Aggressive Kong Dropper

Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...

Pretend as though nothing is happening. Avoid eye contact. Do not engage.

Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...

Don't smile. It isn't cute. Don't acknowledge the behavior or encourage the persistent badgering. Like an ignored child throwing a showy tantrum, the unrewarded behavior will eventually be abandoned.

Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...

The red, rubber kong bounces randomly, knocking ankles and ricocheting off chair legs and kitchen cabinets. It is empty, an objectionable offense if you're a seven-pound Havanese in need of your daily dose of melted American cheese. Pick up the kong with your teeth and launch it where you will.

Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...

It lands on my shoe. I have to look down. How frequently does your dog toss a toy in the air only to have it land perfectly on top of your shoe and stay there? In doing so, I spot her a foot away staring up at me with the expression of someone having a difficult time explaining a very simple concept to a very stupid person. The kong is empty. She wants cheese. If she were bigger and had opposable thumbs she'd solve the problem herself, but she isn't and she doesn't and she's annoyed at how staggeringly thick I am that I haven't figured out what she's trying to tell me.

Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...

Some people fill kongs with peanut butter, or kibble. We cram it full with American cheese and stick it in the microwave for several seconds. If she's forgotten about the kong, simply pulling open the refrigerator drawer containing the individually wrapped slices of processed cheese-like stuff is enough to bring it top of mind again. 

Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...

Take out the cold cuts to make the boys' sandwiches for school. 

Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...

Take out the leftover grilled chicken to make yourself lunch. 

Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...

Walk through the kitchen in the vicinity of the refrigerator. 

Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...

Or, perhaps most egregious, sit at the breakfast table eating your breakfast while she is clearly faced with the challenge of an empty kong. 

Bump, bop, bippity, bump, bump, bump...

Avoid eye contact. Do not engage.

2016 Mark Feggeler

Because I Can

This tie I'm wearing is not meant to impress you. There's no ulterior motive behind it.

I'm not asking for a raise, or going on a job interview, or giving a big presentation. I'm not attending a funeral, or officiating at a wedding, or sneaking out for a romantic rendezvous, either. The only reason I'm wearing this tie is because I'm not fat anymore. 

Overweight? Yes, by about ten pounds, but no longer by thirty. 

The more forgiving khakis have been shoved to the back of the closet, along with extra-large dress shirts and some of the poofier cargo shorts, waiting for the next time I balloon into them. That's been the story of my waistline throughout my life. Bone skinny as a little kid, fat through middle school, bone skinny through high school, slightly doughy in college (thanks a lot, beer), slender at the wedding, second-trimester imitation during the pregnancies (thanks a lot, greasy cravings covered in cheese sauce), and so on through the years since the kids were born.

The most recent weight loss has been possible thanks to a way of eating we've adopted that seems to promote a better balance of calorie intake to calorie burn. We haven't cut out sugars, but we have cut them way back. We haven't cut out flour, just all-purpose flour. You'd be amazed the array of baked goods still available if you embrace baking with alternate flours like oat, almond and tapioca. The purpose of this post, however, is not to preach about healthy eating. Rather, it is to explain why I'm suddenly wearing nicer clothes.

You see, when you gain weight it can be disheartening and embarrassing to purchase stylish clothing to fit your new girth. We've all got those lines we don't want to cross. For me, it's thirty-six. So long as the zipper zips and the button doesn't tear free of the fabric and rocket across the room like a ballistic missile, I'm buying nothing larger than a thirty-six-inch waistline. The pants might be screaming, the pockets might be in a state of permanent gape, and my shoes might be staring up longingly at a hemmed cuff hanging halfway down my calf, yet I will convince myself they fit perfectly just to avoid the reality that I truly need thirty-sevens. 

Unfortunately, that approach to denial does have its limitations. Suits are a perfect example.

Whoever invented tailored suits should annually be burned in effigy because suits don't care if you can't cope with your new found fatness. I own several suits and they're all tailored, which means they were purchased at times in my life when I could stomach the notion of being publicly measured like cattle at an auction by a stranger drawing chalk lines on my ass. The moment your weight fluctuates five pounds in either direction, a tailored suit looks more like something you borrowed from a cousin who's almost your size. Gain more than ten pounds and the suit becomes a relic of bygone days, relegated to the far ends of your closet along with winter coats, embroidered sweatshirts and Halloween costumes.

The pants aren't the half of it, either. Few things scream "unchecked weight gain" louder than suit jackets so tight your range of motion is only slightly better than someone encased in an upperbody cast. When your double-breasted jackets don't even afford you one-ply protection from the elements... When your vests ride so high up your stomach they might as well be tube-tops... When your shirt collars are so tight you have to unbutton them to swallow, that's when you trade out suits and ties for husky khakis and reasonably attractive golf shirts.

Then comes the day you take a diet seriously, or begin exercising regularly, or reduce your intake of sugar and gluten as we did. The pounds gradually melt away. You become reacquainted with your jawline. Your nose no longer appears ready to pop off your face. You realize your clothes are suddenly so roomy you wouldn't look out of place singing lead for the Talking Heads. Little by little, you experiment with pants, shirts and suits you gave up on long ago, and they fit!

Which brings me back to where I began. I'm not wearing this tie to impress you. I'm wearing this tie because I can.




2016 Mark Feggeler

Turkey Dog

So, the turkey was carved and we all were seated at the dining room table to feast on Thanksgiving dinner. And feast we did, over-indulging the way one can on a national holiday when gluttony and subsequent self-loathing are strongly encouraged. 

You tell yourself you're going to take only a small portion of this and a taste of that, saving plenty of room for dessert, during which you intend to take only a sliver of that and maybe a modest spoonful of this. When all is done you might as well have been competitive eating. What started out as manners ("Please pass the potatoes!") has devolved into greasy-fingered gestures and grunts ("Ugh... Give... More..."). You really don't even want dessert, but you cram it down regardless because you feel morally obligated. After all, everyone went to the trouble of baking. 

Somewhere during the early stages of dinner: phase one, I heard a strange noise coming from the kitchen. It might have been the dishwasher running, only we hadn't yet loaded the first dish. It might have been the kitchen faucet running, only it wasn't. Instead, it turned out to be the frantic lapping of our six-pound Havanese, Lola. 

The problem wasn't really Lola. Lola was simply doing what any dog would do if turkey juices were flowing freely from the carved carcass on the countertop. The problem also wasn't the cracked cutting board that allowed the turkey juices to escape and flow to the floor. No, the problem was the fact of turkey juices hitting Lola square on the head as she stood there in her own little tryptophan-laced Thanksgiving celebration.

In case you've never soaked you hair with seasoned turkey grease, let me assure you it has some staying power. Three baths later the savory aroma of thyme, rosemary and tarragon continued to waft from Lola's head and her usually toussled top lay heavy between her ears. Try as we did over the next few days, it wasn't until the professional groomers got hold of her several weeks later that all was set right.

Spreadable Nightmare

I've made many sandwiches in my lifetime.

I can spread peanut butter, jelly, mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, horseradish and many other primary sandwich ingredients and condiments like nobody's business. I've plated up everything from basic, slapped-together sandwiches, to tremendous Dagwood specials that could choke a horse (but that did not choke me).

What I'm trying to say is, I'm no novice at this task, and neither is My Lovely Wife. We have three kids. We've been making sandwiches for seventeen-plus years without any difficulties. Until recently.

Some months ago, our children discovered the joys of Nutella. If you've never experienced Nutella, please stop reading. Not only can't we be friends, I really don't want to have anything to do with you. Stop reading this post immediately, go to the store, buy some Nutella, and eat an entire jar by the spoonful. Return here only after you've digested the delicious chocolaty hazelnut glory of Nutella and accepted that your parents didn't really love you, because if they had they would have introduced you to Nutella years ago.

As scrumptious as Nutella is, however, if you've ever tried to make a Nutella sandwich, you very likely know that it puts up a serious fight.

The first sign of trouble is when you plunge the knife into the jar and it stops dead in its tracks. If NASA were to measure the force required to drag a butter knife through a jar of Nutella, it probably wouldn't register on any existing equipment. Nutella should come with an elbow brace and a sling, because you're going to need them by the time you extricate knife from jar.

The second sign of trouble is the massive damage caused to the bread when attempting to spread the Nutella. Not only didn't this stuff want to leave the jar, now it clings to the butter knife with a death grip, shredding the slice of white bread like a savage animal in the process. You've got two options at this point:

1. Hold the bread down with your fingers and spread around them. You might not end up covered in Nutella to your third knuckle, but don't count on it. You'll probably need a shower.
2. Press down hard enough with the knife to ensure spread vacates knife. You might not completely destroy the integrity of the bread, but don't count on that, either.

I strongly encourage method number one. It's definitely messier, but the chances of success are far greater. Plus, you get to lick your fingers for the next hour.


And if spreading Nutella weren't already an impossible task to achieve, everyone knows the best accompaniment for Nutella on white bread is marshmallow fluff. Unfortunately, the only substance less easily spreadable than Nutella is marshmallow fluff. It's like an overwhelming, sandwich-themed, cosmic joke.

By the time both ingredients are sufficiently applied, the bread sufficiently mangled, and your nerves sufficiently shot, you might have achieved a final product resembling something close to a sandwich. But trust me, one bite is all it takes to prove the final product is worth the struggle.



© 2014 Mark Feggeler

I Ate a Banana

That’s all I did.

Of course, I did have my normal breakfast not long before that -- a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats with milk, along with a bowl of strawberries and blueberries.

I eat the cereal because I like it. I eat the strawberries and blueberries because I believe they can offset the damage done by decades of Dorito binging. While I wouldn’t say I was the least healthy eater in the world, a steady intake of chicken wings, pizza, Quarter Pounders with Cheese, fries and potato chips doesn’t necessarily qualify as a healthy diet. I’m fairly certain the blueberries are compensating for all of that now.

Oh, I also drank water and took the usual vitamins, if you want a complete breakfast inventory from the morning of the great banana incident.

In fairness to the banana, my skin already was slightly itchy when I woke up that morning, but it was after eating the banana sometime around 10:00AM that my immune system shifted into overdrive. Red bumps formed in my armpits within minutes of discarding the peel and, soon after, that familiar tightness in the throat joined the party.

Trust me when I tell you nothing gets your attention faster than a restricted airway. It doesn’t hurt, but it is most definitively unnerving. One minute you’re fine, and the next you find yourself gagging on your own uvula and wheezing like a ninety-year-old chain-smoking coal miner with a collapsed lung.

Fortunately, I’ve had only one reaction so severe that I seriously considered calling 911 and it was a long time ago. My troubles in recent years have been comparatively mild, resulting in only slight restriction of the trachea and a few hives that hang around just long enough to remind me how uncomfortable hives can be.

I wish I could identify my triggers, which would enable me to avoid those things that set off an allergic reaction. Whenever I’ve broken out, there’s never been an obvious culprit, except for that one time I ate gumbo chock full of crabs and clams. They might not have caused my lips to swell, but they’re nasty and that’s enough reason for me to blame them. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely certain I have identifiable triggers. It is an understood fact that there are times when the immune system, just for poops and giggles, decides to respond to an allergen that isn’t there, flooding the body with mast cells itching for a fight with a foe they can’t find. And that’s the most annoying part of it – not knowing what to avoid, or whether avoiding anything will make any difference anyway.

So, maybe it was the banana.

Maybe it was the combined effect of the banana and the strawberries.

Maybe it was the lethal combination of the 5:45AM cycle class, the healthy cereal and the fruit, with the banana serving as the final nail in the coffin.

Perhaps all that healthiness is the root cause. I’m starting to think I might need to return to the dietary patterns of my unenlightened, halcyon youth. After all, I can’t recall the last time Doritos made my throat close up.

© 2014 Mark Feggeler

Nine Days Old

Of all the things that are oh-so delicious, yet oh-so not very good for you in mass quantities, bread takes the cake.

Too many carbs can pump up your blood sugar, imbalance your metabolism, settle in stores of fat in embarrassing parts of your body, and result in throwback acne breakouts that make you wonder where you left that tube of Clearasil thirty years ago. Trouble is, bread plays so well with most other foods that it's a natural go-to item on most menus.

You can slather bread with any variety of creamy spreads,  melt cheese on bread, pile meats on bread to make excellent cold cut sandwiches, load bread with vegetables to make slightly less excellent vegetarian sandwiches, wrap bread around mozzarella cheese and pepperoni to make mini calzones, spread bread out on a pan and cover it with sauce and cheese to make pizza, and even balance snacky-type items on itty-bitty slices of bread to create dozens of party-size appetizers.

You can make bread bowls to hold soups and salads. You can top bread with olive oil and fancy Italian seasonings to make focaccia bread. You can top bread with caraway seeds to make rye bread. You can make round bread, rectangular bread, square bread, fluffy bread, flat bread, moist bread, dry bread and even pita bread. There is practically no shape, style or flavor of bread that isn't available for your digestive delight.

You can toast it, which so completely alters the nature of bread that we find it necessary to no longer refer to it as bread (but we all know it really still is bread). And, if you don't have anything to put on bread, you can tear a hunk off a loaf and stuff it in your mouth, because that's just one of the many acceptable things to do with bread.

The only kind of bread you can't eat is moldy bread. Sad to say, bread sometimes sits around long enough to turn on you. I'm not talking about the white residue you can convince yourself isn't really mold (maybe some excess flour landed on the outside of the loaf before it was packaged, right?). I'm talking about the hairy, green, mushroom-sprouting, biodome experiment mold that has taken over half the loaf and makes you wonder if other foods in the pantry might also have been contaminated. That's the kind of bread you shouldn't eat.

We have a game we play in our house called "Spot the Spot." Okay, maybe I'm the only member of the family aware of the game, but it goes something like this:

• Step 1: Buy bread.
• Step 2: Don't eat all the bread.
• Step 3: Store the leftover bread in its original clear plastic bag.
• Step 4: Continue not eating the bread and check it daily for moldy spots.
• Step 5: When you finally do identify an authentic moldy spot, loudly announce to the rest of the household that you found a moldy spot and will be throwing the bread away.
• Step 6: Throw away the bread with over-stated dramatic flair.
• Step 7: Take note of how many members of the household have paid absolutely no attention to you.

More often than not, this game is played out by hamburger and hot dog buns in a basket on our kitchen counter. Unbeknownst to them, they enter this makeshift gladiatorial ring with little hope of emerging unscathed. It's a cruel fate.


2014 Mark Feggeler

The Noshing Neanderthal

According to an article in the latest Reader's Digest, egg yolks and lemon will be the new "big" things in eating this year. I'm not sure who, exactly, determines that egg yolks and lemon will be the new "big" things, but that's the prediction, nonetheless.

It's sad, really, because even though I'm an ardent food admirer, I'm not a particularly "big" fan of either egg yolks or lemon-flavored anything. Egg yolks are fine as a baking ingredient, or for omelets and scrambled eggs, but that's about it. And lemon's only purpose, in my humble opinion, is to make you feel better about the low-grade chemical furniture lacquer you spray all over your house when you're dusting. Neither item is going to win a popularity contest if I'm the judge.

But the article states there are other hot food stuffs to be watching out for this year, so perhaps I am despairing too soon.

Gluten-free pastas will hit the ground running, which is good for them because I'm likely to have a sizable head start when they arrive en force. See, I'm willing to scale back in certain areas for the sake of trying to save myself from gaining a few unneeded ounces, but I can't fathom the purpose of a gluten-free pasta. I'm not diabetic, or even pre-diabetic, or even predisposed to the potentiality of the possibility of becoming diabetic, so I'm not sure why I'm suddenly supposed to be excited about a variety of non-flour, carb-free, gluten-free, tough-as-hemp pastas that probably don't taste anything like real pasta.

It's also the year of dairy-free dairy products. Almond milk, soy milk, coconut milk, and any other artificially thickened watery extracts of non-cow origin are supposed to be all the rage, making real milk passé. Funny, but I like my milk to taste like milk, and fresh milk at that, not something that's left over when you accidentally leave a jug of milk sitting in the back of the fridge two weeks beyond the recommended expiration date. Again, I've managed to scale back from whole milk to skim milk, but I refuse to drink anything calling itself milk that didn't come from a mammal.

Unattractive poached chicken.

Then there's cooking methods. Seems steaming and poaching will make a comeback as people across the developed world embrace these healthier ways to prepare foods without depleting their nutritional values.

Yummy grilled chicken.

But have you ever poached anything? I haven't, so I looked it up. Poaching involves cooking in liquids at low temperatures. It requires patience and time, neither of which I have in any great abundance. Poaching a chicken breast can take up to thirty minutes. I can grill that sucker in less than ten, or five if I slice it thin and turn the grill on high. Carcinogens from burning the meat? Part of the price we pay for life at the top of the food chain. Besides, how many times has the Cooking Channel told me "color equals flavor?"

Maybe I'm the problem here.

Maybe my unwillingness to let go of the conventions with which I'm familiar in favor of the fun fads of the food industry makes me a culinary stick in the mud -- a noshing neanderthal. But no matter how many times I read about the power of kale to cleanse my intestinal tract and pack my bloodstream with four-thousand times the daily recommended allowance of every vitamin known to man, nothing is going to make me want to eat it. It's a bland, tough leaf and I'm not a rabbit.

At least kale is on the way out, or so I've heard lately. And that's the best news about fad foods -- their fifteen minutes of fame come and go fairly quickly. Wait long enough and perhaps a food you actually like will be the next "big" thing.

Of course, a food like chocolate doesn't need the PR. After all, it is chocolate.



© 2014 Mark Feggeler

Poison Veggie-Fruit, Anyone?

When I was a kid, my mother kept an impressive garden. It ran along one side of our suburban Long Island home and was accessible from the backyard. Following the final frost of spring, and lasting straight through to the first frost of fall, you could be certain to find a variety of fruits and vegetables sprouting, blooming, and yielding their harvests.

Although she might plant something new every now and then, there were staples on which you could rely. Tomatoes, of course, and string beans grew well, supported by the chain-link fencing surrounding our yard. Raspberries were a summer favorite. Mom made the best raspberry jam that never seemed to set up properly and, consequently, served as an excellent topping for vanilla ice cream. The tiny closet under the basement staircase was a treasure trove of mason jars filled to the rim with freshly boiled and packed preserves.

But there was one item Mom always planted that I never appreciated, mostly because it both confused and frightened me. I speak of rhubarb. The name alone is enough to cause confusion. What the heck is a rhubarb? Why is that unnecessary "h" crammed into the name?

All other naturally-growing and farmed foods make sense to me. An apple looks like an apple. String beans look like string beans. Even pumpkins and squash look like how you would imagine things named pumpkin and squash looking.

But rhubarb looks nothing like what you might think it should because rhubarb is a silly name with no suggestive descriptive qualities whatsoever, and I suppose that's understandable once you get a good look at a rhubarb plant.

Rhubarb has reddish-purple stalks that sprout a foot into the air like diseased celery and have such a tart flavor that they require an entire field of sugar cane just to make them edible. At the top of the plant are mismatched, dark green leaves that make you wonder if some weirdo snuck into your garden during the night and stapled kale to the top of your diseased celery stalks as a prank. And Mom was always quick to warn us against the poisonous qualities of rhubarb leaves.

