Category: Food Page 1 of 3

Food Is the Boss of Me

On April 11, 2021

I think about food all the time. Here’s an example. The anniversary of my marriage to my wonderful and ornery husband was a couple of weekends ago. To celebrate we went to the beach – not to sit with our toes in the sand or stroll hand in hand listening to the ocean waves. No, my husband wanted to go away from the beach and drive two hours on twisty, gravel, muddy logging roads so we could hike two miles to see waterfalls and wildlife and such.

And see them we did. But the whole time, all I could think about was lunch. We left our motel around 8 in the morning, drove forever then started our hike. By 10:30 I was checking my watch – an hour and a half until I could eat. An hour later I checked my watch again. 10:48. What??? This went on at regular intervals, until around 11:30, when I started checking every couple minutes. Then I said, “I’m going to have lunch.”

“Must be 12 o’clock,” my husband said.

It was. I fight eating until the noon hour, and then until dinnertime because I want to eat all day long. Someone I worked with once told me they put out a cigarette on their break and immediately craved the next one, miserable because they’d have to wait until the next break to have it. That’s the way I am with food. Even when I proclaim, in misery, “I’m stuffed,” I still want a little something sweet; a little something salty. I’ve been told by lots of people that I eat more than anyone they’ve ever known.

I have to do three things to stay within the normal range of my body mass index (BMI). (1) I only eat at mealtimes – three times a day, and (2) I only eat healthy food (there are occasional exceptions to these two – I am human, after all). (3) is the one I don’t ever break: I never buy the next size up. Otherwise, with my appetite, I would always be the star of “The Biggest Loser.”

At straight-up noon I unzipped my fanny pack and ate my pumpkin seeds (for protein), a bunch of carrots (for Vitamin A), a lot of celery (for some crunch and filler), and two small mandarin oranges (for dessert). It was a lot of food, but all of it served my body’s needs for nutrition. I figure my mouth is like a car’s gas tank. I want to put the stuff in there that will my body run well. Good food is good fuel. I want my belly’s gas tank to give me a body that can get out of a chair without struggling.

Because of my three eating rules, I can eat like a horse and still wear the size 8-10 I’ve been wearing for decades. When I get above my ideal weight (always at Christmas because of sweets and party foods), my jeans get tight and uncomfortable (no stretchy pants for me – I need good old-fashioned Levis that let me know I’m not eating healthy). After those extra pounds slowly (way too slowly) melt off, I’ll be able to eat a few more fun things every now and then, like chips – man oh man I do love salt and vinegar potato chips. I hardly ever buy them, otherwise they’d be scarfed on the drive home from the grocery store.

America – It’s Time to Get Strong!

By Suzanne Olsen

On March 14, 2021

In Exercise, Food, Health

The American immune system is not a lean, mean, fighting machine. It is soft. It is flabby. It is housed in a muffin-top, beach-ball belly, existing on Cheetos, deep-fried Twinkies, mashed potatoes and gravy, and bacon-wrapped bacon. It doesn’t get any exercise except walking to the kitchen for a cold beer and a bag of chips because clicking through 988 channels of reruns makes a body hungry.

You may ask, “what is an immune system anyway?” Without getting too technical, it’s the boxers and street fighters and soldiers in your body – the guys that fight corona viruses and flus and bacterias when they invade your body to make you sick.

When a virus goes up your nose, instead of standing at attention and shouting a battle cry, America’s immune system lights up a cigarette, leans against a wall and says, “Sup?”

We need basic training for our bodies. We don’t want overweight and out of shape immune systems huffing and puffing on the battlefield, we want soldiers that can drop and give us 50.

We’ve been hearing a lot about compromised people with diabetes and heart disease. They might say, “These things run in my family.” That is absolutely true. Often it’s yo momma who introduced you to unhealthy lifestyle habits, just like her momma did to her. Those yummy comfort foods she fed you tastes good, and it’s cheap. It wasn’t so bad in the past, when people worked hard and had to carry water up from the creek, build fences, walk to the barnyard to feed the chickens, they could burn off all that cheap creamed corn, potatoes and gravy, bread and butter and apple pie.

