big slabs of the congealed paste and slapped them onto plates with enthusiasm. We were called to the table, poured big glasses of questionable milk, and then told to eat.

The smell resembled something between microwaved sneakers and warmed death. And the taste. God, the taste. Eating that stuff was like being forced to chew on tinfoil. For hours. While standing in an overused outhouse. And we were happy to let our mother know just what we thought of her cooking, with a series of gagging noises, followed by dramatically plugging our noses and swallowing.

Most parents, tormented by the high-pitched wailing and moaning of a particularly obnoxious child, would have surrendered. They’d have acknowledged that they fought the good fight and ordered Chinese food. Not my mom. She let us cry as long as we wanted, which was about 4 or so hours for three days in a row, and wouldn’t let us leave the table until every bite of the revolting vegetable concoction was gone. And she put the dog outside so as to eliminate any chance of foulplay. This was worse than Guantanamo. We threatened to run away. We threatened to commit suicide. We threatened to call child services. She offered to do it for us. It was a useless stand. Freedom fighters finally beaten, we forced down the eggplant casserole and plotted our revenge.

For all the shortcomings of this approach to family dinner, there were a couple of distinct advantages to being raised on more than just boxed starch. For instance, when I was a sophomore in high school, a friend’s mom inadvertently served us long-sour milk. None the wiser, I gulped the entire glass in a few swallows, noticing the strange texture, but not thinking much of it. My friend’s first sip made her gag, and we all waited with bated breath to see what the horrific outcome of my actions would be. Would I vomit? Diarrhea? Never come to the friend’s house again? 4 hours passed. Then 8. Nothing. I was in the clear, my body immune to rotten food.

This immunity has paid off in other countries. Dog in Indonesia, cow entrails in Argentina, mouse brain somewhere along the line, and the only thing that ever made me sick was the package of processed cookies in Buenos Aires. And really, I’d never have eaten any of that that food in the first place if it weren’t for the fact that being forced to endure torture by dinner had made me willing to give any food a try once.

Somehow, out of that food culture, my mother managed to raise two food snobs who not only worship pork fat and homemade pasta, but who also sit around comparing brands of knives used for cooking. And with this turn of events, she had no choice but to succumb to the inevitable evolution into a more conscious consumer, or she’d be left behind for dinner excursions. As much as my mother loves the microwave, she can’t stand to be left behind. In the name of socializing with her family, even her own palate became too discerning for tuna casserole.

Old habits die hard, though. I recently had business to attend to in her house and found a tomato rotting on the counter, juice everywhere. And when I cleaned out her refrigerator about a year ago to make room for a dinner party I was preparing, I found bread crumbs. From 1997.

The first WORK email I received today started with this:

Good morning Laura,

Are you feeling fat and sassy this morning?

I don’t know this person, but they’re clearly watching me, big brother style.  When am I ever NOT feeling fat and sassy? And the day after Thanksgiving? The answer is, “Amen, sister, can I get a hallelujah!”

Thanksgiving is theoretically the most wonderful time of the year. It’s all about overcoming our differences to come together and eat until we pass out in front of the TV, just like the Pilgrims and the Natives did. I like that. Normally, I stretch this joyous holiday into a 5-day weekend in California, over-consuming and over-exercising with the entire Belquist clan, none of which has ever heard of the word “moderation.” This year marked the first Thanksgiving in Divorced Kid World, as well as the last chance for Adam to catch the CU (powder puff) football team play Nebraska at home. To appease all parties, we opted to stay in Colorado for this one, and Adam and I agreed (through extortion and coercion) to cook Thanksgiving at Mom’s house after we did our brunch duties at Dad’s.

Such a monumental occasion suggests documentation. Without further ado, the play-by-play:

8:50 am: I wake up to a text from Adam requesting I text him when I wake up. I do so, find out he’s in South Denver, and suggest he drives himself to Dad’s for brunch, since picking him up would mean driving over an hour out of my way. We fight, he tries to manipulate me into picking him up anyway by telling me he hates people who don’t follow through on promises. I passive-aggressively don’t respond and get in the shower. Yay family time. Happy Thanksgiving.

9:35: Apparently confused about what holiday it is, I dress like Santa Clause, if Santa wore short red dresses to family gatherings.

10:10: I load the day’s necessities into my car—my toothbrush, laptop, and a case of wine. I look twice at the tequila and try to convince myself I won’t need it.

10:37: I arrive at Thanksgiving feast numero uno feeling awkward and wishing I’d picked Adam up after all. After I cut my coffee with Bailey’s, Dad’s gf Wendy suggests we open the champagne, and I agree, relieved. Since I’m the resident wine-o, this task falls to me. I can’t get the cork out. Fail. Wendy’s son Dustin does not fail. I’m both demoted and dejected.

