Food Crime Then & Now: Iceberg Lettuce & Sausage Sticks

ADDENDA:
During the course of the day, I sat down to read my hand-written journal from my cross-country bike trek. I wrote down pretty much everything I ate, the good, the bad, especially the ugly, and a lot of thoughts about my parents, whose passings were still very fresh in my mind. Only once, the two subjects crossed. From my Marshfield, Missouri entry:

Heard a piece on the radio about some local hospital improving their food, choked me up, reminded me of the time my mom was hospitalized, her food, sharing pizza & Chinese food with her, bringing her chocolate. God I miss her.

Mom's hospital food was bland and gross, and my mom had no appetite due to the chemo. Still, she would eat bites of the pizza, Chinese & chocolate not because she was hungry, but because it was comforting and it was shared with her son.

The full weight of my mother losing her facilities came to bear due to her bearings in her kitchen. When she started her first course of treatment, they eventually sent her home, and every few days would make her way back to the hospital. I got a call from her one evening at work, a little panicked because she could not remember how to turn off the oven. I immediately left work and rushed to her apartment. When I got there, the oven was off - she had mistaken the clock time on the panel as a temperature. The next day I moved in with her and started making arrangements for home health aides during the day.

My mom was never a good cook, and it was almost a relief that during the time I lived with her, I got to prepare breakfast and dinner (I'd set aside easy stuff to prepare for the aide). I remember one dinner, I was making dried pasta and jarred sauce, and made a simple green salad with most of the stuff I grew up on - carrots, cucumbers, green pepper, celery, onion - and romaine instead of iceberg. I stopped eating iceberg lettuce years before because it tastes like nothing and is nutritionally void. When I served the salad, my mom asked where the iceberg was. I sighed like I was a snotty teenager again, told her this was much healthier, not to mention tastier, and it was HER generation who screwed up our eating habits by making silly stuff like that the standard.

Instead of getting into a raucous (and fun) argument with me about intergenerational food warfare and my silly teenage-like snottiness, she meekly said, "but I like it." I immediately felt horrendously guilty - I knew subconsciously she was dying and these were most likely her last meals (they were), but on the surface I was hoping to introduce her to new things, to things that reflected my way of thinking and seeing things. Suffice to say, for the next month till the end her house saw nothing but iceberg lettuce. I can't eat the stuff today without feeling a little guilty and sad.

Speaking of guilt, sadness, and nutritional corruptness of a generation, today's peeps certainly aren't guilt-free. Some of us have gotten a lot worse than just iceberg lettuce. I think I ranted about this product early on in this blog, but it's worth repeating. This morning I went to my local Pathmark to pick up bulky sundries like cat litter and toilet paper. I used to shop for my main groceries here before Whole Foods and Fresh Direct started up. After picking up my list, I wandered around a few aisles, where I would find the things that in the past I'd be there to buy. Industrial cereals, yick, diet soda, blech, frozen White Castles, ewww. I seriously considered buying something snackable from the freezer case, and I was also keep an open mind about alternative breakfast foods. Of course, the chocolate chip pancake-wrapped sausage on a stick came into my view and stunned me with all the power that it stunned me with months and months ago.

Really, any adult who bought this for their kid should be charged with child abuse. Looking through the freezer case, looking at fat and salt-heavy snacks called "Anytimepertizers", Jesus fuck, are we insane? I understand freedom of choice, but if economic activities that are arguably victimless like drug use and prostitution are illegal, shouldn't there be a class of "food crime"? (Personally, I think prostitution and all drugs should be legal and regulated, and so should so-called 'value-added' food products, but that's a rant for a different kind of blog....)

BREAKFAST: 10am, organic cheerios with good milk, banana, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1:30pm, homemade mac n' cheese, homemade vanilla ice cream, homemade brownie, homemade seltzer, 3 bowls, hunger 4/5
Boy, I'm stuffed. Three relatively unhealthy foods easily available in large quantities at Pathmark - mac n' cheese, brownies and ice cream, all made from scratch, all simply delicious, even if frozen and in the fridge for a week.

DINNER: 8pm, assorted shared appetizers including beef bone marrow on toast with wine reduction, 1 boiled whole shrimp with touch of cream sauce, artisanel french fries, country pate, misc. vegetables in vinaigrette, saucon sec, mushroom ravioli, chocolate bread pudding, 1 glass wine, herbal tea, water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Intense meal at Blue Ribbon bakery in honor of Katya's birthday, with B and 3 others. Read a lot about marrow, seen it on TV, felt like I had it before but upon eating it realized, ahhh, actually, I never ate this before. Presented in a cut shank of bone, the inner marrow is fatty and gelatinous, a cross between warm bacon fat and good butter, really rich and tasty and a bit overpowering if not spread thinly enough. Really tasty, awesomely non-vegetarian looking - when you look at it, you know exactly what your eating, unprocessed and unmediated - you're scooping goo out of the bone, near the joint, straight up. Ain't a burger made up of 20 different cows, ain't mystery meat.