Now we eat the same cheap stuff, along with modern-day chips of all kinds – but now we’ve got nothing to do but watch TV. There’s no nutrition in that stuff, it’s just handy and tasty. It’s the same food we give to livestock. How do you fatten up cattle before they go to market? Corn and other cheap grains. They get fat because it’s not their natural food so they keep eating, trying to get nutrition that isn’t there. It’s just calories. A cow will eat itself to death on corn if you let it – it’s stomach will literally burst. I know this for a fact because when we were kids, my brother didn’t latch the door to the feed shed at my grandfather’s farm, and one of the milk cows got in there, Pet was her name, and ate corn all night and her stomach burst and she died. She ate herself to death.

We’re eating ourselves to death, too. The human body is hollering, “Hey, you! We need some food that’s got vitamins and minerals in it! We’re hungry for something healthy!” But all you hear is the “hungry” part, and you grab a bag of potato chips. Your body keeps pleading, so you grab some buttered popcorn and a Pepsi.

You can’t have good soldiers unless you give them the food they need. I didn’t say “want,” because we all “want” unhealthy food. It’s tasty! Our bodies become addicted to sweets and starches. How many times have you said, “I’m not even hungry but I want a little something sweet (or salty)?”

Breaking an addiction isn’t easy, but it can be done. You’ve got to retrain your mouth to like carrots and broccoli and other vegetables. Hey, quit making that barf face! Why do you think healthy people eat these things? Do you see them gagging when they eat salads? No. They love ’em. Their mouths have been trained to like the taste, just like you were trained to like sweet tea even though it gags me because it’s so fricking sweet. Talk about a barf face!

While you’re at it, send your body to basic training. You don’t have to march up and down saying, “hep, deda-hep” or whatever those boot camp marchers repeat on TV – just stroll around the block to start out. Look at people’s flowers, listen to the birds sing, make fun of the paint on someone’s house.

You’ve got to repeat this mantra: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” If your body is in bad shape, it’s because of you. Not your momma. Not your daddy. Not your genes. Your momma may have raised you to be unhealthy because that’s all she knew, and all your brothers and sisters and cousins might be unhealthy, but once you leave home, it’s all on you

Get rid of these excuses:

-“I don’t like vegetables.” (Your momma probably didn’t like vegetables either unless they were floating in bacon grease or butter or gravy or starchy stuff like potatoes and corn.)

-“Diabetes and high blood pressure and heart disease run in my family.” (That might be true, but look at them – do they have unhealthy habits, too?)

“My doctor says it’s genetic.” (Your doctor has also told you to eat right and exercise.)

Now stand up and do something. Walk around the block, up steps, down escalators. Bend over and pick up things rather than letting they lie there. Do you own housework. Quit parking in the handicap space. Walk through the mall even if you’re not going to buy anything. Do your own yard work, mop your own floors. Build up to a couple of blocks and eventually a couple of miles a day. If it makes your joints sore, are you carrying two suitcases full of body fat everywhere you go? Bad eating habits can do that to you.

Find a make-your-body-happy way to eat that makes you strong – I recommend eating the South Beach or Mediterranean way because they’re not weird diets to lose weight. You want something you can do the rest of your life, not just something to drop pounds. You’ll lose weight eating this way in the long run, but that’s not what we’re after. A leaner body is just a nice side effect of getting healthy. Your check-ups with the doctor will get better – lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, so you may be able to get rid of some of the prescriptions you’re taking to treat your unhealthy lifestyle. Remember, the stronger you are, the stronger your fighting team will be.

The way you eat can be an addiction. No one was born to be an alcoholic, a smoker, or a food addict. You may have been brought up in a family with all of those things happening, and you may have generations of addicts in your bloodline, but you are the one who reaches for a bottle, a smoke, or a bag of chips.