11:12: We sit down to eat. Brunch conversation surrounds witty comments on the use of instant mashed potatoes in Thanksgiving dinner and, remarkably without my doing, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the corn lobby, and why processed food is a manifestation of everything that is wrong with the world. I bask in my sphere of influence, happy that I’ve created an army of foaming-at-the-mouth food issue people, even if they’ve taken it a step further than me and inexplicably eliminated plastic from their homes. At least we’re not eating turkey bacon. Thank you, Michael Pollan, Patron Saint of all things locally raised and organic, may you bless yourself.

12:29 pm: My armpits start to get sweaty from the caffeine-nervousness combo. Maybe because Wendy’s telling me all about how she made her cranberry sauce and stuffing the night before, I have yet to start, and I still have no idea how to cook a turkey. She gives me a recipe that involves making a foil tent, which is impossible for me to envision without including foil sleeping bags and foil pillows. She also offers to send me home with cranberry relish and her own homemade stuffing. Wisely reasoning that Mom probably wouldn’t like eating Thanksgiving sides made by her ex-husband’s girlfriend, I politely decline. Besides, that feels like cheating, so I freak out and announce an early departure about 4 minutes later, thinking about the fact that Grandma Judy has already threatened to write me out of the will if dinner isn’t served between 7:30 and 8.

1:11: I arrive at Mom’s house.

1:12: Grandma Judy and I get into a fight about how to cook a turkey. I’m obviously acting like an expert since I’m now armed with instructions and a vision of a foil tent. She looks down at me from her turkey ivory tower, built through 48 years of experience, and tells me the only way to cook a turkey is in a bag. I tell her to go sit down. She tells me I’m going to fail miserably, and also that if I don’t use a bag to cook the turkey, the entire family will get AIDS. 9 minutes later, I’m deaf and hoarse, and I grudgingly agree to let her take over all turkey cooking activities. Win for Grandma Judy.

Judy's louder so she wins

1:21: Apparently taking over all turkey-cooking activities does not include washing the turkey. I struggle with the 22-pounder, making sure to get water in every orifice. Grandma Judy loudly suggests I use soap so as not to give everyone salmonella. I loudly refuse so as not to make everyone ingest chemicals.

1:24: Grandma Judy and I take 9000 photos of her favorite part of the turkey, the neck. She makes me hold it and makes a lot of jokes about posting those pictures so as to threaten ex-boyfriends, stalkers, and would-be suitors. I think that sounds like a great idea.

that's a neck, ya filthy animal

1:59: Adam has chopped 2 onions, a whole bunch of celery, all of the sweet potatoes, a bulb of garlic, chives, rosemary, and sage. I have toasted a few pieces of bread and burnt a couple of them. Adam is the detail person. I am the higher level visionary. I have also already had a lot of wine.

2:37: I find the can of cranberry sauce and the bag of stovetop stuffing mix Grandma Judy bought in addition to my shopping list of ingredients. It’s good to know my family has faith in my ability to pull off a fully homemade Thanksgiving feast.

fail

3:10: The pies, cranberries, and stuffing are finally done and the turkey is in the oven. I eat 3 cookies I find in a bag on the counter and go nap on the chair in front of the TV.

5:15: I wake up to find Adam half on and half off the other chair in the living room, yet inexplicably still asleep. He looks like he’s practicing for international flights. I wake him up to finish the feast preparation. We promptly get in a fight because apparently the cookies on the counter were his and apparently they cost a fortune. He calls me a fatty. I call him an ass hole. Yay family time. Happy Thanksgiving.

BEANS SLEEPY!

5:27: The potatoes are boiling, the chicken stock is reducing, and my béchamel is bomb. I threaten to light Adam on fire because due to football and my consumption of his precious cookies, he’s decided he’s no longer helping. Yay family time. Happy Thanksgiving.

6:42: Mom’s friend Luke arrives while I’m mid-meltdown because everyone’s bailed on me for appetizers and Broncos at the last minute. Luke is 4 years older than me and tells jokes that I liked in third grade, but he’s also objectively one of the most attractive men I’ve ever met. My brain is confused, so I’m tossing back glass after glass of champagne, eating cheese, and trying to watch the 37 things on the stove top/not burn myself.

7:10: The turkey comes out of the oven to rest. I mutter a comment about it being dry, Grandma Judy must have sonar hearing because she retorts that the bird is more MOIST than any turkey she’s ever seen. I spend a precious 3 minutes in repulsed convulsion over the word moist; Adam takes the opportunity to drop a few more words I hate (ointment… blech).

7:36: I begin rotating things in and out of the oven in an effort to keep everything warm while Grandpa Jim teaches Adam how to carve a turkey. Patience not being my strong suit, I make a suggestion or 25 about how maybe this learning experience could be put off until a year when we have the luxury of an extra 30 minutes before dinner. I also notice at this point that Adam didn’t whisk all of the flour lumps out of the gravy. I tell him this. He must be deaf because he ignores me.