"Don't eat the leaves!" she would say, as if my brothers and I were secretly scheming to raid the garden for a quick treat of raw rhubarb. You have to wonder who was the first person to figure out you could eat a plant with the color scheme of a poisonous frog and the mouth-puckering uber-tartness of a thousand Granny Smith apples.

That isn't merely an old wive's tale, either. If you eat enough rhubarb leaves -- 11 pounds, to be more precise -- you could end up dead. Not that I expect any of you to suddenly get a hankering for 11 pounds of tart leaves, but be warned that if you cook the leaves in soda you will increase the poison's potency, meaning you might only need seven or eight pounds to make you drop dead. If only because it would be the most disgusting food you ever tasted, don't do it.

To confuse matters even more, the United States government has officially declared rhubarb a fruit, regardless of the fact it has a stalk like celery, leaves like salad, and bears absolutely no fruit. That's kind of like setting aside the fact the platypus is part mammal and part fowl and declaring it a member of the mollusk family just for poops and giggles.

Throughout the years since my childhood, I have learned to enjoy the flavors of many of the suspiciously healthy items at which I once turned up my nose. Cauliflower, carrots, broccoli and many more now cross my plate with no chance of not being eaten, but so far I have managed to keep rhubarb at a safe distance. I plan to keep it that way.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Intestinal Fortitude

When I was a kid, I had the average kid's relationship with the green, bitter, leafy plant known as spinach. There was no preparation that made it palatable. Even our dogs wouldn't eat it when I dangled a spoonful at them under the table. If an animal that regularly eats its own poop turns its nose up at a food, how can anyone possibly expect a kid to eat it?

At some point during my early adulthood, I discovered I liked spinach.

Creamed mega-laxative in a pot.

Spinach with garlic and lemon. Spinach in vegetable lasagna. Spinach and ricotta in that all-the-rage, 1990s, faux-bread substitute pita pocket. And creamed spinach. Some certified genius took this outrageously healthy and unpopular vegetable and served it Alfredo! They award Nobel Peace prizes for lesser accomplishments.

But over the last few years, in spite of my growing fondness for all things spinach, spinach has decided it does not like me. And I have learned through direct experience that when spinach chooses to do nasty things to your inner workings, it does not have the common courtesy to provide advance notice. One day you're scarfing it down like Popeye prepping to take on all of China in a cage match, and the next day a single mouthful sets you rumbling on the toilet louder than a launching rocket and gripping tight to the porcelain to keep from lifting off.

Although I've had enough time to come to terms with this new dietary restriction, there are moments when the will is weak and I tempt fate with a serving or two, heedless of My Lovely Wife's warnings and usually when there's a big bowl of creamed spinach before me on the table.

The first sign I've made a mistake is that false sense of security I get after I've eaten more than my share without my body immediately vomiting it back out. Stands to reason if my body can't tolerate spinach, it wouldn't allow it in. But it does, and before the plates are cleared and my belt loosened to aid digestion, the power of that dark-green mega-laxative is already being unleashed.

I might as well not even own a pancreas for all the good its enzymes do in breaking down the spinach on its way along my digestive tract. Like a freight train running off the rails, spinach barrels through my upper and lower intestines, not sparing a second to admire the scenery. By the time it gets through the colon -- carrying along with it the flushed out remnants of every cheeseburger I've eaten since 1977 and every spare bit of vitamin K in my body -- I'm fully cognizant of the fact I should never be more than a pants-dropping away from any one of the three toilets in our house.

The next morning, after the smoke has cleared and several rolls of toilet paper have mysteriously vanished, I make a solemn promise to my reflection in the mirror never to eat so much as a single shred of spinach.

But then there is all that leftover creamed spinach in the fridge...



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Not-So-Mellow Mushroom

There's a reason I finally learned to make pizza. That reason is the Mellow Mushroom.

It's been a couple years since we last ate at our local Mellow Mushroom. Maybe it was the burnt pretzels, or the burnt pizza crust, or the fact we waited nearly ninety minutes for the burnt pizza to reach our table, but whatever it was I knew I was done with the place. The real shame of it is how excited we were for the restaurant to open. Mellow Mushrooms in other cities had never failed to please. Their service is timely and their food noticeably unburnt, both of which are qualities I admire in restaurants.

As a result, we were justifiably delighted to hear someone was going to open a Mellow Mushroom only a few miles from our house. We watched and commented as construction progressed.

"Did you see they hung their signage?"

"Did you see they paved the parking lot?"

"Did you see they're going to have an outdoor patio?"

My Lovely Wife and I were so anxious to have a Mellow Mushroom nearby, we couldn't even wait for the kids to be available to try it out. The first day the restaurant was open to the public, while the kids were at school eating peanut butter sandwiches, we were sitting on the covered patio dining on delicious items from the Mellow Mushroom lunch menu. And it was good. Good enough for us to recommend the restaurant to our friends and family.

As time pressed on, however, we noticed inconsistencies in the quality of food preparation and long waits for tables (which is good for the restaurant) and for the delivery of food to the tables (which isn't any good for anybody). People around town started grumbling. We started grumbling. That last time we tried the restaurant, the ninety-minute wait for burnt pizza was the straw that broke the caterpillar's hooka. I found a Mario Batalli pizza dough online and we never looked back.

Then, just last week, the local high school jazz band performed at the restaurant to raise funds for the band program. Our Daughter and her boyfriend, Señor Awesome, both are in regular band and Señor Awesome is featured prominently in the jazz band, so we thought: "What the heck. Let's give Mellow Mushroom another chance and help raise money for the school band at the same time."

I would like to list now the reasons why we should have stayed home, eaten our own homemade pizza, and simply written the school band program a check.

1. Non-burnt pretzels, served promptly: This sounds like a promising start, but in hindsight it really wasn't. All it did was draw us into a false sense of security about the rest of the meal.
2. A Confused Waitress: For obvious reasons, a bad omen. When you tell the waitress you want a cheese pizza with basil and Roma tomatoes (both items from the list of toppings in the menu) and she doesn't understand what you're talking about, you know you're in trouble. And the fact no one at Mellow Mushroom seems to realize cheese pizza with basil and Roma tomatoes is commonly known as a Pizza Margherita also says a lot about this place's pizza bona fides.
3. One-Hour Wait Until Management Steps In: Yes, one hour. In an industry governed by ticket times and the expediting of food from the kitchens, it took the assistant manager one hour to realize we had not yet received our food, but only because we called it to his attention. At least he was kind enough to assure us our meal would be on the house.
4. Another 45 Minutes After Management Stepped In: We waited impatiently for a total 105 minutes from time of order to the time our pizzas were placed in front of us. During that time, I somehow managed to refrain from pointing out to the assistant manager that pizza normally takes five minutes to prepare and ten minutes to bake. Allowing the dough to rise is the only time consuming process, but I have to think if any place of business is going to have a ready supply of risen pizza dough, it's a restaurant that specializes in pizza.
5. A Confused Waitress, Part 2: After being reassured multiple times by multiple people we would not pay a penny for our meal, the waitress came to the table to ask how we wanted to split the bill. She might have gotten a tip if, just once during the two hours we sat at her table, she had refilled our glasses.