Even healthy people want these foods – they’re tasty! The people who make this stuff and advertise it on TV have spent decades figuring out exactly what it takes to make you keep buying their products. Healthy people love potatoes and gravy and chips and dips the same as you do. But they learn how to eat well because they want to be, well, healthy. That’s why people who love to smoke quit smoking, and people who love to drink stop drinking. Unhealthy eaters change because they don’t want to be dependent on doctors and prescriptions for heart disease and diabetes – that “pound of cure” I was talking about, or they don’t like how it makes them look and feel and limits what they can do.

All addictions rob you of your strength and make your body weaker. It’s not about how you look on the outside. It’s about being strong! Next time germs invade, your immune system will stand up tall and say, “Oh, no. Hell no. Not in this house!” I’m not saying you’ll never get sick. But if you do, you may not get as sick. Your soldiers will beat up on those germs and eventually they’ll run off, holding their hands over their bottoms as you pelt them with all your healthy ammo. If nothing else, you’ll look and feel better. You can do this. Start today!!

America’s Bodies and Immune Systems. The strong. The proud. The free!

Election 2020

By Suzanne Olsen

On November 8, 2020

In Exercise, Fat, Fears, Food, Humor, News, Politics

Election 2020 has put an extra five pounds on me. On Tuesday, as I watched the returns coming in, my appetite for salty, crunchy foods hit new highs. We made tacos for dinner, and I ate extra beans and onions and chips and cheese and guacamole, and vigorously shook out way too many drops of Tabasco sauce on everything. I was wound up.

Record-breaking quantities of food passed through my mouth at dinnertime. With every new red or blue state on the map, I headed for the kitchen. I devoured 80 percent of the crunchy food group before moving on to chocolate.

It was fear eating. Like when I’m at the cinema watching a scary movie in wide-eyed horror, barely breathing, putting fistful after fistful of faux-butter popcorn in my mouth with one hand, clutching the armrest with the other, not even aware I’m eating until my greasy fingers scratch the bottom of the bucket.

Social distancing from my kitchen

By Suzanne Olsen

On June 15, 2020

In Fat, Food, Home Life

I have social distanced from activities, family and friends, stores, but what I really need to do is social distance myself from the kitchen. Being home all the time is causing my appetite to surge like a Space X rocket.

I blame it on boredom. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty to do – clean closets, yard work and all that, but it’s not fun. Used to be, back in January, or Pre-C, I’d spend my time going out – you know, with friends and family, volunteering, shopping, book club meetings, luncheons. I’d style my hair and look at all my clothes, get exasperated because I didn’t have anything to wear, start combining my sad glad rags to try and get a new look, create a pile of discards on the floor that I’d hang back up later. After much time and energy I’d leave my house, finally happy to be seen in public.

It gave me something to do. First thing most mornings: walk with a friend wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Then back home, shower, change into nicer jeans and top. Blow dry and hairspray my hair, put on makeup, pick out different shoes – not the muddy ones from the walk. Later, for the evening adventure, try on several outfits, shoes, necklaces, scarves. Hang the rejects back up. Re-do my hair and makeup. Maybe give myself a pedicure.

Now, with just my husband and me here alone, unless I have a Zoom meeting, I dress in baggy, somewhat clean clothes in the morning, let my drab hair hang limp, never wear makeup.

I have nothing to do but eat.

A Memory for Mother’s Day

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 11, 2019

In Food, Kids

Note: I wrote this when my daughter was around ten years old.

It’s five in the afternoon, and I’m debating whether to sacrifice precious calories for a glass of wine, or save them for a piece of the ugliest cake on earth that my daughter, Kelly, made last night. It’s really no contest. That cake! Oh, my!

