Arts and Lifestyle Wednesday Presented by The Exit Room of Lee's Summit-Food for Thought

Perhaps excepting music, there is likely no more personal thing than one’s relationship with food. Or maybe there are more, since instantly I thought of George Carlin’s description of people’s attitude toward other drivers, basically noting that the only person going the proper speed was someone going exactly the same rate that you are. Going faster, “a maniac”, going slower, “driving like an old lady”.

     But it is certain that personal taste, as far as taste, is extremely personal. Just like music, it makes for great discussions since there is no right answer. One of the quirkiest things I know of, and I know quite a bit since most people think my eating habits are quirky, is my Mom’s disdain for pizza. I think she might be the only person I know who does not like pizza. It might not be someone’s favorite, but it likely is the safest choice to serve up at any gathering. Cheese pizza, of course, since toppings can create quite a conflagration. From anchovies to pineapple, there are things to add that horrify some, and glorify others.

     I once was a very ordinary eater. Raised in a large family with five siblings all within a nine-year age range, you just ate what was served up. My Dad had an ulcer, so we ate pretty ordinary American food. Meat and potatoes mostly, with maybe spaghetti once a week. We went through periods where we were pretty poor, so sometimes dining was more a competition to get through the first serving, because there wasn’t much second to be had.

     I wasn’t a picky eater in any way. Pretty much the only food I didn’t like as a young boy was liver. In a still hard to comprehend bit of strange 1960’s parenting by otherwise rational parents was their insistence that I eat the liver or face punishment. There aren’t many things that rise to a consensus in general taste, but one might be on liver. Let’s face it, it sucks. Pretty much the only way people actually enjoy it, and that is arguable, is in the form of liver and onions, where enough other ingredients are dolloped on to hide the real flavor and texture.

    There was none of that going on for six-year-old Danny Clinkscale, it was just liver out of a frying pan and onto my plate. Awful, and for some reason, with this the one and only thing I didn’t like, I was told to eat it, or I would have to go to bed with no supper. After one failed attempt to gag it down, I would start the same routine weekly. I would come home from playing, see that liver was on the menu, and just head right to bed hungry. I don’t really remember how long it took, but eventually my Mom came to her senses and stopped making it.

     My path to my own quirky eating ways came when I stopped growing. Until then I pretty much ate like a horse, yet was slender. I remember exactly what my intake would be in a day when I was a senior in high school. Two large chocolate covered cake donuts for breakfast, TWO school lunches, (yes, I paid twice the amount and got double the food), and then a big dinner. I was playing sports constantly and was in fine shape.

     But my fourth week of college at KU, I was playing in a pickup game with members of the varsity squad, and I suffered what we would now diagnose, I believe, as a high ankle sprain. I only was on crutches for a week and could walk fine after that, but I couldn’t play basketball for months. I gained over thirty pounds my first semester. This would start a period of yoyo weight gain and loss. Gain a bunch of weight, go on a strict diet, which I was good at, and then gain it all back.

     Two examples of how adept I was at gaining pounds came in two part-time jobs I had during my extended trek to a college degree. I worked a Christmas break job at a deli, where we could eat anything we wanted before a six-hour shift and were constantly around the delicious deli delights in the kitchen while working. Three-week job, twenty-five pounds gained. A couple years later, I filled in for three weeks as a morning newsman at a small-town station. Two trips per morning were required to the local donut shop to pick up the local paper. This time around, twenty-seven pounds.

    Eventually I got sick of it. I had to figure something out that would work with my crummy metabolism. I hadn’t yet become a daily runner (and even that didn’t completely do the trick), so I came up with a plan of being on a semi-diet all the time. I would just eat the right foods, and not much of them, regularly. But I still could indulge occasionally, and I never had to go full bore on celery and V-8 like I once did.