7:51: We sit down to eat. The gravy is cold. Grandma Judy is trying to outdo Luke with bad jokes. Mom can’t figure out why a water pitcher is useful. Adam is still calling me a fatty. I hate everyone. So does Grandpa Jim, but he’s a lot more subtle about it.

7:53: I ate too much cheese. I’ve taken three bites and I’m stuffed. Everyone else loves the food, or pretends to love it, probably because I will rip their throats out if they say otherwise.

7:54: Apparently Luke doesn’t eat carbs. I mentally cross him off all invite lists for future parties.

7:55: The turkey is moist. Grandma Judy gloats. I congratulate her on using foolproof modern technology to achieve her desired effect.

7:59: I’ve inexplicably cleaned my plate and have reached the wall of death or vomit.  Probably vomit since I’ve had a mild case of the stomach flu since last night.

8:05: Pie. Thank god I have a second stomach for dessert.

8:07: Grandpa Jim busts out his notes on the characteristics of the generations and baits all of us (uh, Grandma Judy and me) into a discussion. Highlights of his generation: loyal, career-oriented, don’t like fun at the office. Highlights of my generation: networking attention whores, whimsical non-executors, don’t like the office, period. Luke must not have a joke on the subject because he is silent. Mom is subtly trying to fit herself into a younger generation.

9:05: Grandma Judy and I decide to play Scrabble. Grandpa Jim bets on Grandma Judy to win. My first play is worth 70 points. My second play is worth 66 points. I tell Grandpa Jim to get over his generational prejudice because I have arrived.

9:17: Grandma Judy tries to cheat at Scrabble.

9:54: Grandma Judy tries to cheat at Scrabble.

10:11: Grandma Judy tries to cheat at Scrabble.

Grandma Judy tries to cheat at Scrabble

10:32: I show Grandma Judy where she can get more points because I feel kind of bad for her. She calls me a friggin’ horrid bitch. I laugh. She laughs. She’s still losing.

10:59: I win 390-262. Grandma Judy tells me at least she knows how to cook a turkey in a bag.

Wiiiiiinnnn

Key takeaways:

1. I survived.
2. This entire day built up to 15 minutes of consumption. Due to the appetizers pregame and the stomach flu, it wasn’t even an enjoyable 15 minutes.
3. The global system will crash during my generation due to ADD and a lack of execution on lofty goals.
4. Michael Pollan rules.
5. I am now the family’s reigning Scrabble champ.  Proudest. Moment. Ever.

There is, most unfortunately, no such thing as a free lunch.  That sucks.  I like lunch.  I like free.  The blissful union of those two things is something someone somewhere should get on.  There may be a Nobel prize, or at least a James Beard award, in store.

There is, however, a custom in Madrid called “tapas” which I gather to mean in English “free bar snacks.”  Typically, this consists of a basket of salty chips or peanuts, tossed on your table so that you might order another round of drinks.  This normally works.  The salt parches your throat so that you can barely rasp “another round” to your friendly server.  Which arrives with more salty snacks.  A vicious, beautiful cycle, that.

There is at least one place, however, that goes above and beyond a salty snack and delivers the closest thing to free lunch I have ever seen in the non-communist world (uh, or in the communist world, for that matter).

It’s possible to spot El Tigre from a block away.  Even on a Sunday afternoon, young Spaniards with trendy haircuts and acid-washed jeans block the door, oft clutching a glass or bottle of something that looks vaguely alcoholic.  The ceilings are low, the décor rivals the best and dirtiest dive bar with unsteady tables, wall kitsch that has little rhyme or reason, and barrels filling in so more patrons can crowd into the tiny space, set things on a flat surface, and pretend that they are involved in some semblance of comfort.

Flat surfaces are important.  Order a caña in El Tigre, which is a juice glass full of light beer, and you get plate of authentic Spanish tapas that range from tortilla Española to ham on tostados to croquetas of fried cheese and dough.  The closest thing to a potato chip you’ll see is a fried potato, dripping in salt and grease and doused in salsa brava.

It’s hard to hold your food and drink at the same time, hence the tables and barrels.  It’s also hard to have just one round (huh, I spot the revenue model here).  If you’re like me in your lust for free and delicious, you’ll feel obligated to eat until you’re about to explode, which will cost you approximately 5-7 euros, depending on how healthy your appetite is (mine is healthy.  Very healthy.  If this had been dinner, I would have spent 7 euros.  As it was a snack, I spent 3.50).  On a continent where it’s hard to spend less than $50 a day even if you’re living po’, El Tigre is a godsend.  Just watch yourself.  If there’s anything worse than an alcohol hangover, it’s a fried food hangover.  And at El Tigre, you’re likely to get both.