On Being A Connoisseur Of Fine Food

Now that I'm a quasi bachelor life has offered me opportunities few men can realize. The wife is off gallivanting around the Midwest doing whatever 68 year olds do. I've the run of the house, Dublin and Columbus, Ohio.

If I happened to be a millionaire life would be good. As it is, I'm a cheap skate about certain products, one being food. I'd eat dirt if it went well with ketchup. I grew up poor. As a kid we might have toast covered with Karo syrup for dinner and like it. I always went for the white kind; sometimes asked for seconds. For dessert we'd eat popcorn.

My spouse is the all-time greatest cook of the 20th and 21st centuries. Many are the times I've read and reread her recipes so that in circumstances like the one I'm in now I'll still be feasting on fine delicacies.

In the past week I've eaten not once, but twice, roast turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy and a side plate of spring peas. It's what we Iowans call comfort food and those are my favorites.

In addition, I've cooked Salisbury steak with the trimmings, chicken fried steak and roast beef. All magnificent.

In order for a quasi bachelor to become a gourmet it is necessary to start with the proper cooking utensils. In my case it's called a microwave. This tiny box just might rank only behind the automobile as the greatest invention ever created, especially for men.

Let us all refer back to my previous mention of foods I've prepared. Do you know one can go to Kroger's and buy a Banquet meal in a box with all these foodstuffs for only one lousy dollar? Yessiree Bob,(My apologies to Gabby Hayes) a complete turkey meal costs that little.

This begs the question: what goes into this stuff? People will go to fine, and not so fine, restaurants and spend ten or twelve dollars on such a meal.

I've chowed down on an 8 oz. Salisbury steak. I have to assume this piece of meat came from a cow don't I? Or, did it come from a bovine that had been lying around the rendering plant for a week?

As for the turkey, was it a turkey breast or was it made from it's feet, toenails included?

Peas are peas and corn is corn, huh? It's difficult to screw the consumer on these, maybe. The potatoes could have been left over from the Irish Famine of 1848 but they still taste like real spuds to me so not a problem.

Besides, the less I spend on food the more I can spend on more important items, like the new golf putter I purchased yesterday.

I am---the man!