No Wonder We’re Fat – We Eat Like Livestock

By Suzanne Olsen

On April 5, 2019

In Exercise, Food, Health

Ever been in a restaurant that serves fresh bread, and you eat it all and ask for more? When your belly starts pooching out, do you unbutton your pants, and when your food comes, are you still hungry enough to eat it all, and do you really really want to lick the plate? Do you unzip your pants all the way down and then feel in the mood for a little something sweet? When your dessert comes, do you hold your fork up to stab any hand that comes in for a sample before you eat every crumb all by yourself? Do you say, multiple times, “I’m stuffed” then, if there’s any bread left, reach for it saying, “I really shouldn’t eat this, but…” After you ask the waiter for more butter, do you finish off every piece of bread, even if it’s several slices?

Su-then Hospitality

By Suzanne Olsen

On October 23, 2012

In Food, Vacations

Speaking of Tennessee and being Su-then – that is a whole ‘nother world down there in Dixie. The things they do are amusing at every turn. The Cracker Barrel is an example.

After my lengthy flight from Portland, OR to Knoxville, TN (the closest airport to Kingsport that I could use with my airline miles), and renting a car for the last leg of the trip, I was starving to death and didn’t want fast food – I wanted collard greens and fried okra and black eyed peas and corn bread and other such Su-then fare. I wanted Cracker Barrel. I called my family and my Uncle Martin gave me the names of three exits with Cracker Barrels between Knoxville and Kingsport, an hour and a half drive away.

I parked the rental, mouth watering, and stepped up on the long porch of this mecca of southern cuisine. I passed all those wooden rocking chairs and for a second I was tempted to sit a spell, but figured I’d better get my name in because it was Saturday evening and the place was packed.

After a small wait in which I browsed the country store and thought about how good it was to be back in the South, a sweet girl with a cherub face seated me at a little table in the middle of the action. Waiters and waitresses zipped from table to table and said things like, “Hello, darlin’. Can I git you something to drink, sugar?” It was like that through the whole meal. I couldn’t take two bites without someone asking if they could get me some more water, “honey,” and if I was enjoying my food, or “Sweetie, can I refill that tea for you?”

When I went to the cash register to pay, an ancient woman with more wrinkles than a wadded up linen shirt was behind the register. I mentally stereotyped her, no doubt slow and fumbling, as she handed the change to the couple in front of me. When I stepped up to pay she briskly took my money and started ringing me up. “Sweetheart, did you have a good supper?” she said. “Can I interest you in some of this hand lotion? It smells so sweet. Oh and you really ought to try these caramels – they just melt in your mouth!” Not only was she quick, she wasn’t taking “no” for an answer until she up-sold me something from the gift shop.

With the drive ahead of me, it was going to be late when I arrived at my Aunt Mary Ellen’s house, and it was already way past dark, but I eased down into one of the wooden rocking chairs on the front porch and felt myself rock back and forth like the pendulum in a grandfather clock, listening to the soothing sound of wood rolling over wood, remembering the taste of that good southern food, the smell of the fresh-baked cornbread, and the sounds of families exchanging stories all around me as they visited at the Cracker Barrel on a Saturday evening. I mentally willed myself to slow down to Tennessee time.

I’d come back “home” to take a little break from life and get centered – and as I sat there rocking, I knew it was going to be a perfect trip. A couple walked slowly out of the restaurant, holding hands. He grinned at me and said, “How y’all doin?” There are no strangers in Tennessee – but there are some strange people. I’ll tell you about one of them next time.

Hot Lips Nachos

By Suzanne Olsen

On December 1, 2011

In Food

I had nachos for dinner tonight and got way too liberal with the hot sauce and jalapeno peppers. Law have mercy! My lips were burning like someone was lighting them with a blow torch. And yet I could not stop eating. The flames barely had half a second to recede before I put some more fire in my mouth.

I suffered through a rather large plate of nachos, and it never got any easier. Each bite was as hot as the last, and just as painful, and yet it was not a deterrent for me to cease stuffing myself.

