"I'm Not a Short Order Cook" -- Linda Thomas

Does anyone have odd things that they take special note of? For instance, maybe you're especially aware of how clean peoples' shoe strings are when walking down the street, something mundane like that. Well, ever since I was a kid, I always paid special note to how people eat. Figures right? Vince paying special attention to food -- who'd have thunk it? Touche. While we're on the subject, I also take notice of quirky ways people cook, too. I do all of this because I find it amusing. Whether the habits are annoying, outrageous or puzzling I find it all amusing.


For instance, right now, I'm a house guest right now, staying with two gracious childhood friends. Both of whom have ridiculous palates. My boy Gee for instance, doesn't like tomatoes or ketchup, but eats spaghetti 5 days a week. Is that not ridiculous? There's a whole host of things that he doesn't eat. His list of no-no's is as long and trivial as a 7-year-old child's would be. Sadly, I've committed his capricious list to my failing memory because I cook a lot and Gee will hit you with comments like these, "Awwwww V, you put mushrooms in this?! V, I don't like mushrooms." That's when I briefly take a break from slaving over the stove to apologize for confusing mushrooms with some other food. Usually I'll pop my head out of the kitchen to see Gee with a grimace on his face as he picks whatever it is out of the dish or scrapes something of his bread. It's downright comical.

Then we have my man Chuck, whose palette is just as ridiculous because he's on the other end of the spectrum. He makes these wild concoctions that don't even sound right in theory, so I'm sure they can't taste any good. One time I saw him preparing a turkey sandwich with the following ingredients: American cheese, pepperjack cheese, provolone cheese, horseradish, mayo, mustard, salt, pepper, seasoning salt and adobo. What?! I mean, what was left to put on it? I thought he was gonna start sprinkling pencil shavings on it.

There was another time we went to this Jewish deli in Rockville called Eat'zit. They have every type of meat, cheese, spread and bread you can think of. This cause Chuck's raging taste buds to hyperventilate and he lost it...He just went buckwild. Here is an actual transcript from his order

Server: "Hello sir, what can I get for you today?"
Charles: "Yeah, let me get a sandwich with ummm..."
"Lots to choose from, huh sir? Why don't we start with what bread you want" (if he only knew)
"OK let me get Ciabata on the bottom and a pesto tortilla wrap on the top"
Me: "Chuck what are you doing?"
"Yo, just chill. I'm gonna put you on."
"Sir, I don't know if that bread combination is feasible. It's very unorthodox."
"Trust me. Aight, now for the meat let me get some turkey, some ham, some roast beef, throw a lil salami on that bad boy, and some prosciutto, some bologna. You got any liverwurst back there? Some of that, too. American cheese, Muenster cheese, mozzarella, blue cheese, feta cheese. yall got goat cheese back there? aight hook that up. lettuce, tomato, cabbage, fresh rosemary. Squirt some lemon and lime on that bad boy."
"Wait sir, this is ridiculous. Look at my counter, it's a mess. I beg you to to regain your wits and end this shameful combination. Let's just call it a day, OK?"
"Aight, drip some chocolate sauce on it and we got a deal."

He's the worse. But what about the way people eat?

My younger sis Priscilla, a grown 24-year-old woman, can't eat any finger foods without food juice, crumbs or sauce engulfing her hands, plus she eats as slow as molassess and only chews on one side of her mouth. Even still, everytime my older sister Lyd and I go out to eat, she will inevitable drip something on her shirt and have to feverishly work to wipe it off before the stain sets. Making it worse, she usually accompanies the dripped sauce on her shirt with some lame exclamation like, "FOOEY!"

My big cousin Jason hummed when he ate. It'd be like the early 90s and he's humming "I Want To Sex You Up" while he chewing a mouthful of scrambled eggs. My cousin Ryan, Jason's younger brother -- only at hot dogs from about 6-10 years-old and he ate each hot dog in two bites. He'd bite off one half and shove it to the right side of his mouth and then shove the rest in the left side of his mouth and sit there looking ridiculous.

