Revisiting the Block of Noodles

College culinary life is notoriously boring. Us students are pegged ramen-scarfing kitchen degenerates. Though some undergraduates may refute this often unfair claim, I wear the stereotype with honor. I love those blocks of dried noodles that make some cringe.

Those orange bags and their contents have become as infamous in our culture as my peers’ nutritional habits. But let’s take another look at the block: With ten cents and the time it takes to boil two cups of water plus three minutes, you have a big bowl of noodles, a canvas on which to build your gastronomic sculpture. I’ll add my own mix of spices in with that ambiguous, salty yellow powder.  Or spinach, celery, cilantro, scallions, chopped onions, corn. Really, people add whatever it takes to make this cheap slop of noodles feel like a full meal. These add-ins are the chromed out spinning rims on my rusted Buick of a banquet. 

In fact, “ramen” doesn’t refer specifically to its manifestation as a bagged, tangled hunk. It’s actually a style of Japanese noodle made from wheat, water, salt, and an alkaline powder called kansui which gives the noodles their color and firmness. People serve the noodles in a fish broth seasoned with soy sauce and soy paste called miso and topped with any number of goods: pork, sea weed, scallions, onions, sometimes even corn. Hmm, sounds familiar. It’s not just food for the over-studied masses. Maybe ramen deserves a little more respect than we afford it.

The Multicultural Progressive

Telling you that I love free food seems as pointless as telling you I love puppies. Of course I do! What student doesn’t? However, it takes a certain suspension of shame to take advantage of free food the way Neva and I do. The mention of a freegan opportunity wrests our eye lids wide open with the same wonder-eyed look that came across my face when I first gazed upon Splash Mountain after getting my picture taken with Goofy.

So when we heard about the Ryle Hall multicultural progressive dinner held this past Sunday, our eyeballs almost fell out of their sockets. The event, put on by Ryle’s Residence Life team, consisted of Asian, Pan-African, and Latin American cuisine, all provided (for free!) along with short cultural presentations and performances. We followed our guide to different lounges in this residence building, where we piled our plates high and suffered through the often underdeveloped presentations.

The Asian station came first. We ate beef dumplings and crab Rangoon, both catered by an American-Chinese restaurant and home-made fried rice. The portion sizes were good, given that we still had two more plates of food awaiting us. “Chinese food is actually nothing like what you have on your plates,” the presenter began. I turned to Neva and chuckled. She leaned in and whispered, “Why don’t they just serve us authentic food.” I smiled, “Because they’re lazy, Neva!” We half-listened to the short presentation on Asian (well, mostly Chinese) culture and continued on to the next station, eager for a second plate-full.

At the Pan-African stop, we experienced home-made African dishes, several of which we had seen earlier at the African Student’s Association cultural show, Sights and Sounds. I filled my plate with scrumptiously spiced grilled chicken drum sticks, tender, moist beef medallions served in a thick, stew-like sauce, and sweet fried plantains. The ASA students then put on a shortened version of a Sights and Sounds sketch as we giddily broke into our second plate of freegan fare.

In our final stop, the Latin American students disappointed us with food catered by a mediocre Tex-Mex joint in town. Not surprisingly, most of the food had been gobbled away by the earlier two groups that had passed through this station. I resorted to make-shift nachos with chips, salsa cold refried beans and guacamole composed solely of avocado, sour cream and salt.

Besides the Pan-African fare, the food in this progressive dinner left much to be desired. However, it was free! And we came out of the event uncomfortably full. In my eyes, that’s the sign of a successful free meal.

The Secret to Quesadillas

Quesadillas are simple. Top Ramen simple. In its most essential form, it’s cheese folded into a tortilla and then melted. Sure, we can get fancy with meets and sauces. Don’t go too crazy with the toppings or you’ll ruin the entire thing! You want tomatoes? You want onions? You want cilantro, a squirt of lime and loads of meaty delight? That’s a Taco, you’ve overshot the goal. Bring it back a little.

