The Art of Eating in These United States or Why My Husband has to Order Meatloaf Out

One of my favorites memories is eating sushi in Texas.  Yes, that Texas.  The red meat state.  Steven and I were meeting a fifth generation Texan for dinner.  This well-do do, successful business man left his over-the-top self-confidence back at the ranch.  Poor fellow didn’t know what to make of it all and probably would have preferred some chicken fried steak - Texas fare I tried only once, and only so I could say I did.  I wasn’t sure a Jersey Girl was genetically capable of digesting the stuff (Yes, Nosey, she is, but she doesn't want to).

Growing up in middle class 1960 America made for a rather boring culinary experience.  The variety of foods, like the family budget was limited. Baked chicken parts, fish sticks, sausage, meatloaf, the typical meat-vegetable-potatoes variety except for the high holidays and Thursday night spaghetti. In fairness to my parents I should note that I was a finicky eater, a very finicky eater, whose favorite condiment was ketchup - lots of ketchup.   On just about everything, especially the meatloaf.

Besides predictable variety in the diet, we could also be certain that our meal was never undercooked.  Mom had a very real fear of trichinosis.  Turns out she had an elementary school teacher who suffered from it.  Modern food preparation techniques and agricultural science aside, meats had to be cooked on the well-done-and-dry side.  To this day, my siblings and I ask, “Is it done yet?", as we peer into the oven and stare at the roasting bird or pig and expect to somehow divine the answer.

When I was a preteen, grandmother tried to get me to try shrimp and cocktail sauce.  She promised I would like it.  She was right.  "Try the mushrooms," she suggested. "You'll like them."  She was right.  But I drew the line. Every year at annual clam-bake offered by my father's employer, I dipped pulled roasted chicken in clarified butter while everyone around me dipped lobster.  There was no way I was going to eat that thing.

Then, skinny, finicky me met Steven, my not yet handsome husband - to clarify, he was handsome, but not my husband.  Yet.  Steven asked me to lunch one January afternoon.  We were both college students working the interim session at Lafayette College.  I was in the biology department’s laboratory annex breeding fruit flies like crazy.  Again to clarify: the flies were breeding, I was merely moving them from vial to vial.  Steven was photographing metal samples with the metallurgy department’s scanning electron microscope that for some reason was housed in the biology building.

Lunch, he told me would be tuna salad.  He would be making it in the SAE house kitchen.  I wasn't scared of the kitchen, not with their commercial dish-washing system.  But let’s get a few things on the table, so to say.  To me tuna salad meant tuna with mayo and maybe celery.  I don’t like tuna.  I don’t like mayo and I don’t like celery.  But I did like Steven.  A lot.  So I went along with his plan, mentally preparing to take a few nibbles and spend the rest of the afternoon wondering about the caloric value of fruit flies.  Well, turns out Steven Gage tuna salad was a shocker.  Tuna, yes but with raisins and apples and pecans and dressing and oh so good that I didn’t notice the celery seed. That was a first epicurean eating experience with Steven Gage.  

Now 30 years and eight states later my culinary tastes (and waistband) have developed considerably. I long ago gave into eating the occasional lobster. Two years ago, I even tried the scallops.  Yummy.  So tonight, I’ll have the vegetable pakoras and raita and shrimp coconut korma.  And Steven?  He'll have the meatloaf because his wife ran out of ketchup years ago.