The manager arrived in time to apologize and offer us certificates for free food the next time we dined at his restaurant. Fortunately, he neglected to provide us the promised certificates before we left.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Honey Roasted Heaven

Have you ever tried eating natural peanut butter?

It's a lot like lining your mouth with day-old wallpaper paste, only less satisfying. And you don't need much more than dab of it to permanently glue your tongue to the roof of your mouth. You can smack, and sneer, and contort your face all you want, but only time and a raging flood of fluids from your salivary glands will make it go away.

Then there's that great natural taste.

All those preservatives and chemicals found in commercially processed peanut butter that tree-hugging, healthy-living people are trying avoid must be delicious, because commercially processed peanut butter is insanely tasty while natural peanut butter tastes like pre-licked stamps, which leads one to conclude that true peanut butter flavor as we've come to know it results from ingredients ending in "dextrose" and "glutimate."

And I'd like to know how anyone can take peanuts, which are supremely delectable, even when not salted, and grind them into a spread with no discernible odor and a flavor profile that matches elementary school art class paste. When the dog gives you that "are you kidding me?" look when you offer it a lick, you know there's a fundamental flaw with the product.

We even tried natural almond butter once. I wouldn't have thought it possible to find anything more bland and unfulfilling than natural peanut butter, but we managed.

It's like the development teams of the two products challenged each other one day to see which could develop the worst spreadable product for general sale. Almond butter takes the prize, but only because natural peanut butter tastes like something. A bad something, but something nonetheless. Natural almond butter's complete lack of flavor is what makes it the more disturbing of the two to eat because, apart from the fact your cheeks have suddenly adhered to the sides of your teeth, you can't be sure you're actually eating anything.

So, when My Lovely Wife entered my office the other day with yet another jar of preservative-free, all-natural, freshly-ground something-or-other, I was leery. A tiny scoop on the end of a spoon was all I took. Then I went back for more and haven't come up for air since.

It had flavor. It was sweet. It had moisture. It was ground honey-roasted peanuts.

Whoever was the man or woman that thought to throw honey-roasted peanuts into a grinder ought to be knighted and given the Pulitzer. It took sheer genius to discover that a little honey and some salt -- and whatever dextroses and glutimates are involved in the honey-roasting process -- could help peanuts grind down into a sweet, salty, slightly crunchy mixture that, so far, has been blue heaven on everything we've chosen to spread it over.

Now the only problem we have is when we open the pantry to find the container empty.




© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Sputter and a Thud

All my life, the one thing I have never been troubled with is allergies.

On just about any day during the last 45 years, if you were to have asked me how I was doing, I could easily have answered without any hesitation: "Well, I'm not suffering from allergies, that much I know!"

Oh, sure, on the rare occasion I might experience a fluke reaction to something or other.

Like that time, twenty years ago, when My Lovely Fiancee and I were at Sunday brunch with her parents. There I was, minding my own business, feasting off a plate mounded high with buffet delicacies, when suddenly my skin puffed up, red patches flared and vanished and flared again on some very inconvenient parts of my anatomy, and my throat closed up so tight I could barely draw a breath. Let me tell you, nothing puts a damper on a fancy buffet faster than the unexpected sensation you might not survive to digest it.

Whenever hives have hassled me, it's been impossible to tell what might have been the cause. But lately, over the past three weeks, I have experienced a lingering constriction of the throat that my doctor assures me is the result of a mid-life food allergy. After a week of abstaining from most everything one possibly could be allergic to, it's time to start investigating the usual suspects.

Nuts?

I've eaten my weight, and probably your weight, too, in peanuts, almonds, cashews and walnuts. Peanut butter and almond butter, both the hippie tree-hugging natural varieties and the good old chemicalized mega-processed kinds, are no strangers to my diet. I fully understand some people can't get within 60 yards of a shelled nut without a HazMat suit and an EpiPen, but I am not one of those people. I could strip naked, slather myself in peanut butter and frolic through plantation fields in Georgia without fear of contracting a single itch. A little chafing, perhaps, but no itching.

Dairy, then?

Same story with dairy. Considering the quantities of milk and cheese I've consumed in my lifetime, there are probably hundreds of cows laying low, like mob informants in the witness protection program, deathly afraid of being hooked back up to the milking machines. If it turns out I am allergic to dairy, I'll bet the daily quota per cow at every farm across the nation gets cut by a third.

Then there's things like gluten and grains. I don't even want to go there. No bread? That's just cruel and unusual, especially at a time in my life when I've finally learned how to make a perfect pizza dough.

So, now begins a period of trial and error, during which I slowly reintroduce those items I have been avoiding. Take tonight, for instance. A slice of pizza will no doubt test the potential dangers of cheese, tomatoes, yeast, flour, oregano and basil. Okay, maybe four slices.

If you hear a muffled sputtering for air and a loud thud, you'll know half a pizza wasn't a very good idea. Kind of makes me wonder where I might have left that EpiPen.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Pete's Parm

You'd think, having a healthy dose of Italian heritage infused into her genes, Our Daughter would know where and when to order an Italian entree.

Not that I'm any connoisseur of world cuisine -- and there's absolutely no Italian blood in my veins -- but I did grow up on Long Island not far from Manhattan. You couldn't spit in our neighborhood without hitting a pizza parlor or an Italian restaurant run by someone who looked like an extra from one of the "Godfather" movies. Add a few hundred randomly placed delicatessans, each serving a meatball sub more delicious than the other, and it's almost impossible not to develop a keen appreciation for properly prepared Italian food.

Twenty-three years ago, when I moved from the Empire State to the Tar Heel State, the lack of diversification among restaurants was the most difficult change to tolerate. We were lucky to have a McDonald's, let alone a great place to get pizza.