Taco bell charges $3.50 for this exercise in basic motor skills. Screw those money-gorging sirens. Avoid their song. I promise you, the creamy jalapeño sauce isn’t worth it.

The perfect quesadilla is built, not born. And if you want your sky scraper to stand, you build with steal.

Lesson 1- Flour tortillas are bullshit: Don’t be deceived by their smooth, white exterior. They’re just oversized communion wafers, unworthy of your quesadilla. Corn’s the only way to ride. These tortillas taste better, but more importantly, they fry better. (Think corn tortilla chips vs. flour tortilla chips; one hoists salsa proudly on the salted savor of the swinging stalks of Iowa and the other tastes like dirt.)

Lesson 2- If it says “Kraft” it’s not good enough: I don’t care about the enticing labels the makers of American cheese singles place on their products to convince you of their authentic ethnicity. The “Mexican” in “Mexican Blend Shredded Cheese” is a filthy lie. Buy queso chihuahua instead. This is a Mexican style cheese specifically made for its melting powers. So it’s perfect for making queso dip or perhaps for liquefying within the confines of a tortilla pocket.

Lesson 3- Grate your shit: Large slices of cheese take longer to melt, which means you’re more likely to end up with a burnt shell. Be smart with your cheese. Whether you use a little or whether you like your ‘dillas fat and oozy, always grate.

Lesson 4- Did you really just say microwave? No, you didn’t. Because you know better. And don’t you dare dry-pan that sucker either. Frying is the only way to go. See, what you’re quesadilla needs is a nice hot oil bath. Don’t be afraid to put on the moves. If you take care of it, it’ll take very good care of your taste buds. Cook until your shell is evenly golden-brown.

Lesson 5- Get spicy: I like to add a little chili powder and I’d never forget the onion salt. Get creative to find your spice happy place.

Lesson 6- Never settle for one: This is America. Gluttony is essentially a requirement for citizenship.

Lesson 7- Always…ALWAYS! Remember to enjoy!

Guacamole Temper Tantrum

Last year, I taught my roommate, Jared, how to make Guacamole. Which isn’t to say that I taught him much at all. Really, I just should him how easy it is to mash 6 ingredients together. The hardest part is picking avocados at the right level of maturity. After that, if you can use a knife and you know how to mix and mash, Guacamole’s a snap.

Now Jared makes this dip for every occasion. Every potluck dinner (and there are plenty end-of-semester potlucks), he goes to the store, buys four avocados, two tomatoes, a lime, a jalapeño, and a white onion and a bundle of cilantro. He cuts up his veggies, adds lime juice, salt, a little pepper, and a few shakes of chili powder. Then, he mushes the mix together with his hands (just as I do it) and he’s off.  He’ll come back with a smile on his face and he’ll brag to me, “Everyone loved the guacamole.” Of course they did! Who doesn’t love fresh guac?!

Jared’s mother once jokingly reproached me, “why’d you teach him how to make guacamole? Now every time he’s home he has to make some. It’s expensive to buy all of those ingredients!” I laughed and looked over at Jared, his head turned down smiling.

“Well,” I responded, “There’s nothing like home-made guacamole!”

So what’s the problem? It’s a selfish one: I never get to see much of the guac! Sure, he bought the ingredients, he cut them up (usually with a steak knife, just to up the challenge) and he stained his fingers green with avo slime. Regardless, my sense of entitlement out-competes logic. I taught him, right? Don’t I deserve some amount of guac royalties, owed to me for the rest of my life plus 70 years? If he makes the green dip for his wedding, I want a Tupperware full of the goods and a bag of tortilla chips with my invitation. If his geriatric friends invite him over for a game of bridge and he decides to mash some avocadoes up for the occasion, he better send me some in the mail so I can spoon the slop up before eating my pudding. That’s that.

