Surviving Hummus

My family is trying to kill me…  one healthy meal at a time.

I’ve got a daughter who has become uber-healthy. While I respect her dedication and discipline, I have a problem with it creeping onto my plate. My notion of healthy living is running more so that I can eat whatever crap I want.

My parade toward death started innocently enough. With granola. That’s how they get you, right? They offer you something you like – almonds, oats, nuts, honey, and just enough sweet bits to tie it all together into a happy, delicious treat. Then slowly it morphs. It becomes good for you. Gone are the sweet bits; replaced with freeze-dried fruits that are a shell of themselves because they’ve had their natural sweetness squeezed out of them. All that’s left is the crusty husk… like me.

Still I eat it. I eat it because things that were the source of life: nachos, Oreos, M & M’s, and pre-wrapped synthetic goodness seem to have been removed from our pantry. I miss my sweet and salty friends. They were the sustenance of my youth. I weep for them.

The desolation that our refrigerator has become is truly abhorrent. I barely have the resolve to open its air-tight door and hear the floooth of disappointment. My heart sinks with the sound of the broken seal.

Where is the cheese?

Green, green, green. Was man truly meant to eat green with every meal? I don’t mind the occasional salad, but unless you dress it up, green things are completely subpar on the taste side. The only thing particularly manly that comes from green veggies is the resultant gas. Lettuce and broccoli are like jet fuel but when the plane starts bouncing down the runway, we get in trouble. It’s not fair. Nature is nature, you feed a man a leaf and you have to be ready for the leaf to be turned over… and over… and over.

veg

By far the biggest problem in the fridge is hummus. What the heck is hummus? I’ve never seen a chickpea; it has the consistency of paste and no taste – why would we consider it a food source? Hummus has more relevance as mortar than food. If you can erect a cinder block wall with it, please don’t serve it to me! I don’t care what flavor they add to it, when I crack the lid all I can see is the poop emoji staring up at me.

We also seem to be dabbling in the latest craze to assault the American male: quinoa. I can’t even say it, why would I eat it? I thought it was just some made up crap given to us by the flower children who pushed smoothies on us a few years ago. Since I had no idea what this quinoa was, I did some research and found quinoa comes to us from South America. May I remind you that the last mass produced crop the South Americans exported to us was from the coca plant and now we have an entire government agency trying to push that back over the border. Shouldn’t that serve as a lesson?

If there is a point here, it is that a man was meant to live on grease, pizza, and red meat – not beans and sprouts. I know there are some who have chosen a green path and while I don’t understand their earthy, crunchiness, I can look the other way. Most real mean can’t be pulled into vegetableness. It is simply unnatural! I have survived hummus thus far, but I fear the quinoa might be the tipping point.

God gave all his chillens taste buds for a reason.

I just want a little corner of the fridge and one shelf in the pantry reserved for stuff that will clog my arteries. Is that too much to ask?

 

 

 

Gone Reading

I’ve been “Gone Reading” for a few months. Hey, I know I’m a nerd… but I like to read. A lot. Have you ever been so intent on a book or a book series that the real world disappears as you immerse yourself in the world created by words?

My whole family reads. In fact, the TV is rarely on in our home but we can all often be found together in the den with books. Our beach vacations consist of sun, sand, and words. I felt a little sorry for my daughter’s boyfriend who came with us last year and looked bored after a couple of days. But hey, you wanna date my daughter, pick up a book kid…

booksI was trying to think of the books that really sucked me in over the years. The first was probably The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. I devoured it and then its much-larger cousins: The Lord of the Rings. I think the escape to another time and another world was what I found alluring. I stayed in the science fiction/fantasy genre for a little while but I had great English teachers in high school who expanded my horizons. They shared classics like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Great Gatsby, and The Grapes of Wrath. One introduced me to Charles Dickens through Great Expectations and I was hooked. I’ve read most of his works and consider David Copperfield my favorite. I’m trying to forget it right now so I can pick it up and be lost in it again. There’s nothing like the first time you read a classic.

I went through a Leon Uris phase. I devoured one John Grisham, Congo, but the ending was so disappointing that I vowed never to read another of his books. War and Peace started me down a Russian literature path that I followed for a while. There is a reason it is often called the best novel of all time. After 1400 pages I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the characters. My wife talked me into Les Miserables and some Jane Austen. I admit, she is a master.

I’ve plowed through most of the top 100 novel lists – of course, some I liked and some I didn’t.

I’ve tried to keep up with modern writers also. Great books such as: The Book Thief, The Goldfinch, All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, The Kite Runner, and A Man Called Ove.

Most recently, my daughter decided I need to read a series and she hid the book I was reading and replaced it with A Game of Thrones, by George RR Martin. Maybe it’s the RR, but I got completely lost in the story like in the Hobbit days. I became utterly useless to my family. For two months, I was gone reading again. I ignored projects and commitments. Our house fell in disrepair and I had very little social interaction except at work.

Five books, 5216 pages, and two months later, I’ve caught up with him and now I’m angry. Seriously – you can’t finish the story in over 5000 pages? He left us in the middle of several wars, plots and subplots, romances, uprisings, and no resolution! CURSE YOU, GEORGE RR MARTIN!!!! Please finish the next book without killing another Stark!

Soothing tones….

What are your favorite books and have there been some that have sent you, “Gone Reading”?

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