But at least he was a kid. My boys and I were visiting friends in NYC about 4 or 5 years ago and my dude Nisan, who was about 24-years-old at the time, had an experience at Ray's Famous in the Village. We're all standing there eating out slices like civilized people, when we turn to look at Ni and he has pepperoni juice dripping down his albino forearms. It was sad and hilarious.

Pops is disgusting. He does things like make turkey sandwiches, then take a knife and continuously add Miracle Whip to the tip of the sandwich. Which means that the bottle of Whip is riddled with his saliva. He also does weird things like grab a 2 liter of Pepsi out the fridge, fill a glass up with ice and then pour about 2 ounces of Pepsi, drink it down, then pour two more ounces. It had something to do with the temperature of the soda cascading over the ice. It was weird. He also had odd and completely wild cooking habits. My sis Lyd reminded me of one yesterday when text'd me about how Pops used to a PAINT SCRAPER to chop up the steak for cheesesteaks. Here's an except from her text: Dude, I was just thinking....Have you ever paid real attention to Daddy's cooking habits? Like...Has it ever occurred to you that he chopped up meat for steak sandwiches w/PAINT SCRAPERS! Since when is that a cooking utensil??!!? I had a taste for a steak sandwich & I was going to hunt for the steak "fillet" cuts...Then I was like...Man I don't have the "choppers"...LOL As my mind races to figure where I can cop them...I realize they were "semi-rusty" paint scrapers....

It's sad, but true. As a matter of fact I can remember one time getting restless for dinner and going down to the basement to ask Pops what was up with the goods...Only to find him down there sharpening the blade on his paint scraper to get, as he put it, "extra traction for this chop action."

My mother was bad too, but at least she had a reason. My lil bro Adam, we call him A-Easy these days, had really bad asthma back in the day and it made him allergic to almost everything. He couldn't eat any dairy products. No cheese, no milk, no butter, nothing. So Mom would do really crazy things that would adversely affect the whole family, just to appease Adam. Like make cookies with orange juice instead of milk. I can't tell you how disgusting it was. What's foul, though, is that Mom had this saying, "I'm not a short order cook." She'd use it whenever one of her five children would complain about something she made. Like maybe I would say, "Awww Mom, not kelbasa again! I can't stand polish sausage." To which she'd reply, "Oh please boy! Do you think I have time to cater to each and every one of your needs? Please! I'm cooking for 7 people here and 'I'm not a short order cook', so deal with it!" But I ask the jury: wouldn't making chocolate chip cookies with orange juice to accommodate one child and torture four others be considered a dumbfounding example short order cooking?

But by far, the most zany dude ever when it comes to food was and, to an extent, still is my man Vino. We call him Vino because back in the day, before he put on that married-man-weight, he resembled a wino. Anyways, Vino is about 5'2 or 5'3 and he always wore huge coats, especially during those frigid Buffalo winters. His penchant for rocking oversized trench-coats added to his wino look, as well. But the thing is that he used to keep the most unfathomable things in his trench coat pockets. I mean, he was the type of dude to pull a clock-radio out of one of his pockets. But what used to kill me is the food related items. Like spoons and forks. Not plastic spoons and forks he got from KFC, real-life silverware, with dry cream o' brocoli soup on it. And not just eating spoons either, I mean, this dude would pull out, like spoons you can stir Kool-Aid with. He always had some candy, too. Gummy bears were his thing. So you'd be standing next to this little grown man pulling gummy bears out of his trench coat pocket. Still, nothing was more outrageous than one time when we were all in a car and all of sudden we Vino starts fidgeting in his seat and we here this rustling sound...The next thing you know Vino is stuffing Salt & Vinegar potato chips in his mouth. So, we ask him to see the bag and he pulls out a whole family size bag! Not a Big Grab...A real bag of chips -- the kind that cost $2.00. We couldn't believe it.

Food and people, we have fun together don't we?