I love that he’s turned my recipe into his specialty, but I want it to mean more guac for me, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. It’s the toddler in me still lingering around.

It’s Definitely Delivery

Ordering in will be my down-fall. What convenience, I call a number, recite another number off of a piece of plastic and within half an hour, a blank expression hands my food to me through my own front door with another hand extended out expecting a tip. I never have to leave my home. Let me ride this couch to the end of time! Let the crevice in the couch grow until I can no longer stand! Delivery has made the ultimate sedentary life-style possible.

But wait! I’ve devised a way to improve this system further. Why do I have to get off the couch at all? I don’t want to walk across the sauce-stained carpet and mess with pesky dead bolts to pick up my pizza. My fingers are far too greasy to get any sort of grip on the doorknob. It’s too hard! I’m already willing to give Jimmy John’s full access to my checking account. Amazon saves all of the information necessary to feed from my line of credit. Advertisements invade our homes to the point that they’re quoted more than books over the dinner table. So what does it matter if I give Domino’s a copy of my house key? 

Walk right up to my door and step right in.

What? You say you bring me a disk of processed white carbs drenched in preservative-laced tomato sauce and globs of milk fat? Bring that shit over here! I’m probably watching through every season of King of the Hill on Netflix. I’ve forgotten what “fresh air” means and my goal is to never see my knees again. Frankly, that bendy joint does nothing useful for me anymore. This couch is it for me, delivery boy. Slap that $5.99 feast on my belly tray and I’ll have it in me by the end of this episode!

Don’t forget to lock the door on your way out!

Honey Mustard

            Honey mustard: Its peculiarity doesn’t lie in the melding of sweet and spicy or in its designation as a dipping sauce, spread, AND salad dressing. It’s in this sauce’s sheer variety. Different ranch dressings differ slightly in taste and consistency, but in the end, ranch is just ranch. It’s white, specked with spices and it tastes like only ranch can. Hidden Valley tastes cheep while home-made ranch can be a cathartic experience. However, it’s still frickin’ ranch! Honey mustard, on the other hand, can seem to make up its mind about who exactly she is. Sometimes, the sauce is vaguely sweet, with a nice, toned down mustard kick, other times the thick, sticky mess would hold the name, “mustard honey” much more appropriately. Still, in other instances, what’s called “honey mustard” resembles neither part of its composite name (wtf?). No one seems to agree. What parts mustard and honey constitutes the right ratio? What exactly makes honey mustard?

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs with a Puerto Rican family. That means rice and beans. Lots of rice and beans. And being embarrassed when my mom would talk to me in Spanish as I peered through Captain Underpants in the gym on my elementary school book fair days. And riding my bike by the ticky tacky homes on a blistering summer day, chasing down the sound of “Do Your Ears Hang Low” ringing in the air. And lots of ignorant Mexican jokes that didn’t apply to my heritage at all. Once, a good friend’s mother asked me if Puerto Ricans ate tacos and burritos. I had to keep myself from screaming at this otherwise kind woman (mainly because I was sitting next to her daughter in the back of her van. “No, tacos and burritos are more boarder food. Its Tex-Mex. Puerto Rican food is very different.”  

Being Latino in a well-off, predominantly white suburb parallels being an 18^th century time-traveler working management at Best Buy. I learned that my home culture and my school culture were very different, but who the hell was I? Where did I actually fit? My mom would often bash American cuisine and cultural idiosyncrasies. “We aren’t Irish, why would we celebrate St. Patrick’s day?” She’d question when March came around. “These Americans don’t know anything about dinner parties. They play board games all night and everyone’s out the door by 10:00.” But her “us and them” dialogue conflicted strongly with my grade school kid desires to fit in with my peers, whose home lives seemed so foreign to me.

