Food: A Love Story (40 page)

No, Halloween is my favorite because it is the ultimate candy holiday. When you’re a kid, Halloween is amazing. You dress like a superhero, you bang on your neighbor’s door, and they give you candy. I do that today, and my neighbor wants me arrested. Probably because I make such a hot Cat Woman. “Purrr! Kitty wants some
candy
.” Pumpkin—the only real food associated with Halloween—is purely decorative. People buy pumpkins around Halloween, but it is never to eat them. When someone wants pumpkin bread or muffins or a pumpkin pie, they go to a bakery. It is way too disgusting to try to obtain actual food out of a raw pumpkin. Who the heck gets hungry while scooping out that nasty, tangled mess? Hannibal Lecter? In our family, we always try to roast the slimy seeds, but they
just turn into burnt, overly salted choking hazards that scrape your intestines for the next two weeks after eating them. We only buy the pumpkins to make jack-o’-lanterns. “Let’s carve this healthy food up into a scary face and let it rot while we eat some candy.”

Thanksgiving is uniquely an American holiday. Sure, Canadians have a Thanksgiving, but I think they have theirs in October or something. Weirdos. I don’t think they even have a Fourth of July. Thanksgiving is intended to be about gratitude. A day of gratitude. Thank God there is a day for us to focus on being grateful because I’d hate the idea of having to be grateful year-round. We express this gratitude by overconsuming turkey, an enormous assortment of side dishes, and, of course, pies. There is very little complexity in the concept of the Thanksgiving holiday. It seems as if very little effort went into the planning.

“How about at Thanksgiving we just eat a lot?”

“But in America we do that every day!”

“Well, what if we eat a lot with people who annoy the hell out of us?”

Thanksgiving is all about overeating. Even one of the main dishes is actually called “stuffing.” Stuffing? What names did they turn down? “Cram It In”? “Eat Till You Can’t Breathe”? In some parts of the country, people call stuffing “dressing.” Actually, the term
stuffing
makes a lot more sense than “dressing,” which normally refers to something done externally rather than internally. By calling it dressing instead of stuffing, it almost seems as if they are purposely hiding the location where this dish is actually cooked. It’s borderline dishonest. “Here’s your ‘dressing’ (
wink
).” Admittedly, I’m not completely comfortable with the fact that stuffing (or dressing) is, in reality, cooked inside a dead animal. I’m not sure how this is supposed to be appetizing. We are basically shoving a loaf of
bread up the carcass of a turkey. This is a rather humiliating thing to do to anything after it dies. Talk about an outrage of personal dignity. I hope the turkeys never find out about this practice of “stuffing.”

TURKEY:
You guys are going to kill me?

HUMAN:
Oh, it’s going to get a lot worse.

The Thanksgiving meal represents the opening day of the holiday season, and it is a very unprofessional season at that. Santa may be watching, but nobody is being good in December. Christmas is the Las Vegas of holiday eating. From the moment December begins, you get a free pass to overindulge. There’s even candy in Advent calendars. Regardless of your faith or belief system, all Americans find themselves invited to a never-ending buffet of holiday parties. All dietary rules are suspended. You navigate your way through each day facing an onslaught of hors d’oeuvres, the French phrase for “trays of fattening stuff no one can identify.” Cookies, cakes, and candies are exchanged with friends for virtually no reason at all. During December we are all ingesting, imbibing, and spending with a reckless abandon like a bachelor party on a guilt-free boondoggle. Everyone has the unspoken agreement that what happens in December stays in December.

If Christmas consumption doesn’t kill or bankrupt you, you get one more chance on New Year’s Eve, the prom night of holidays. New Year’s Eve is the pinnacle of the alcohol overconsumption category, but it also is the culmination of all the indulging of the entire year in a final fit of hedonistic madness. It’s the overconsuming of overconsumption. The pressure is on. We get one last hurrah before we head back to the war of regular life and responsible living. Over the course of December’s gluttonous rampage we’ve committed to turn over a new leaf
come January. We can’t go on like this. We
can
be healthy, but only if we first get one last night. One last drink. One last piece of cake. One last cigarette. Like the Frog Prince, a kiss at midnight from our sweetheart will turn us into a new person. And
poof.
It’s a new year.

First Quarter

I start off the year with the best intentions. It’s a new year filled with hope and possibility …

FAMILY DINNER

When I was growing up, every Sunday my family would have a family dinner. “Sunday dinner”—or as I called it, “torture”—was my parents’ attempt at being civilized and having at least one meal a week with the entire family. Mom, Dad, and the six kids would gather around the dining room table. There was no getting out of it. My friend’s mom could offer to take me to meet Jesus and I wouldn’t be able to go. It was “family time,” and I remember hating it. There was a formal-dress requirement. Well, not formal but more fancy, so wearing scratchy clothes was a necessity. The dinner had to take place in the dining room, and my mom had to use her wedding china that was so nice it could never go into a dishwasher. It had to be carefully washed by hand. And preferably dried with a kitten. And it had to be a white kitten.

Sunday dinner would start around 6:00 p.m. We would say grace to thank God for all His blessings. Then we would try to rip each other apart over the first serving as my mother yelled orders at us from the other room. She never had time to eat. She would be scooting back and forth combining elegance
and warmth with absolute frustration. “Eat the coleslaw!” would be bellowed from the other room. My dad would hack a productive smoker’s cough before he began every sentence. “(
cough
) This is great, Marcia,” my dad would mumble as he slid a carving knife into a pork roast, a turkey, or a rack of lamb. He would use a low voice as if to indicate to the rest of us “Compliment your mother or you die.” My siblings and I would quickly chime in with “It’s great. Thanks, Mom.” Then a silence would fall over the table as bowls and plates were passed and food was voraciously consumed. I remember being a kid and never being able to find a multicourse meal appealing. I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t just have McDonald’s for Sunday dinner. My eight-year-old palette was already accustomed to fast food, and expanding it beyond that has been a lifelong struggle for me. My mom could make thick and juicy home-cooked hamburgers on some fancy roll, but I still preferred a thin, tasteless McDonald’s hamburger on that wonderbun.

At the end of dinner, my dad would light a cigarette (yes, in the same room with all six of us kids) and begin a discussion that to me always seemed like awkward small talk: “Someone (one of the kids) broke the clicker (remote control).” Or: “(Someone we don’t know) is dying, so we should all feel horrible.” Or even worse: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” As a ten-year-old I remember announcing, “Mike says I’d be a great proctologist.” No, I had no idea what it was, but I figured out I’d said something wrong when everyone laughed at me and my dad gave me the deadeye stare.

Occasionally my father would ask us about historical events. “Jimmy, what do you think of the Vietnam War?” It didn’t matter that the Vietnam War was long over or that I was ten years old at the time and pretty much unaware of the existence of Vietnam. I’m sure my answer was nothing very insightful
and probably pretty ignorant, much to the delighted mockery of my older siblings. “Um, it seems fun on
M*A*S*H
.” (
gales of laughter
) “That was
Korea
, you idiot!”

Many of these Sunday night family “discussions” would inevitably lead to massive arguments, and normally someone would end up crying or getting punished. The punishment was pretty harsh and usually involved cleaning up after the Sunday dinner, which was the only thing worse than the actual Sunday dinner. Cleaning up after an eight-person Sunday dinner that you don’t even want to be at should probably be added to Amnesty International’s list of torture techniques. But we were dressed nicely, so it seemed like very civilized torture. It’s no wonder I still love McDonald’s. You can just eat it, then throw the bag away.

LAST SUPPER

Sitting and eating a meal with someone is intimate. I try to eat as many meals as I can with my kids. Sure, I try to eat as many meals as I can in general, but eating with my children is important. There we are together, eating and talking, spilling and throwing food. Sometimes my kids misbehave too. It’s a great time to force myself away from all the other distractions in life and sit around a table sharing an experience with my family. Even baby Patrick in his high chair knows it’s important. He laughs along and babbles in agreement. He is in the mix. The entire family is participating in something together. Jeannie and I try to teach manners and civilize these little monsters, but anyone with young children knows it’s never a relaxing experience. It’s just good to eat together. It’s a unique time you can share with your family, and it’s been going on for thousands of years.

My board of directors.

People of every culture have shared a family meal to commemorate their most important customs. On Passover, Jewish people eat lamb, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread in communion with their ancestors. It’s pretty brilliant, really. Imagine if years from now people thought of you while they ate bratwurst. “Well, on this day we eat brats to honor Jim Gaffigan.” Eating a meal with your family or friends to honor someone or something heightens the experience of eating, and eating heightens the experience of the tradition. It was on a Passover over two thousand years ago that Jesus hosted the Last Supper. It was the “Last Supper,” not the “Last Seminar,” for a reason. Jesus was getting at least twelve men together. There had to be food.