Too Much Information About The Color Of My Urine

I don’t ever “treat” myself to anything. You hear people say that all the time: “I’m just going to treat myself to…” whatever guilty indulgence they have deemed themselves to have earned through denying that object for some period of time.

            I don’t do that.

            I eat whatever the fuck I want, and don’t view anything delicious as a “treat.”

            In fact, I’m a little weirded out when people use that kind of language because the implication is that some foods are “good” or “bad” when really all foods are good, and bad. Even water, if you drink too much, is harmful. Now, I don’t know much water a person would need to drink to cause bodily harm, but I can promise I’ve had the kind of hangovers that justify gallons upon gallons of water, and when you work in kitchens you can drink and drink and drink… Water that is. Still, I’ve never had a problem with drinking too much water. Of course, 90% of the time my pee comes out as a dark yellow, almost orange/brown, substance with a consistency more like a solid than a liquid, so I imagine I could stand to drink some more water.

            This idea of treating oneself to some kind of food is foreign to me. We didn’t have discussion like that at the dinner table growing up. My parents made great food, and we loved it. We had “salad” that was sliced Hanover Tomatoes – capitalized on purpose to show respect to the greatest of all tomatoes –, cucumbers, and blue cheese dressing. I could eat that salad all day and all night if I were given the change. To this day, I can’t eat a breakfast sandwich without thinking of my mother, cooking fried eggs, while I sat on the kitchen floor, in front of a small floorboard heater, because the pesky kitchen would never get warm enough in the winter. She would cook the eggs over easy, and put them on toast with, American cheese, and bacon. I’d eat them on the floor, in front of that heater, and it was pure heaven. I don’t even like toast, but when it’s part of a breakfast sandwich that’s a whole different story. It has the power to instantly transport to back to my childhood.

            My childhood where dinner might be bacon wrapped chicken, baked in a mixture of cream of mushroom soup and sour cream, on top of a bed of chipped beef. This was always served with rice so we could mix it up with the sauce and eat it with a spoon. My mother does pot roast the same way: sear it, cook it SLOW in sour cream and cream of mushroom soup.

            My father makes green beans, which are cooked all day, with bacon, until they are soft and mushy, in the best of ways. He finishes them off with a little Lawry's seasoned salt and cayenne pepper. We always fight over how much cayenne he puts in – my mother preferring them milder, and my father always going a touch over board. As I’ve gotten older I’m tending to agree more with my father on that one.

            My father makes a meat sauce that is like a Bolognese, but he creates it in a miracle like way, with a deep, fierce, and unrelenting hatred of… Oregano. Seriously, he hates the stuff, and says there’s nothing that spice can’t ruin. Now, I love it, but I prefer my father’s spaghetti sauce to all others, and I make a pretty dang good Bolognese, but my dad wins the prize. Hell, I used to take mason jars of it back to school in the north, to eat late at night with crackers like a dip. What I’d do is pour a bunch of this into a bowl, heat up in a microwave, then fold in a bunch of American cheese, so it made almost like an Italian queso fundido type sauce mixture, and then I’d dip Pepperidge Farms butterfly crackers into it while watching late night T.V.

            To be clear, in my family, no one ever questioned this practice. It’s the way I liked it, and it was one of my favorite things in the whole world, and only my father can make that sauce. He gave me the recipe once, and I tried to make it, but it wasn’t the same.

            It was not a treat.

It was a snack.

And when I took the jars up North, I would eat that sauce, an think of home.

            Treats are for three year olds. My son Porter gets a treat when he poops in the potty. What I get is a handle bottle of Bourbon and a quart of my dad’s sauce with crackers and cheese, and I call that a damn good fucking Tuesday.

            I think these folks who talk about “treating” themselves are misguided, but I can see how thinking certain foods are bad can be beneficial. After all, I did recently learn how bad a potato chip is for you, and now when I see those tempting delights in the store I turn my back on them like the girlfriend who cheated on you in college and then acted like her shit don’t stink. (Yea, you know who you are bitch!)

            I still don’t treat myself to thing, even while doing this salad challenge. Even the salads are great. I smother them in creamy dressings. I cover them in bacon. I eat them with sliced steak. And still… Still… They come in at half the calories compared to what I would have eaten.

            Let the haters say what the haters are gonna’ say: that I don’t understand how to eat healthy. They’ll be right, but I’m learning to eat healthier, and that’s a good thing.

            Also, I dropped a pant size in two weeks!