Throughout High School, I played around with the recipe. I’d listen to Reggaeton to feel in touch with my roots. I learned the basic steps of merengue and salsa at quinceañeras by reluctantly dancing with the older women whose husbands would rather sit and converse. These steps became a way to impress my friends with my ethnic-ness, convincing the skeptics about my roots despite my pale skin. Puerto Rican culture became my honey. I spent my four years and Naperville Central High School testing how much of it to mix into the mustard seed suburban culture I’d learned in school. Other students went all out. They became their home cultures fully, wearing flags on their clothing, spackling their vocabulary with Spanish phrases, or working comments about their exotic escapades into every conversation. As high school trudged on I realized that I only need a dab of honey. Representing my family’s culture is important and simply sharing my knowledge with others at appropriate times is sufficient. After all, my culture, the culture of my peers and the people who’ve surrounded me for most of my life, is that of the middle suburban class. I’m honey mustard. Mostly mustard (with a dab of something different).

The Perfect Grilled Cheese

The perfect grilled cheese is easy to achieve. The secret? Heirloom tomatoes! These non-commercial variations of the fruit tend to be a little sweater, which contrasts well with the salty sliced cheese. Heirlooms vary in flavor between strains, so get ready for a taste adventure! If you don’t have access to a farmer’s market or specialty supermarket that carries these coveted fruits, slice up some Roma tomatoes instead.

Nestle the tomato wheels between two slices of your favorite cheddar cheese on two slices of wheat bread. Why wheat? Am I suddenly health conscious? Of course not. Wheat bread tastes better when steeped and fried in oil. But wait! Don’t close that ‘wich up yet. Sprinkle some onion salt and cumin powder over the tomatoes for a tasty twist.

Cover the bottom of a pan in a thin layer of your desired frying oil. Canola is a nice, fairly healthy option, but coconut oil provides a nicer flavor. Set the range to medium and heat the oil with one minced clove of garlic and a pinch or two of cumin seed. Watch the pan carefully. You don’t want the garlic to burn, leaving your sandwich with a resiny bite. Heat for five minutes and remove the garlic and seeds from your pan to the best of your abilities. To make your life a little easier, you could use garlic pounder and ground cumin instead.  Place your sandwich in the pan and turn the heat up to medium-high. Cover the pan to insure that the tomatoes warm sufficiently and that the cheese melts fully before your bread turns into a hunk of oil-sodden charcoal.

From here, continue as you would with any old, Kaft American slice-tainted grilled cheese. Fry each side of the sandwich until its golden brown, plop it on your plate, and enjoy it’s delightful simplicity. 

Linner Time

Family habits come and go, but one tradition remained strong in the Suarez household throughout my childhood: linner. When 3:00 came around on a Sunday afternoon, my parents became restless. The house stirred as they finally hopping in the shower after a noon spent with Time Magazine sipping on a fresh roast. “Get ready, it’s time to eat!” My mom’s voice echoed through the house, shaking the gunk still sticking to the corners of my eyes. My brother, Daniel, would fight for a few more minutes in bed, but my mom’s endured nagging always brought him to a grunting stand. On any mid-afternoon weekend’s end, Hunger struck the Suarez clan hard. 

Most families enjoy special nights out at Olive Garden or Outback once in a while, usually on a Friday or Saturday night. Endless breadsticks and bloomin’ onions become short-lived monuments to the week’s end. Chatter reverberates from salad plates and wine glasses in dining rooms brimming with fork-stuffed faces.  We had a different idea of this sacred suburban tradition: timing is everything. Sunday linner is the product of my dad’s abhorrence for waiting lists and my mom’s questionable eatery manners. So there are rules: 1) Wait out the weekend rush and beat out the dinner rush. Friday nights are good for pizza, but avoid the new Italian food joint. 2) Evade the church-goers. Those shiny-shoed, kaki-sporting smiles still high on halleluiahs clear out by 2:00 pm. And 3) If you aren’t in the car by 3:00, you don’t eat. When mom says its linner time, you better turn off the Xbox, grab the least smelly pair of jeans out of hamper purgatory and dart into the back seat of dad’s CRV.