The weird thing is that it burned like hot tar on the equator on my lips and into my mouth, but once it headed to my throat, it didn’t burn anymore. All the way down the chute to my stomach, I didn’t feel a thing.

This makes sense, when you think about it. Your lips and mouth are like two Buckingham Palace guards – they’re not going to let anything in that would do you any harm. If those guys can take the red-hot fire of spicy food, then they must figure that your cast iron stomach should do just fine.

I’ve popped things in my mouth and discovered that they were too freaking hot – like they’ve come out of an oven in Hades. When that happens I don’t spit it out, I simply make a big “O” with my mouth and say, “Hot! Hot! Hot!” and fan it a few times with my hand. And then I swallow the blistering lump so it quits burning – once it gets past a point, I can’t feel it anymore.

This is a wonder of biological engineering – a miracle of the human body.

On the other hand, some things go in your mouth all nice and easy-like, for instance the beans I had for lunch today, and then later they raise a ruckus in your digestive system like Tasmanian devils wrestling in the eye of a hurricane.

But I am not going to let this deteriorate into a discussion about flaming bottoms and lighting matches to see if they can ignite a blow torch when a person passes gas, and so forth.

Why can I NOT seem to get past bathroom humor?

When I went with my writer’s group to a retreat a few weeks ago, one of the members gave us each and “award.” Mine was for Humor. The one line summary she’d written about me on the award was, “Wait, wait – I have to go to the bathroom.” That pretty much sums me up – I don’t want to miss anything, hence the “wait, wait,” but the bathroom is always close by – either in my writing, in my talking, or when I’m rushing for it because of some extremely spicy food I had no business eating.

Okay, speaking of the toilet I have to tell a story, but it will need to wait until tomorrow because it’s too long for tonight when the bed is calling and my eyelids are as heavy as a full bladder. See, I just can’t get away from bodily functions……

Bad Wine and Spotted Dick

By Suzanne Olsen

On October 30, 2011

In Food, Religion

Funny day today. I went to church and the priest had some wine he was getting ready to bless for communion when he stopped cold and said, “There’s something wrong with the wine.” He turned to the choir director, “Can you give us some music while we get this taken care of?”

The pianist started playing a song and one of the altar guys took the wine and headed to the room behind the altar. The priest stood there looking over the congregation, and I wondered, “What could be wrong with the wine? Maybe it turned to vinegar and he took that little drink and nearly gagged. Or it had a fly doing the backstroke in there. Or green mold floating on top. Or maybe it had a tarantula in it. That last one was far fetched – there aren’t any tarantulas around here, but we had quite a bit of time to kill for me to get creative.

This is the same priest I wrote about last week – I won the raffle for him to come and bless my house. I have not set that up yet because I still haven’t decided on the correct protocol – do I have him for lunch, or just have him do a slam, bam, thank you ma’am type of blessing and send him on his way. After today’s events I’m glad I’ve been indecisive, because now when he comes I can ask him what happened to the wine.

Another odd thing happened – I got behind the zebra car on the freeway. It’s a white car someone painted stripes on to look like a zebra. Then they glued a zebra tail to the trunk. My daughter and I have seen it parked in our area of the city, and we always say, “Look at that zebra car. Who would paint their car like a zebra?”

So today I went down the ramp and got on the freeway, and this zebra car was exactly in front of me. What are the chances of that? I watched that zebra tail – complete with a realistic black tuft at the end – for several miles, twitching in the wind. I got so excited I texted my daughter, “That zebra car is in front of me on the freeway!” She immediately texted back, “Are you texting while you’re driving?” I didn’t answer her.

This evening my cousin Nancy from Memphis called and started telling me a funny story about an older man she was visiting – the husband of a friend who passed away. Each time she visited him in the nursing home she’d ask him questions about his life. Eventually he’d ask, “Now why are you doing this?” He wondered why she was visiting. She always answered that he’d lived an interesting life and she wanted to record his story. On her recent visit he asked her again and she gave him the same answer. He looked at her for a couple of minutes and finally said, “You know, I’ve had an operation.”

