Tongue-In-Cheek … Foot-In-Mouth

It’s hard to figure out exactly what “fancy food” is; given the term has different meanings to different people. A few folks would agree that eating sushi, for example, is eating ” fancy food,” while the vast majority of us, to include dull-witted rock formations, realize that eating sushi is eating RAW FISH, also known in competitive sports fishing circles as “bait.” And I find it absolutely amazing that people in 2007 will consider consuming raw fish because we now—follow me closely—have FIRE, which was given to us by our knuckle-Dragging Neanderthal ancestors who discovered fire so that they could cook brontosaurus brisket. And you should use fire to cook your food too, that is, unless of course, you want a tapeworm setting up housekeeping in your large intestine! I’m not particularly partial to pesky parasites, so pass the lighter fluid and matches.

Look, I’m a simple guy at heart, or to be more anatomically accurate for this column, “a simple guy at stomach,” because everybody knows the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. And therefore I like simple COOKED non-fancy foods such as Kentucky Fried Chicken, because chicken tastes good; I can distinguish chicken at a glance, and fried chicken—much like anything else fried, to include raw fish, which if you we to fry raw fish it would NOT be raw and therefore edible—tastes great. So if you do the below cooking calculus you will come to the following KFC conclusion:
Chicken (which I like) + Frying (which I also like) = something I like!
Therefore, being an uncomplicated food kind of guy, when it comes to a potential meal, as long as it does NOT break any of my three cardinal caloric core codes: (1) it is NOT alive, (2) it is NOT looking at me, and (3) it is NOT trying to slither or slime its way off of my plate, then I’ll eat it, because I am a simple uncomplicated food kind of guy.

However, though my feelings for fancy food is famously unfavorable, for our 19th wedding anniversary, my wife wanted “a sit down supper for a change,” which I would soon find out roughly translated from “female speak” into “male speak” meant—“a strange looking meal which you will need to perform an autopsy on in order to identify exactly what it is before you put into your mouth, brought to you on a HUGE plate approximately the size of Ted Kennedy’s head, only slightly larger if you can believe that one, containing a VERY tiny portion of food which will require the assistance of a bloodhound and binoculars to locate, and because there is so little food you will use up more calories eating it than you will get from it, and when you are done your dinner you will be one fat molecule away from total starvation and forced to crawl on your hands and knees to the nearest KFC to inhale your bodyweight at the biscuit buffet.”
I went along with my wife’s fancy food choice because that’s the kind of guy I am. Of course, I’m using the phrase “that’s the kind of guy I am” in the sense that I’ve grown accustomed to having my you-know-what attached to my body in the original factory installed location without the help of duct tape. And when my wife is annoyed, she could teach Paul Bunyan a thing or two about swinging an axe, if you catch my drift.
At any rate, we get to this fancy French restaurant, and no sooner do I sit down do I realized we were in for some serious table trouble, because our tableware consisted of a knife, a fork, a spoon, and (ready?) a magnifying glass. My wife saw the familiar tsunami of sarcasm wash across my face as I eyeballed the silverware selection. But her gnashing of teeth reminded me that she DID NOT want me to make a complete spectacle out of myself in this fancy French restaurant, while at the same time embarrassing her. So, not wanting to have to become overly familiar with the legendary adhesive properties of duct tape as it pertains to re-attaching vitally important body parts back into their original factory installed location, I put my giant brain into gear and suggested our waiter serve us what he felt was a fancy French meal.
That was a severe food faux pas on my part, because if you allow a French waiter to place your order you will end up eating “escargot.” Now “Escargot,” for your unsophisticated slobs out there, and you know who you are, is fancy French language for “snails;” as in snails found on lawns trailing behind them slimy slime trails; snails which seconds after being placed on my enormous aircraft-carrier-sized plate broke ALL three of my cardinal caloric core codes by being alive, looking at me, and attempting to slither and slime their way off of my dish and head for the closest lawn where they belong, so I say “so long” to those slimy snails and their slimy trails as the slither and slime along to a lawn where they belong.

Sorry, I had a Doctor Seuss moment. I get a little crazy when talking about live slime-covered food containing eyeballs. Give me a minute to recompose myself. Okay, Bill, now, in with the good air, out with the bad. Go to that happy KFC place.

Anyway, luckily, thanks to my trusty magnifying glass, I was able to “cook” the snails like ants in a schoolyard. And to be honest, they tasted like chicken, which if you ask anyone who has ever eaten anything fancy like Tarantula Tongue Tiramisu will tell you it tastes like chicken. If this is the case, then why don’t we all just eat CHICKEN and stop this exotic fancy food foolishness!

As for me, I will always remember that the fancier the food, the more people handled it, and the more people handled it, the less I want to eat it, because the more people who handle it, the greater the chances someone will jam their finger into their ear, wiggle it around, and then touch my pâté de foie gras, which is fancy French talk for “goose liver.” But a lot of you wouldn’t notice the coating of earwax on your pâté de foie gras to begin with, because regular pâté de foie gras already comes complete with its very own waxy sheen. And if you weren’t such an unsophisticated slob, and you know who you are, then you would be familiar with such fancy French food.

Okay, well, I have to go. My wife wants to eat at YET another fancy French restaurant. So I’ll see you at KFC around 9:30 PM. I’ll be the unsophisticated slob with his head firmly wedged in the tub of gravy.