For most middleclass suburbanites, mid-afternoon on the day of rest is for lazing around the football game or enjoying Scrabble with the folks while the smell of green bean casserole rolls through the sun-mottled rooms of home sweet home. For us, this meant empty restaurants and patient waiters. No running between bistros, spending two hours for a place with a wait time of less than one. No spit in our food when mom sends the prime rib back three times because it isn’t rare enough (true story). We sit in our booth thrones, in an empty dining room talking as loud as we please about the week past. The food is always hasty and hot and the flow of diet coke refills is endless. Our cups never go dry.

Free Food! At the ASA's Sights and Sounds

Food tastes best when it’s earned: This is false. There is, in fact, such thing as a free lunch. And breakfast. And dinner too. Neva Sheaffer lives by this mantra. “Do you know what a freegan is?” She once asked me in a string of twelve text messages (we’ve built up a pen-palesque relationship through texting). I had no idea. According to freegan.info, “Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumptional economy and minimal consumption of resources.” In other words, these individuals love free food.

“When does this end?” I groaned at Neva. We’d been standing for an hour and a half at the back of a room filled with shifting bodies, all sneaking looks toward the buffet at the back. The African Student’s Association romped across the stage for mostly unamused eyes. Pain rung my ankles and my calves became stiff clumps of dirt. Neva hogged a concrete column, shooting me a smile as she leaned, relieving the weight on her feet.

“Soon, I hope.” She grabbed my arm and nudged me closer to the food line. We laughed silently through our teeth, too scared to look around for dirty looks from other audience members.

Finally, the show ended and the master of ceremonies announced the food protocol. “Everyone who had to stand in the back through the show, we appreciate your commitment. You’ll get to eat first.” Our faces contorted, giving away our absurd level of excitement. We walked down past gleaming buffet trays filled with homemade dishes from all over Africa. “Would you like some of this?” Of course, I’d love to try some! “Any of that?” Yes, heap that on my plate. At the end of the line, my Dixie plate looked like an over-worked mule struggling to keep its spine from snapping.

We vacuumed down fork-fulls of plantains, spiced beef stew, and red rice, savoring the food as much as we did its freeness. No one bothered to even ask about the dish’s names. We simply ate, high with the feeling that, in some way, we’d beaten the system. After all, two hours in the standing room is a small price to pay for free food.ue relationship through textsionship through textss (we'a

Milkshakes!

Drinking milkshakes is a painful experience. This creamy concoction is wishfully served with a straw and yet, you’d have better luck baking a cake with a space heater. Anticipating your utter failure, the waiter will always bring you a spoon. And yet, I can never resist attempting to drink a shake the intended way: through a narrow, plastic tube. To actually succeed at this ordeal requires the resolve and endurance of a greasy politician contesting the presidential seat.

           

Now, once I’ve given up on these foolish pipe dreams, I pick up that spoon and scoop into the cold silk. While the worst milkshake amounts to nothing more than watered down ice cream and that pickled maraschino cherry slopped on top often holds less life than a cat floating in formaldehyde, the perfect shake is synecdoche for the perfect summer night spent taming the day’s sun burns with jokes among friends. It’s watching the freckles beginning to peel off a new love’s tender, maroon shoulders as your spoons clank together within the blooming glass cup that holds a sweetness between you. We trade smiles and spoon-fulls across the table, recounting tales of sun-basked triumphs. A milkshake is youth held frozen within velvety crystals. And the comfort it brings, the fragrant memories it conjures, is worth all the brain freezes. 

Comradery

            I did a terrible thing the other night. I threw all caution to the wind—well, to the hurricane—and resigned any notions of health, restraint, or decency that I may have once held. And, believe it or not, I learned something through the experience: Life is about rebellion. It’s about standing up and doing what’s wrong because it feels oh so right.

