A VIEW FROM THE KITCHEN WINDOW
By Chris Sherman
Condiments can enhance your marriage
Nothing says “I love you” like a pickle. A pickle on your spouse’s plate shows how much you care. It’s that little extra thought that keeps the romance in a marriage. Anyone is capable of making a sandwich for someone they care about, but choosing just the right pickle takes time and effort, therefore proclaiming your love in loud, vinegary tones.
The element of surprise sets the romantic heart aflutter. Year after year, your partner made sandwiches sitting there lonely on a plate. Now you come along and make him a sandwich and there is suddenly a pickle. Seeing a pickle where a person does not expect to see one starts a mild adrenaline rush. The receiver of the pickle may mistake this feeling for love. They would never dream it was the presence of the pickle weaving its magical spell. They will think it’s the wonder of you, and your thoughtfulness, and they will relish in their good fortune.
Pickles aren’t the only thing in your refrigerator that can enhance your marriage. After all, you can’t have pickles with everything. Ketchup, for instance, has inadvertently been responsible for many a good marriage. Ketchup is red, the color of love. Red ketchup sends a subliminal message to your partner like no other condiment. He knows it reminds him of something, but he doesn’t realize that it is the memory of his lost romantic love for you. He just knows that when he sees the smooth red condiment he wants to just lean over and kiss you square on the mouth right in the middle of his hamburger.
Should you and your partner have a quarrel, the best recipe for making up should include mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is smooth and creamy and can be soothing to the temper. Let me suggest a turkey sandwich with plenty of mayonnaise. The creamy subtle taste of the turkey, combined with the smooth, slightly tangy taste of the mayo, will calm the roaring beast in his soul. How can anyone harbor hostile feelings toward someone who liberally uses mayonnaise as a salve for a sore and aching heart? If the situation is an argument in the extreme, usually concerning mothers-in-law or money, making the effort to add the romantic properties of the afore mentioned pickle to this sandwich of love, will show that you are willing to make the first move in the healing process. This will only enhance the effect, resulting, no doubt, in lots of syrupy words of apology and hugging, accompanied by a side order of kissing.
Are the two of you getting board with each other? You know each other too well and you are finishing each other’s sentences? Honey mustard will correct this common marriage dilemma in no time. When your partner is expecting just plain old yellow mustard and you surprise her with honey mustard, she may see you in a different light. Honey mustard is all at once sweet and then spicy, just like you are. The sweetness washes over the tongue, soon to be chased away and overwhelmed by a fiery tang. Wow! How many ham sandwiches have hit the floor in a frantic attempt to reach across the table to rediscover one another? Soon you’ll be hand in hand, giggling and cooing like newlyweds. If you were planning an expensive vacation to jump-start your tired marriage, save your money. Honey mustard is where it’s at.
Romance, left unattended, can die like yesterday’s meatloaf. Mundane, everyday life has a way of taking over the best of marriages, leaving them tasteless and bland. In order for romance to stay alive, there needs to be a bit of extra effort on both your parts. Condiments are the perfect place to start. Fire your therapist, throw away all your self-help books and get down to the grocery store. Load up on all things pickley; dill pickles, pickled peppers and sweet pickled watermelon rinds. Get the BIG bottle of ketchup and a vat of honey mustard. The way to the heart belongs on the refrigerator door. Take my advise, and you’ll be happily celebrating your 75th wedding anniversary deli style!
-30-
Monday, March 19, 2007
Sunday, March 11, 2007
My mother has a boyfriend
Mom’s in Love
My sixty-five year old mother has a boyfriend. And just when I thought it was safe to go back into the world and live my life. Now that I’ve gotten the children to feed and dress themselves and my husband to choose his own ties with confidence, I find myself playing senior psychologist for my new man-minded mother and her new-found romance. Our phone calls feel more like psychologist’s sessions than our usual mother/daughter chats. She is no longer the calm and in-control mom I used to know. She’s become an insecure neurotic wreck.
