One deep-fried piece of lettuce, please
My salad looked good. Lettuce dotted with broccoli, onion, carrots, cauliflower, green peppers, grilled chicken, low-fat cheese and light dressing was just what I needed to ...
"You eat like a girl," my wife said, holding a fried tenderloin sandwich. The oil-soaked hub cap of pressed pork was large enough to cast a shadow over her plate, french fries, the table and enough of the restaurant patrons may have thought it closed early.
"I do not," I said, my man-genes taking over and crushing any chance of me saying anything intelligent. "There's something dead on my plate."
"Is it dead, or just depressed?"
Time does a lot to change an appetite. Well, time and enough heart attacks in the gene pool to scare Chef Boyardee into laying off pasta. And, by the look of his smug, pudgy face on the ABCs & 123s can, maybe he should think about it.
I don't eat the Chef's cooking anymore. I don't eat a lot of things.
I grew up in the '70s, when red meat was still good for you, chicken skin helped keep in the flavor and the grease in our Fry Daddy was solid and white because it was lard.
Now I feel guilty just remembering the taste of Slim Jims.
The manly diet of sausage, marbled steak and potatoes dripping with sour cream all the men of my generation were promised as kids has been replaced with green vegetables and baked fish. That's like finding out the prize in the bottom of a box of Lucky Charms is a prescription for Lipitor.
Sitting in front of the TV growing up, I watched black-and-white reruns from the 1950s when husbands came home from work, ate an obscene meal of beef and died of congestive heart failure before they retired. I thought that's how the world worked.
It was. So when did things change?
I blame doctors, aging Baby Boomers, color television and quite possibly my wife. When we both order a salad, the waitress always brings her the light dressing. Of course, the waitress doesn't know the Fat-Free Strawberry Ranch Jubilee dressing is mine until my wife points and laughs.
Standing at the counter of a barbecue restaurant, I scanned the big wall menu looking for something healthy.
Brisket. Pork. Barnyard sqeezins. Nope. Nothing here.
"How lean's the beef?" I asked the girl taking orders. She smiled.
"It's brisket," she said.
Yeah, stupid question.
"Got any steamed vegetables?"
My wife smiled, ordered brisket and cheese-covered mashed potatoes and ate them in front of me.
Oh, well. At least I'll be alive tomorrow.