It’s about cheddar turkey sausages and peanut butter. No, not side by side, carefully kept segregated on a plate. Together. This is a food affair. This is a sultry desecration of the holy sanctity of food rite. And it was amazing.

I started off by throwing two Johnsonville cheddar turkey sausages onto the Foreman until those wieners wore black cloaks of charcoal. We’re talking seconds away from being ash, people. Carcinogens? What about them? I sliced those two magnificent meat scepters into wheels, seeping processed yellow cream like treacly sap from a sugar maple. A glob of honey peanut butter garnished my plate. Reluctant, I scooped the thick paste up with my first sausage wheel and brought the blasphemous concoction to my lips. The first bite flooded me with a single idea: companionship. These foods were meant to be together.  The salty-sweet butter enveloped that spicy morsel like a goose, keeping her egg warm. My chewing folded the cheese and meat into the peanut dough, bringing two lost friends closer than they’d ever been.

The contrast nourished some feeling of comradery, a vague remembrance of a time when heavily spiced and salted foods sustained the mob, when eating was a commodity and stuffing meat into your gullet rang through your body more vibrantly than the church bells ever could. In this place, I’m one amongst so many. I mean nothing alone. It’s the men and women sitting beside me that give me breadth.

I once cried, a tipsy slob, at the edge of my brother’s bed. The watches claimed 2:00 a.m. A girl I’d loved had just screamed words that once meant damnation into my ears. He held my hand as I writhed in my lonesome pity, dwelling on a night three years before when I had spent the dark away with her sitting at the edge of a river, watching the moonlight flow in place. My brother, normally stoic and unamused, cried with me.  

The Salt of Odin

My roommate and I live by a very simple food mantra: onion salt makes everything better. Everything. It’s magical flavor fairy dust, bringing salty bliss to every dish. And, as a college student, it’s a great way to spice up any cheap, poorly executed meal. Toss some on your popcorn, sprinkle it on a salad, pummel any bland plate in a hailstorm of onion salt. It will improve your life.

Stop what you’re doing. Forget all other plans you've set out for the day. They’re meaningless now. Go to your closest grocery provider, stumble impatiently into the spice isle, and pick up a shaker of onion salt. Throw the indicated amount of money at the cashier and sprint the hell out of there. Pat yourself on the back. You've done well. Take a minute to soak in the moment. From this point on, your life will be radically better, more significant. Now get back home and begin infusing yourself with the salt of Odin. You will continue this process until your muscles become jerky. Don’t settle for less.

Incorporating onion salt into your life is actually very easy. Just follow three simple steps. 1) Locate onion salt in the myriad of unorganized cabinets in your college apartment. If you’re like me, this is the most difficult step. 2) Fiercely slam the shaker against your counter top  Smash the sucker with all you've got. Don’t hold back. Onion salt has a pesky habit of aggregating into an unusable hunk. This tends to be infuriating. Step two reestablishes the salt’s powdery consistency and relieves the anger caused by this annoying penchant. 3) Open the shaker, invert, and salt your sustenance to taste.

 Several simple recipes can benefit from the addition of a little onion salt. It goes great on fried eggs or on sliced tomatoes with a little bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  One of my favorite recipes is cheese-less cheesy bread. Simply drizzle a little olive oil on some ciabatta bread and top it off with onion salt. The combo results in a distinctly cheesy flavor with much less saturated fat and cholesterol. Olive oil and onion salt also goes great on run-of-the-mill toast and provides a healthy alternative for butter or margarine. If you’re in the mood for a simple Mexican dish, grate Chihuahua melting cheese onto a yellow corn tortilla, fold, and pan fry in your favorite oil until the shell is crispy and golden-brown.  Top it off with onion salt and a little chili powder. Now feast on the perfect quesadilla.

You can use onion salt in place of table salt whenever possible. Get creative! Forget the irreparable damage to your arteries brought about by the dangerous spike in blood pressure that will occur if you actually take my advice. Live by the onion salt and you will achieve gustatory nirvana. 