All of a sudden she is now extremely body conscience. In a heroic attempt to lose her non-dating weight, Mom is existing merely on broccoli on Branola sandwiches. There’s no more picking between meals, no more of her old rationalizations like, “carrot cake is a vegetable.” No more chocolate bars with her L. A. Law. She now “works out” at a gym called Sinewy Seniors. Every morning she goes to “feel the burn”. This from a woman who used to consider getting out of bed a sit-up.
She’s obsessed with her wardrobe. Her new clothing expenditures exceed that of the gross national debt. He must never see her in the same thing twice. She must really have high hopes for this relationship, because she has already stockpiled a wardrobe that will take them well into their nineties and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s already secured an outfit for his funeral.
She is constantly reading into everything the poor guy says and does. Even their hand-holding has not escaped her scrutiny. In one of our “sessions”, she confides, “Last week he held my hand during the whole movie. This week he only held it through the previews. I purposely didn’t get popcorn so our hands would be free. Then, right after the previews, he gets up and gets this huge vat of popcorn and a large drink. I definitely think he’s avoiding intimacy.”
I try to reassure her. “Maybe he just needs more fiber in his diet.”
In our next “session”, she wants to know why he only takes her out for lunch.
I say, in my cool, detached psychologist’s voice, “What’s wrong with lunch?”
She says, “Lunch is good...if you’re in third grade with a baloney sandwich and a juice box.” Her voice raises several octaves. (Reminiscent of the days when my room was a mess.) “Don’t I deserve dinner? Do you know how hard it is to look good in broad daylight? Besides, when am I going to wear all my new evening clothes?” I hear tissues fluffing out.
I try, “Why don’t you tell him how you feel?”
She whines, “If I complain, he may stop seeing me. He hasn’t even seen the green skirt with the pink sweater yet! No, I’m not saying a word until I’ve worn all my good outfits.”
I say, “But mom, he’s 72, how many more outfits do you think he has left? I would give it just two more pant suits and a dress and then I think you should speak your mind.”
I now find myself worrying constantly about my mother’s happiness with this man. Am I advising her correctly? What if this guy doesn’t like her hand bag one day and he breaks off their relationship? What if there’s another woman he takes to dinner, after taking Mom to lunch? And who’s he seeing for breakfast? Furthermore, what if this popcorn-munching-no-hand-holding maneuver is an indication that he’s really a cold fish? And more importantly,, what if Mom gets thinner than me?
This is all too much. I think I’m the one who’ll need counseling soon. I, too, am becoming an insecure neurotic wreck. Oh, well. My mother, myself.
My sixty-five year old mother has a boyfriend. And just when I thought it was safe to go back into the world and live my life. Now that I’ve gotten the children to feed and dress themselves and my husband to choose his own ties with confidence, I find myself playing senior psychologist for my new man-minded mother and her new-found romance. Our phone calls feel more like psychologist’s sessions than our usual mother/daughter chats. She is no longer the calm and in-control mom I used to know. She’s become an insecure neurotic wreck.
All of a sudden she is now extremely body conscience. In a heroic attempt to lose her non-dating weight, Mom is existing merely on broccoli on Branola sandwiches. There’s no more picking between meals, no more of her old rationalizations like, “carrot cake is a vegetable.” No more chocolate bars with her L. A. Law. She now “works out” at a gym called Sinewy Seniors. Every morning she goes to “feel the burn”. This from a woman who used to consider getting out of bed a sit-up.
She’s obsessed with her wardrobe. Her new clothing expenditures exceed that of the gross national debt. He must never see her in the same thing twice. She must really have high hopes for this relationship, because she has already stockpiled a wardrobe that will take them well into their nineties and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s already secured an outfit for his funeral.
She is constantly reading into everything the poor guy says and does. Even their hand-holding has not escaped her scrutiny. In one of our “sessions”, she confides, “Last week he held my hand during the whole movie. This week he only held it through the previews. I purposely didn’t get popcorn so our hands would be free. Then, right after the previews, he gets up and gets this huge vat of popcorn and a large drink. I definitely think he’s avoiding intimacy.”
I try to reassure her. “Maybe he just needs more fiber in his diet.”
In our next “session”, she wants to know why he only takes her out for lunch.
I say, in my cool, detached psychologist’s voice, “What’s wrong with lunch?”