Nancy and I both burst out laughing when she told me this. “He thought you were hitting on him,” I said, “and he wanted to make sure you knew he couldn’t make any little Nancy babies.”

“And then there was the time I was at the grocery store,” Nancy said. She was on a roll. “There was this attractive older woman walking down the aisle and I was behind her for a good ways. By coincidence I stopped at the same place she stopped. I was right beside her, and I reached for a can of Spotted Dick.”

“Spotted WHAT?” I said.

“Spotted Dick. I picked up the can and said to the woman, just to make conversation because she was right beside me, “Have you ever had any of this?

“The woman looked puzzled and said, ‘Why, I don’t believe I have.’ She turned away quickly and scurried down the aisle.”

“She thought you were hitting on her, too! My gosh, Nancy, do you just stalk old folks so you can hit on them – it doesn’t matter if they’re male or female? Can you imagine that poor old woman, you’d been following her down the aisles. She finally stops thinking the stalker will pass, and instead you try to make a pass at her with a can of Spotted Dick?”

We laughed until we couldn’t breathe.

“What the heck is Spotted Dick anyway?” I asked, wiping the tears from my eyes.

“It’s sponge cake in a can,” Nancy said, and we laughed all over again at the absurdity of that.

“Who puts sponge cake in a can? And then names it Spotted Dick? Oh my gosh!”

Anyway, as you can see, this has been a most interesting day. And I was fretting because I didn’t know what to write about….

My Dog’s Frito Feet

By Suzanne Olsen

On October 29, 2011

In Food, Pets

My little dog’s feet smell like Fritos. She’s lying beside me as I type on my laptop on the sofa, and she just changed positions. The smell of Fritos wafted into the air like incense.

My family thinks the dog’s feet smell pleasant. Fritos is a pleasant odor. On the other hand, our personal human feet are disgusting, especially when they’ve been in sweaty shoes. Perhaps that’s the problem. If we did not wear footwear for hours on end, would we also have pleasant smelling feet?

This is for future pondering because we want to focus on the dog’s feet right now and ask the question, how on earth did a dog’s feet come to smell like a packaged corn chip?

A corn chip is made of corn and salt all smashed together, baked until it has that perfect crunch, and sealed in a bag that is impossible for humans to penetrate without a sharp object or very, very strong teeth. It used to be that you’d get a guy to open a lid for you, but now you have to find a guy to get into a bag of chips. Sometimes, if there’s no guy handy, I’ve had to tear at these bags with my teeth like a savage jackal, over and over, getting a small bit of bag each time, spitting it out and tearing some more until I gnaw a hole big enough to plunge my fist through.

So the grains and salts and other things that go into a corn chip – the chemical composition as it were – and the baking, which alters or at least dehydrates the chemicals – and the packaging which protects the baked chip until the year 4010 because air doesn’t have the teeth to penetrate the seal – how in the universe can THAT smell like my dog’s feet?

My dog’s feet always smell like Fritos except just after a bath. Within a day, the Frito feet are back – all four of them. The rest of the dog may be foul from rolling in dead rodent to try to get the clean shampoo smell off, but those feet are pleasant.

It’s a mystery someone needs to solve, because there is something very, very sick about smelling a dog’s feet and immediately craving Fritos and cream cheese.

If you’ve never tried it, take a normal Frito – not the big ones – and scrape it through a container of Philadelphia cream cheese. It’s quite tasty. Don’t go in too deep or the Frito will break off. BEWARE – you will go through a whole container of cream cheese pretty quick and become a big fat lard because you won’t have the willpower to stop eating them, they’re that good.

Back to the subject, which is, why does my dog have Frito feet? If you know the answer, please don’t hesitate to send it to me via a package containing Fritos. I’m running low.