Pairs Well: The Smiths and Chicken Salad

A few nights ago, I discovered The Smiths. Home from the bars, I stumbled into my fridge for a late night snack. My cravings fell upon a tub of store bought chicken salad. I set the mood with the multicolored Christmas lights strung around our living room and burrowed under my favorite fleece blanket on the couch. Not bothering with pesky dishes, which require washing, I dug my fork right into the store container.

Soon after, my roommate, Jared, joined the late-night pig out. He thumbed through his iPod, searching through his 20,000+ tracks for that one song that belonged to the moment. Suddenly, the room was filled with a sweet, melancholic melody. Morrissey’s voice danced with the dark romance of a cool night on the beach. I remember my summer, feet blanketed in the almost fridge Cancun sand, watching over the black desert of water, stained only by waves rippling through the moon’s light.  My brother and I stand quietly, contemplating the foreboding grandeur in front of us. Chills run down my neck. I look over at my brother. The moon shines just enough light on him for me to spot the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, catching the salty Ocean breeze.

           

“Oh my God, what is this?” I ask.

            “‘There is a Light that Never Goes Out,’” He responded.

As we let the music conduct our wondering minds, bursts of celery lashed their bitter juices over my tongue, complementing the sweet, fatty mayo (Celery is my favorite thing about chicken salad.) They send comforting waves across my thoughts, a reminder of my nights on the beach, where the water on my feet provided relief from the day’s lingering heat. Together, the chicken salad and the Smiths played out a sensual symphony. It was one of those rare moments in which you connect very intimately with art through a combination of mediums. Taste and sound meshed with the time of night and for four minutes and five seconds, we felt transcendent.

The Condiment Wars

“Skippy’s or Jif?”

“Jif,” I respond.

“Really? Everyone I knew growing up was all about Skippy’s.” Dana watches me spread Skippy’s and honey onto two slices of multigrain bread.

“And which one is more uppity?” I ask, my fingers now sticky with the butterscotch colored spread.

“Oh, Jif for sure,” Dana asserted.  For some reason, condiments bring up a particularly strong sense of brand loyalty in us. We swear by Heinz or Hutz. The Helman’s connoisseur cringes at the site of Kraft mayo in a friend’s fridge. Oh, but it doesn't stop there. We have stereotypes for those on the opposing team. Condiments have divided the nation, my friends. Forget political parties, in the United States, sure you may play for the red team or the blue team but there’s also French’s and Grey Poupon. We’re a nation drowning in brand name sauce. Who’s side do you play for? What’s your topping of choice?

We are Stuffed, Stomachache to Stomachache we Stand

Three slices of Sara Lee 45 Calories and Delightful multi-grain bread all spread thick with peanut butter and honey, store-bought chicken salad with dried cranberries and pecans, spicy pickles, half a plastic tray of black berries that I bought on a whim the other day, a pint of beer, a glass of orange juice, and all of this after a hefty plate of Mongolian stir fry. The diet bread is blatantly ironic in the face of such gluttony, and though it vaguely justifies my terrific binge, (at least in the logic-depraved depths of my food-addicted thoughts), those 45 calories do nothing for my hellish, early morning stomach ache.

I woke up full. Not satisfied, “yeah, I could go for some desert” full, but uncomfortable, “God, I feel worse than the time I ate those street vendor tacos in Ciudad Juárez” full. Why the squeamish, makeshift banquet parading as a midnight snack? Because I couldn’t resist. The fridge is a siren, its contents an irresistible song, and my sensible friends weren't around to tie me to the couch. I wage a war against food and of course, I fight for the rebels, the resistance! Unfortunately, the ruling Deep Fryer faction always finds a way to outwit me. But, alas! I’ll stand against the limp French fries and golden, dismembered chicken parts. With a Corelle plate as my shield and my trusty baguette sword, those edibles don’t stand a chance.