Wednesday's Words for July 26, 2017

This passed weekend, my husband—out of the blue, mind you—said something very un-David-like to me. He said, “I do believe I’ve become somewhat of a foodie.”

Unfortunately for my beloved, “smart ass” is not an affectation I’ve assumed; it’s the real me. I executed a quick glance down toward his “eight-and-a-half month” belly, but kept my mouth shut. Don’t look so surprised, I can keep my own counsel when the situation warrants. Sometimes. Maybe.

He, of course, saw where my gaze landed and laughed, so it could be argued, theoretically, that I didn’t really keep my own counsel at all. Whatever.

The truth is that, in the years since he quit smoking, my husband has put on a lot of weight and nearly all of it is in his middle. That doesn’t bother me, aesthetically speaking. My only concern is his health. He also has COPD. The extra weight doesn’t help his breathing. Especially for someone who was, up until fifteen years ago, a constant 129 to 132 pounds on a medium to slim frame.

His body wasn’t made for that extra weight…but I digress.

He has become a foodie, because, also since he quit smoking, food apparently tastes better than it used to. He began smoking when he was ten, a souvenir from a family visit to his maternal grandparents who owned a large farm in Alberta. Apparently, Gramps took young David out on the tractor on his beloved farm, showed him how to plow a field on that 320 acre spread—and then showed him how to roll a smoke from his “makins”, and what to do with said cigarette after it had been rolled.

David’s mother wasn’t very happy with her father, needless to say. She thought that once the family returned home to Ontario, David’s newly acquired habit would be history, but it wasn’t so. He finally quit smoking in 2002—at the age of 50—and in the wake of my heart surgery, which was when I, a ten-year smoker at that point, also quit.

So yes, I imagine food began to taste really good to him. I enjoy cooking, though I have tried to rein myself in lately. Instead of one day a week designated as a “no-cook” day, I now have two. But those other 5 days, I do my best to present well balanced, tasty, and sometimes innovative meals for us both. I do all I can to ensure the food I make is as healthy as possible.

I rarely buy “processed” meals; I tend to buy ‘fat free’ hams when we have ham, use very little butter and fry rarely, cut down on the salt, and I also use sucralose instead of sugar in desserts. Well, in most of my desserts.

 For his part, David blames me, squarely, for his weight gain. He maintains that if I didn’t cook such enjoyable meals, he wouldn’t eat so much. I point to his three family-sized bags of potato chips a week habit, and ask, “really?”

Otherwise, to know that he now considers himself a foodie is kind of a tribute to a stance I took when we came home from our weekend honeymoon all those years ago. It was in 1972, of course, and we began married life in a small apartment over a store in an older section of a nearby city. He had a job, though I didn’t, as I was expecting our first baby, though I did get a part-time summer job later that month that was easy for me—a seasonal, clerical position. So money wasn’t in great supply for us. And as we returned to our tiny apartment after our wedding, he decided to lay down the law when it came to eating. Probably thinking of the way his father ruled the roost, he announced: “I’m telling you right now, I eat roast beef, roast pork, potatoes, creamed corn, and canned peas.”

I, who had lost my father when I was only eight and a half, and only being really familiar with my mother ruling the roost, replied in kind: “And I’m telling you, we don’t have enough money to eat roast beef and roast pork every night. But don’t worry, I learned how to cook, and how to stretch a grocery dollar, so you won’t go hungry. But you will have to eat what I put in front of you.”

Talk about a stand-off! But we quickly compromised. He would try everything once, and if he didn’t like it, I wouldn’t expect him to eat it, and I wouldn’t make it again. The only thing I made in those early days that he really didn’t like, was liver. And that, he began to like not long after he quit smoking, and now he asks for it regularly.

Therefore, I take the fact that he now considers himself a foodie—and he really is one—as a very definite, “mission accomplished” for that first, post-honeymoon stance.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury