Bucking the Trends...

...or confessions of a non-Foodie.

Twenty years ago I met a professor at a Christmas party where we were playing some sort of trivia game. He announced proudly that he had dropped out of contemporary culture twenty years earlier. I remembered the conversation because I had just realized that I couldn't converse with the preteen babysitter we had enlisted for the evening because I didn't know anything about Michael Jackson's Moonwalk, Madonna, or OP clothes. I didn't intentionally drop out of contemporary culture, but vice versa. As a harried, broke, sleep-deprived mother of toddlers my name had been dropped from the membership roll of The Hip & In The Know. These things happen when your every single car drive is accompanied by Raffi or Wee Sing tapes.

I drive around in my seriously un-sexy Buick these days listening to NPR or the classical music radio station. I use the word "groovy" in conversation. I wonder why so many people at the mall look like they are wearing their pajamas, or just their underwear. I call graphic novels "comic books" and think they should cost a quarter at Ben Franklin's. And so, I have missed the food fad.

There are a lot of folks out there sampling exotic olives and making Crème Brûlée, which sounds like a good name for a teenage cave man. I have to apologize for ordering "a just plain regular black coffee", and get haggis and hummus mixed up.

With no sons at home, I am tempted to eat nuked hot dogs with French's mustard three meals a day. Driving home from work I had a little chat with myself (for the amusement of the driver ahead of me) about eating better. So I went to Central Market. I'm probably the only Planoite who's never been. Had a nice time wandering around looking at fresh veggies and fruits, and an amazing array of sausages. Started zoning out reading labels in the salad dressing aisle in my continuing search for onionless dressings. Suddenly someone was asking me in a very shrill, singsong voice if I needed any help. I turned around to find a woman who looked like a Sixties troll doll wearing a green and white striped apron and a nametag identifying her as a "Foodie". She had a pink lamb puppet, which was apparently the reason for the odd voice. I said I was fine, but the lamb was quite insistent that she could help me, so I asked the lamb which dressings didn't contain onions. The lamb was stumped, and scurried off to the bulk organic whole grains department. I talk to puppets often in both my jobs, but I don't want to do it in the grocery store!