My Mother-in-Law used to have little sympathy for my complaints. She had moved to North Carolina in the early 1970s and one of her favorite stories to tell was about the time she went to the local supermarket and asked for help locating bread crumbs. She would roll out her best Yankee impersonation of Southern drawl when she mimicked the confused store clerk: "You want cruuuuuumbs? Of bray-uhd?"

Her story always reminded me of the time back in the early 90s when I made a sales trip to Charlottesville, VA. Not knowing the area, I asked the front desk attendant at the hotel if there were any good ethnic restaurants nearby. The poor girl stared at me like I had asked her to provide detailed instructions for nuclear fusion. After a moment's reflection, she offered this nugget: "There's a Shoney's down the street if you like country." If nothing else, I was glad to know someone had developed a work-placement program for ex-Hee Haw Honeys.

Over the years, our community has been blessed with the addition of a handful of eateries that understand tomato sauce and ketchup are very different things. And they have names that lead you to suspect they might know what they're doing -- Vito's, Valenti's, Fratello's. Let's face it, if an Italian restaurant has a single-word name ending in a pronounced vowel followed by a possessive apostrophe, it's already halfway along the road to success. This is a fact Our Daughter should have learned by now.

So, when her boyfriend's parents took her to dinner not long ago to a restaurant in a metal building on the side of a semi-rural highway, she should have known better than to order chicken parm at a placed called Pete's. You don't order chicken parm at a restaurant called Pete's. You order chicken fried steak, or country fried steak, or fried shrimp. Heck, order just about anything fried you care to from Pete and he'll probably do it extremely well. Like hushpuppies! Pete probably has perfect hushpuppies, but I promise you parmesan was not a staple product in his parent's pantry.

And even though Pete's name ends in a vowel, it's a silent vowel. Had the restaurant's name been Pietro's, then you could have made an argument for ordering chicken parm, or saltimbocca, or even a linguini appetizer. But it isn't, so you can't.

When Pete attempts chicken parm, you get country fried chicken and a red-colored sauce topped with a cheese bearing little resemblance to parmesan. And when that plate is dropped in front of you, you're getting exactly what you deserve for ordering it from a guy named Pete.

Clearly, we have failed to properly educate Our Daughter.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Exercise Shmexercise...

Some people go the gym looking like they have no need for it. I see those frustratingly healthy folks five mornings a week without an ounce of fat on their bodies and I want to smack the crap out of them.

Other people go to the gym looking like they accidentally stumbled into the place while trying to find the nearest all-night bakery. I fall into this latter category. Four mornings of 500-calorie-burning, 22-mile-distance-covering RPM classes in the indoor cycling room, plus one morning on the treadmill, and I still rival the Pillsbury Doughboy for body shape and muscle tone.

I know what you're going to say:

   "Cut out the carbs!"

   "Count your calories!"

   "Stop eating 27 ounces of dark chocolate every day!"

Now that you've got that out of your system, let's start the return trip from LaLa Land with acceptance of the fact I will never, never, ever, never cut carbs out of my diet.

Bread, for example, is awesomely delicious and last I checked, most breads are made of carbs. And not just regular old white bread used to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, carbs can be found in many different varieties of bread. Bagels, banana bread, challa, ciabatta, dinkelbrot, doughnuts, hushpuppies, hoecakes, monkey bread, matzah, pretzels and pumpernickel all are wonderfully effective methods for delivering carbs to my belly. If bread is delicious, and bread is made of carbs, ipso facto carbs are delicious.

It's not as though I haven't made the effort in the past to scale back. I've tried wraps but they aren't satisfying. I've eaten vegetarian burgers without the bun, but every time I do I end up wondering why I did it. And not to go all religious on you, but Jesus didn't tell the disciples he was the gluten-free, sugar-free, rice-flour, non-cross-contaminated specialty diet loaf of life. He said he was the bread of life. How much more of a product testimonial do you need than that?

Maybe making better fashion choices would help my self-esteem.

Just the other day, not long after cycling like a maniac for 50 minutes and feeling really good about myself, there I was walking the dog down the street wearing white socks, black sandals, gray shorts, bright red sweatshirt, and a sweat-stained black baseball cap, with my hand shoved down my pants to free a fistful of leg hairs from the deathgrip my cycling underwear had on them. It's difficult at times like that not to suddenly experience an overwhelming self-awareness. All I needed to complete the ensemble was to drool a little and urinate on myself.

I must face the fact I will never be the trim, wavy-haired, strutting-around-the-locker-room-naked-because-he's-totally-comfortable-with-his-body kind of guy. I will forever be the pudgy, balding, one-towel-to-cover-my-fat-ass-and-a-second-towel-to-drape-over-my-shoulders-to-hide-my-moobs kind of guy. I will always leave the gym after a strenuous workout looking like a dishevled, crazy, homeless man who just ran five city blocks to outrun the cops.




© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Knife-Wielding Children

It was declared the other night by My Lovely Wife while dining at Vito's that the boys could cut their own food from here on out.

To be fair, it isn't as though the boys squawk like baby birds for us to cut up their food into bite-size portions, and we're not intentionally trying to pamper them. It comes down to a matter of efficiency. We are efficient cutters of food, they are not. We have the ability to cut hot pizza with a knife without sending bits of it flying across a restaurant and blinding fellow diners with scalding tomato sauce. Their level of proficiency at this same task is questionable.

I suppose history will show one of our great failings as parents is not having taught our children to properly use knives. When I see the boys attempting to cut anything from steak to potatoes, I can't help thinking they'd experience greater success bashing their food with sticks and rocks in order to break off easily digestible pieces. Even Our Daughter, who recently started driving, looks as though her hand-eye coordination suffers a seven-second delay whenever she tries to use a knife.

When the children were very young, it made perfect sense not to place serated steak knives next to their plates. After all, when your diet consists primarily of fish sticks, chicken tenders, applesauce and string cheese, there really isn't much call for cutlery. But, as they have grown and their diets become slightly more sophisticated (no more fish sticks), we find we can't leave them weaponless and have them lifting large chunks of grilled meat to their mouths and tearing at it with their teeth. They need the right tools and the training to apply them correctly to the task at hand.

The Italian will welcome this change, I expect. He is passively-aggressively independent and always eager to prove his self-sufficiency. I believe the German, however, secretly enjoys our taking the reins and managing the food-cutting, if for no other reason than it allows him to keep his hands clean. He is a fastidious little bugger at the best of times. One night, several years ago, we were dining at Olive Garden when he decided to survey the table.

"Who had a breadstick?" the German asked.

We each raised a greasy-fingered hand in the air.

"Then you all need to wash your hands," he ordered.