     For a while my eating habits were a bit like former Kansas State football coach Bill Snyder, I didn’t each much at all during the course of the day and then had something light late in the evening. I used slight variations and ideas through the years, and eventually settled on just eating one meal at lunch.

     I truly came to like eating healthy food, and never ate foods I once had cherished like chili, or Reuben sandwiches. I completely gave up red meat, not for philosophical reasons, just for weight consciousness. I don’t really mind being thought of as a food oddball. My wife met me in 1999 when I had just passed forty, and I was set in my ways. It took her a long while to get used to me not ordering dinner when we went out, and she still isn’t a big fan of eating alone at dinner time.

     Getting cancer in 2014 changed things some for me. Radiation treatment caused loss of taste, and worse, for three months. Food tasted awful, but you were hungry and had to eat. I lost a bunch of weight, but when my taste buds returned I also found I could eat a bit more, and I was more inclined to indulge myself…..a little.

     This personal culinary journey has shaped my attitudes of the eating habits in our nation. I don’t think, however, it makes me wrong when I say that we are pretty much flat out gluttons as a society. A small portion of the population does a decent job of staying healthy, but as a whole, any trip to the mall gives you a dandy idea of our national largesse.

     Portions are absurd. If you travel overseas, or indulge in fine dining, you can easily note that a salad doesn’t need to look like a mountain, and a burrito needn’t be the size of your head. Someone of my age well remembers when the first quarter pound burger was rolled out. If you put one of those in front of someone now, they would think they were being jipped on the meat. Don’t even get me started on the keg-sized refill sodas constantly consumed, or how about those softball sized muffins?

     One of my favorite little chuckles is when I am in a nice restaurant, particularly abroad, and I see some likely novice travelers settle down and order, and then look aghast as the main course comes, and two-thirds of the plate is visible. You can definitely picture a fast food stop on the way back to the hotel.

     But I really love to eat on vacation, and wherever I am I try to indulge in something new and indigenous. The past few years this has led to a particular affection for squid and octopus. Foods that when not prepared with tremendous care, and these are among them, can be dreadful or ordinary in lesser form. We were in Barcelona in May, and one chef insisted one of our tapas choices be the goat. That would be a chewy mess ordinarily, but after twenty-four hours of preparation, it was one of the best things I have ever eaten.

     And where would I be without my discovery of soup de poisson in France, the simplest delight one can imagine. When I first ordered it I was taken aback when I saw no visible signs of fish, but this description that I found recently sums up the culinary delight this way…..”no fish is visible. It is there all right, but it has disappeared into the liquid. The body of the fish has gone. The soul remains. The fish is ground, crushed, pulverized, and then cooked until it has become liquid itself, and the soup is then strained to eliminate any telltale traces of the ingredients that provides its greatness.” Fantastic.

      One of the better fallouts from my cancer and recovery process is smiling more than groaning at people’s passions, and if it extends to food that I wouldn’t touch, so be it. One of the things that makes any discussion about food so interesting is that two people can have completely opposite opinions, and state them strongly, and nobody is wrong. I’m sure there was some groaning going on about what I really enjoy when the previous paragraph was read. But I would urge the less adventurous to try some alligator when you’re in New Orleans, the haggis when in Scotland, or escargot when in France.

     That doesn’t mean that if you are from here that you can indulge in our barbecue and say it’s number one. Same with Chicago and deep-dish pizza, or Boston and clam chowder. Deciding that octopus might be dandy was one of the best things that ever happened to my pallet, and what did I really have to lose?

     Pleasures can be painfully simple. It’s almost lunchtime as I am finishing this, and that’s MY meal, and writing this is making me hungry. I think that part of lunch today will be something that has become a fairly regular choice for me. Grocery store Ramen. It was basically the first thing that I could eat when I was starting to regain the joy of taste, and it became a friend. Never had it as a poor college student, and it is about as far from a delicacy as you can get.

     But I find it pretty yummy, and that’s the point now isn’t it? Let the debate continue.