She says, “Lunch is good...if you’re in third grade with a baloney sandwich and a juice box.” Her voice raises several octaves. (Reminiscent of the days when my room was a mess.) “Don’t I deserve dinner? Do you know how hard it is to look good in broad daylight? Besides, when am I going to wear all my new evening clothes?” I hear tissues fluffing out.
I try, “Why don’t you tell him how you feel?”
She whines, “If I complain, he may stop seeing me. He hasn’t even seen the green skirt with the pink sweater yet! No, I’m not saying a word until I’ve worn all my good outfits.”
I say, “But mom, he’s 72, how many more outfits do you think he has left? I would give it just two more pant suits and a dress and then I think you should speak your mind.”
I now find myself worrying constantly about my mother’s happiness with this man. Am I advising her correctly? What if this guy doesn’t like her hand bag one day and he breaks off their relationship? What if there’s another woman he takes to dinner, after taking Mom to lunch? And who’s he seeing for breakfast? Furthermore, what if this popcorn-munching-no-hand-holding maneuver is an indication that he’s really a cold fish? And more importantly,, what if Mom gets thinner than me?
This is all too much. I think I’m the one who’ll need counseling soon. I, too, am becoming an insecure neurotic wreck. Oh, well. My mother, myself.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Mother Confesses to Food Fraud
A VIEW FROM THE KITCHEN WINDOW
By Chris Sherman
Mother confesses to food fraud
They say confession is good for the soul, so I'm coming clean: I've been lying to my kids about the foods they eat. That's right ladies and gentleman, for 15 years my culinary fare has been nothing but a sham.
It all started with ground turkey. I was hearing so many bad reports about beef, so I said to myself, "Good mother, why must you serve ground beef to your family? Ground turkey would work just as well." So listening to myself, I gave it a try with tacos. I bought a ballet pink pound of ground turkey, and quickly cooked it up in the frying pan before the kids came home from school. After it was cooked through, I couldn't help but stare at it. It was white. A grayish white. I knew if it did not look very appealing to me, it would look even worse to the kids. They like food to be bright colors like the red of maraschino cherries, or blue like Fruit by the Foot, not granite gray and definitely not poultry smelling. Then I remembered the handy packet of taco mix I had in the cupboard. Saved the day completely! I sprinkled on the taco mix powder, added water and there it was, beef colored turkey meat! I then proceeded to wrap the turkey meat packaging in a small, opaque bag and brought it right out to the garage trash bin and buried it under a bigger bag of garbage, well out of the way of child sight. (Imagine warning labels on tofu, KEEP OUT OF VIEW OF CHILDREN.)
The end justified the means. They ate the fowl faux tacos and were none the wiser. There were a few questions at first, like, “Why does this meat look different?” And “Why isn’t this meat more juicy?” Well, one lie leads to another and I found myself telling them it was 100 percent fat free beef, raised in Hollywood, California. That was good enough for them, and they munched happily on what must surely be a Mexican Thanksgiving specialty.
If the kids ever get wind that something is good for you, they won't go near it. I sneak home from the supermarket with bags of healthy nutritious food, and then proceed to spend the rest of the afternoon disguising it. I buy low-fat crackers and cookies and store them in handsome Lucite containers, eliminating their garish boxes with the dreaded words LOW-FAT printed a mile high on the front. I pour decaf powdered iced tea mix in the container reading REGULAR iced tea, I put 100 percent Juicy Juice in the Hi-C jug, and the skim milk goes in the gallon labeled 2 percent. It's no wonder the kids think that food tastes better at everyone else's house. Everyone else is serving the real thing.
I've also picked up from my mother, that mistress of deceit, a talent for giving foods super-nutritional powers. She used to say things like, “Drink up all your milk and you will grow six feet six inches tall like your uncle Lenny. Your grandmother had to take a second job, just to keep him in milk.” (It never occured to me that I might not want to grow six feet six inches tall. It just sounded like something really cool to shoot for.) So I tell my kids, “Eat lots of carrots and you’ll have X-ray vision when you grow up.” Spinach gives you muscles. Milk makes your teeth white.
I have also been known to scare them into not eating certain foods. "One French fry, and your arteries will clog up and blood won't be able to get through and you'll be dead inside of a week." "One bowl of that sweetsy cereal and you will be in the dentist chair for an hour with all your lips pinned back, drooling like a St. Bernard." "Lunchables have so much sodium in just one little package, I read somewhere that a 10 year old girl in Minnesota went blind.
I only tell these tales to get my kids to eat better. (And Hubby, too. If he ever knew cookies had eggs in them, oh boy!) Like the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, the truth will eventually come out, but hopefully by then, they will all be six feet, six inches tall, with rippling muscles. I know I've compromised morality for nutrition, but every good mother worth her sodium free salt does the same.
-30-
By Chris Sherman
Mother confesses to food fraud
They say confession is good for the soul, so I'm coming clean: I've been lying to my kids about the foods they eat. That's right ladies and gentleman, for 15 years my culinary fare has been nothing but a sham.
It all started with ground turkey. I was hearing so many bad reports about beef, so I said to myself, "Good mother, why must you serve ground beef to your family? Ground turkey would work just as well." So listening to myself, I gave it a try with tacos. I bought a ballet pink pound of ground turkey, and quickly cooked it up in the frying pan before the kids came home from school. After it was cooked through, I couldn't help but stare at it. It was white. A grayish white. I knew if it did not look very appealing to me, it would look even worse to the kids. They like food to be bright colors like the red of maraschino cherries, or blue like Fruit by the Foot, not granite gray and definitely not poultry smelling. Then I remembered the handy packet of taco mix I had in the cupboard. Saved the day completely! I sprinkled on the taco mix powder, added water and there it was, beef colored turkey meat! I then proceeded to wrap the turkey meat packaging in a small, opaque bag and brought it right out to the garage trash bin and buried it under a bigger bag of garbage, well out of the way of child sight. (Imagine warning labels on tofu, KEEP OUT OF VIEW OF CHILDREN.)
The end justified the means. They ate the fowl faux tacos and were none the wiser. There were a few questions at first, like, “Why does this meat look different?” And “Why isn’t this meat more juicy?” Well, one lie leads to another and I found myself telling them it was 100 percent fat free beef, raised in Hollywood, California. That was good enough for them, and they munched happily on what must surely be a Mexican Thanksgiving specialty.
If the kids ever get wind that something is good for you, they won't go near it. I sneak home from the supermarket with bags of healthy nutritious food, and then proceed to spend the rest of the afternoon disguising it. I buy low-fat crackers and cookies and store them in handsome Lucite containers, eliminating their garish boxes with the dreaded words LOW-FAT printed a mile high on the front. I pour decaf powdered iced tea mix in the container reading REGULAR iced tea, I put 100 percent Juicy Juice in the Hi-C jug, and the skim milk goes in the gallon labeled 2 percent. It's no wonder the kids think that food tastes better at everyone else's house. Everyone else is serving the real thing.
I've also picked up from my mother, that mistress of deceit, a talent for giving foods super-nutritional powers. She used to say things like, “Drink up all your milk and you will grow six feet six inches tall like your uncle Lenny. Your grandmother had to take a second job, just to keep him in milk.” (It never occured to me that I might not want to grow six feet six inches tall. It just sounded like something really cool to shoot for.) So I tell my kids, “Eat lots of carrots and you’ll have X-ray vision when you grow up.” Spinach gives you muscles. Milk makes your teeth white.
I have also been known to scare them into not eating certain foods. "One French fry, and your arteries will clog up and blood won't be able to get through and you'll be dead inside of a week." "One bowl of that sweetsy cereal and you will be in the dentist chair for an hour with all your lips pinned back, drooling like a St. Bernard." "Lunchables have so much sodium in just one little package, I read somewhere that a 10 year old girl in Minnesota went blind.
I only tell these tales to get my kids to eat better. (And Hubby, too. If he ever knew cookies had eggs in them, oh boy!) Like the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, the truth will eventually come out, but hopefully by then, they will all be six feet, six inches tall, with rippling muscles. I know I've compromised morality for nutrition, but every good mother worth her sodium free salt does the same.
-30-
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