So, now begins a new chapter of our lives as parents, a chapter in which we move away from plastic knives and safety scissors, pack away the Disney character plates and bowls, and treat our children as dining equals capable of cutting their own food.

Maybe we should plan on serving soup for the next few months...



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

The Butter Battle

There is a long-standing disagreement between me and My Lovely Wife that predates the births of our children and even our marriage.

Way back when -- almost exactly 20 years ago when our hearts first went all twitterpated over each other -- there were many distracting idiosyncracies we each carried into our relationship. Most of those quirks stemmed from our base personalities.

Me: forgetful; disorganized.

Her: memory like a steel trap; a demand for structure that could take the holler out of the toughest drill sergeant.

Some disparities came from our differing upbringings. For instance, we didn't wash bath towels every day. How dirty can they possibly get from one use? After all, you should be at your cleanest when you use them, right? But not so in her house. Bath towels were washed daily, regardless of their dormant potential for additional absorption and their relative lack of contaminants. As most couples do, we found ways to address these kinds of issues by adopting one partner's preference or creating new protocols we could call our own.

One pesky issue, however, has lingered for two decades. In my mind, it is a matter of common sense. For My Lovely Wife, it is a matter of order. No matter how you look at it, buttering corn on the cob is a loaded issue in our home.

An unacceptable result of
barbaric behavior.

I grew up employing a simple method for enveloping my corn in buttery goodness. A dish holding a stick of margarine would be placed on the table and my family would take it in turn to roll their cobs on it. Sure, by the time everyone's corn was adequately buttered the stick looked like an animal had attacked it, but the process exemplified efficiency. It never occurred to me, nor had it ever to any rational person, this method might strike some as disturbingly barbaric.

Try as I might, I could never make My Lovely Wife acknowledge the benefits of the rolling technique. It went against every fiber of her nature. It resulted in corn-tainted margarine that no longer could serve any other purpose. It simply was not the kind of thing a person teetering on the brink of OCD (on a good day) could tolerate.

For years we have tried to come up with a suitable solution. Many times I've fought with little pats of margarine, watching helplessly as they slip from between my knife and the cob only to land on some unsuspecting meal item that has no business mixing with margarine. Then there were the experiments with squeeze margarine. That oozing, chemical-flavored, I-can't-believe-it's-not-giving-me-cancer grease in a bottle is no substitute for the real thing.

Then, maybe a week ago, an amazing thing happened. Our Daughter and I managed to weaken My Lovely Wife's resolve and place a stick of margarine on the table for rolling. She didn't like it, but she went along with it. Then last night we tried it again. We all rolled our corn and mangled the margarine, perhaps a little too gleefully in my case.

As we sat there digesting, My Lovely Wife looked innocently at me and said: "That really does make it a lot easier to butter your corn..."



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

The Cupcake Declaration

When did cupcakes earn such lofty status in American culinary culture?

And why are the gastronomical pimps at the Food Network and the Cooking Channel so damnedly determined to shove them down our throats? Not too long ago, the primary audience for cupcakes was children. Not that they were happy about it, but cupcakes have always been an easy, dry-mix-in-a-box solution to providing enough treats for a school function.

Your kid having a birthday and you want to send something to school for his or her class? Buy a three-dollar box of Duncan Hines Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix, add a few eggs, some vegetable oil, and bake for 20 minutes. You're done! Cross it off your list and move along. Some kid in their class doesn't like chocolate? Too freakin' bad. Little fascist can bring vanilla when it's his turn.

Really, I have nothing whatsoever against the cupcake as a concept. I don't hate them as some people purportedly do. I simply don't understand the groundswell of cupcake counterculture occuring across the country in recent years.

More and more, it seems, people who think they can bake AND run a small business are investing their lifes' savings into storefronts with cutesy names like Polka Dot, Sprinkles, Little Cupcake, and my personal favorite Cupcake Cupcakes. Genius marketing ploy, if you ask me, repeating the word twice just in case you're too mentally impaired to understand what a store with only one "Cupcake" in its title is trying to sell you.

If these people want to blow their children's college funds on some self-employment pipe dream in which they bake happily to the end of their days like freakishly huge Keebler elves, that's fine with me, but I don't have to endorse it, which is exactly what it seems every food-oriented piece of propaganda I come across is telling me to do.

Magazines, blogs, television, billboards-- everywhere I turn these days I see cupcakes. There are red velvet cupcakes, peanut butter cupcakes, hazelnut cupcakes, key lime cupcakes, carrot cupcakes, coconut cupcakes, mango coriander pound cake cupcakes, peach cupcakes, pineapple cupcakes, pumpkin cupcakes, pink grapefruit cupcakes, gingerbread cupcakes, gingerbeer cupcakes, crystalized ginger olive oil cupcakes with lime buttercream, stuffed cupcakes, fried cupcakes, mini cupcakes, and giant cupcakes that defeat the entire purpose of the cupcake and if they weren't shaped like cupcakes we would simply call them cake.

I, for one, refuse to subscribe to this newfound belief in the almighty power of the cupcake. We're Americans, people! We eat doughnuts by the dozen and cookies by the sleeve. We were born and bred to satiate ourselves with mass quantities of sugary sweetness, not delight in the pristine delicacies of a pretentious treat costing $4.99 for a single serving.

So, all you fancy shmancy cupcake lovers out there, get over yourselves and leave me in peace with my box of Duncan Hines.



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Those, Sir, Are Nuggets

I'd never heard of Boston Pizza before our trip to Niagara Falls. Turns out the company has locations in Canada and many US states, just not in the Carolinas. Who knew?

When the Boston Pizza commercial appeared on screen to help fill the gap between hockey periods, the company heralded its latest addition to its menu: All Meat Wings!

Uh, um, huh, wha?

Apparently the oft-used phrase Boneless Buffalo Wings didn't satisfy the Boston Pizza marketing department. That, or the name is trademarked by some other restaurant. Maybe Chili's Southwest Grill? They have boneless Buffalo wings. I should know, I've eaten my share of them. They serve well when you're craving the spicy goodness of chicken wings but can't afford to have your fingers tinged red up to the second knuckle and your face smeared with bleu cheese dressing.

But, the benefits of not slopping yourself full of Buffalo sauce up to your earlobes aside, the brazen claim of that Boston Pizza commercial was the feather that broke this chicken's back. I don't care how convenient they are or what you call them, they aren't wings.

Wings have bones and shreds of meat so small any rational human being wouldn't waste time attempting to extricate them. The joy of wing eating doesn't come from sustenance. People don't finish a dozen wings and push back from the table, satiated, unbuttoning their pants to relieve the strain of a bulging belly, and announce loudly to world they are full. They push back, greasy and stained, sweat beading on their foreheads from the heat, bits of chicken dangling from their teeth like Quint from the jaws of Bruce the shark, wondering how many more dozens they can eat before their tastebuds are permanently damaged.

But these boneless bites are all about sanitized, generic quantity. And when you break them down, they are nothing more than breaded breast meat (I hope) coated with sauce and served with a side of dressing for dipping. In short, they are chicken nuggets.

Chicken nuggets are not manly. Chicken nuggets require little effort, no tearing meat off bones that stack high like morbid structures in ancient catacombs beneath Paris. Chicken nuggets satisfy no deep-rooted, caveman-like desire to hunt and gather. Chicken nuggets are pacifiers for children too fussy to eat real food.

So, do me a favor Boston Pizza, Chili's, and yes, even you Buffalo Wild Wings -- hold your hype and modify your menus. Those breaded shams you're shilling may taste good in the spicy sauce, but that doesn't make them wings.



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Taco Intervention

There once was a time when if I hankered for a taco, or a burrito, or even just a small cup of pintos & cheese, I sat alone. My nuclear family left me no alternative.

Recently as one year ago, not one other person under our roof shared my craving for the occasional flour tortilla wrapped around spiced meat and vegetables, covered in enchilada sauce and sprinkled with queso fresco.

El Vaquero? No.

El Chapala? No.

San Felipe? Maybe, but only because they have stir fry platters and we can pretend those aren't Mexican dishes.

Faster fare such as Moe's or Taco Bell? Don't even waste the energy it takes to speak their names.

Then things changed. Somewhere along the way from last summer to this spring, My Lovely Wife discovered a heretofore under-utilized portion of her equatorially-oriented palate. I don't recall the exact date she first requested tacos for dinner, all I know is she didn't have to ask twice. It was just like the time she commented on taking down the wallpaper in the guest bathroom and I started peeling it off the wall before she had a chance to change her mind. That was some horrendously ugly wallpaper.

As the months passed, requests for tacos came more frequently. Our daughter didn't seem to mind, since we didn't ramp up the heat too much, which isn't saying a whole lot since this is the same kid who wouldn't eat the honey-coated chicken nuggets at Chik Fil-A when she was little because she said they were too spicy. "They make my tongue itchy," she would say, causing us to wonder whether she needed to be institutionalized.

The German also seems to enjoy the occasional taco dinners. It's the Italian who balks, but we've found a way to satisfy him by filling his tortilla with bland chicken and salad dressing. Essentially the opposite of a vegetarian wrap -- a carnivorian wrap, if you will.

But lately the strain of the prospect of yet another week of taco nights is beginning to show when their Mother makes the suggestion. "We just had tacos," the German will whine, while his brother shuts his eyes and shakes his head like an angry mime.

Even I have to confess to occasionally attempting to thwart the taco regime from taking full command. After all, at this rate it won't be long before My Lovely Wife's weekend naps are officially relabeled "siestas," the poodle is replaced with a chihuahua named Chuy, and we're all required to wear sombreros to the dinner table.

Just be forewarned if you call our house and the person who answers says "Hola," don't immediately assume you dialed the wrong number.




© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Turd-ucken

There are some things humans might never have eaten if not for lack of money or resources.

Take vegetable stew, for example. Back in the Middle Ages, root vegetables were seen as being unfit for the English upper classes – food from the dirt fit only for commoners – so the poor found ways to use these relatively accessible items. What better way than to mix and match them in a big pot of contaminated water from the nearby stream and blend their flavors together over a low simmer?

The rich also harbored a distrust of certain raw foods like nuts and fruits. They ate cheese but avoided milk. These were also times when most people (including children) drank mead because it was safer to risk alcoholism than to trust the quality of the local water supply.

Anyway, you get the idea. Long story short, the poor ate meager yet relatively healthy meals while the upper class died of scurvy, gout and rickets from seasoning, salting, drying and boiling the beneficial nutrients and vitamins out of everything they put in their mouths. The whole raw food diet craze never would have caught on 1,000 years ago.

These days, food snobbery is more about trying everything than about avoiding any particular ingredient.

There are dozens of shows on television in which people wander the world to find the most bizarre food customs, and the more disgusting the main ingredient the better. I’ll bet if I really pushed hard enough I could get Travel Channel or Food Network to fund a one-hour special about the best recipes for hamster testicles from around the globe. Just to tie it in with their other programming, it could air right after a new Iron Chef America featuring Rocky Mountain oysters as the secret ingredient.

Now, I don’t want to rag on my brother, because he really was acting out of a sincere desire to give us all a memorable food experience. After all, who doesn’t like to try new things?

Our palates don’t stop developing when we reach a certain age. If so, I never would have learned to love shrimp, or Mexican food, or oatmeal. Okay, so maybe I can't say I like oatmeal. For me it’s more like a bowl of heated brown sugar, honey and cinnamon with a few soggy oats thrown in for fiber.

But back to my brother and that turducken. Whoever dreamed up the idea of stuffing a deboned turkey with a deboned duck stuffed with a deboned chicken clearly had too much time on his or her hands. Maybe this is the kind of meal that results from bored culinary students getting high before their finals.

That said, I was willing to approach the meal with an open mind. I like turkey. I like chicken. I think I ate duck once and liked it. There was no reason to suspect this meal should be any less than the sum of its parts.

The first red flag popped up when I was advised to try a spoonful of the drippings to taste for myself how spicy it was. Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve never been much of a five-alarm turkey kind of guy. Sure, Buffalo chicken is one of the greatest inventions known to man, but a kick ass hot turkey really doesn’t lure me to the table, let alone a spoonful of hot and spicy turkey grease.

I initially believed the excessive heat came solely from the liberal seasoning of the turkey skin. That was a false assumption.

The real fire didn’t break out until we reached the spicy sausage dressing. Yes, you didn’t misread that or suffer a sudden astigmatism. Spicy sausage dressing. I can just imagine someone sitting around thinking: “You know what this chicken inside a duck inside a turkey needs? Pork and cumin.”

By the time the meal was finished, I was cured of any curiosity I might have had about turducken. A few of us tried politely to find nice things to say about it, but even my brother was beginning to offer qualifying statements about the meal before the table was cleared. I felt bad for him, but I have to admit he did give us an unforgettable experience.

In the end, the best single word I can think of to relay the lingering impression of turducken can be found by shortening the name of the meal to its first four letters.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler