Janice and I were celebrating the freedom of having been vaccinated by going somewhere together in the same car. Our destination was the Container Store, which both of us thought would be fascinating, and it was. Even more fascinating was something Janice said when looking at a small, two-section food container. “I’d put carrots in here and peanut butter in there.”
Now, I’ve known Janice a long time. I’ve traveled with Janice. And I had no idea this close friend and exemplary human being ate weird stuff. In fairness, Janice doesn’t think carrots and peanut butter is weird. I googled the combination, and it’s clear that there are those who agree with her. Weird, like beauty, must be in the eye of the beholder. Or the taste buds.
Early on in our courting, the man I was to marry, a brilliant and highly educated scientist, announced that, as a child, he ate cheese-and-jelly sandwiches. And not only did he eat them, so did his whole family. Again, wonderful human beings all, but they thought cheese-and-jelly sandwiches were normal. Tasty even, if prepared correctly, which is to say, with Velveeta cheese and grape jelly on white bread. My husband claims he liked his cheese-and-jelly sandwiches, but he hasn’t prepared one, or eaten one, in all the years I’ve known him.
My preferred cheese sandwich trades the Velveeta for a good-quality sharp cheese. The white bread for whole grain. And the jelly for bread-and-butter pickle chips. That’s correct: I like cheese-and-pickle sandwiches. Love ’em, in fact. I should think they’d be popular, combining as they do cheese, tang, and crunch. The only time I’ve seen them mentioned was in a British novel, where a character bought one ready made at a take-out place. I googled what the Brits mean by a cheese-and-pickle sandwich, though, and it’s another creature entirely. People don’t know what they’re missing.
People probably have a pretty good idea of what they’re missing when it comes to something else my husband and I eat: applesauce on frozen burritos. We’re not talking about fancy frozen burritos. We’re talking about sixty-nine-cent frozen burritos. It’s not as if we’re trying to stretch our food dollar by rendering palatable something we don’t like. We enjoy sixty-nine-cent frozen burritos. We just enjoy them more with applesauce. Weird, but go figure–we also like applesauce on pasties.
A couple of our grown kids like weird food combinations. Eliza puts cheddar cheese on cinnamon-raisin bagels. She says it’s great and that sometimes she toasts it. Kate—and I shudder even to write this down—puts ketchup on macaroni and cheese. A number of the folks I asked about weird food volunteered that they put ketchup on their eggs. I can see that. But ketchup on mac and cheese? Oh, Kate.
Nyler, our niece’s child, has been preparing his own snacks at least since he was four. That’s how old he was when we first saw him demonstrate this self-sufficiency. He walked into the cottage, greeted us with his unfailing good cheer, and disappeared into the kitchen. We didn’t see him again for some minutes; then he reappeared, making good progress on polishing off an ear of corn. The corn was raw. Nyler liked raw corn. He also shucked the corn he ate, and cleaned up after himself. A remarkable child. And unusual.
Carol likes to drink the juice when she finishes a jar of bread-and-butter pickles. She says it’s just so zesty and exhilarating. I love bread-and-butter pickles. My husband uses it in his most excellent potato salad, as did his mother before him. But Carol drinks it.
Isaac takes the cake for weird eating, though. He likes to eat watermelon rind. His mom, our friend Mary, says he loved eating watermelon when he was a child, as most of us did. Only, instead of stopping after he’d finished the juicy flesh, if she didn’t watch him, he’d chomp his way happily through the rind as well.
Watermelon rind is highly nutritious, according to those who know about these things. But I can find no reference that advocates eating it raw. Pickled or stir-fried, yes. Raw, not so much. Mary says that even now, as an adult, Isaac enjoys watermelon rind. She no longer keeps an eye on him when he eats watermelon, though. Sometimes it’s better not to know.
Eating weird things adds interest and variety and, well, flavor to life. Sometimes, the weird things people like turn out to be delicious. Doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, weird is just weird.
2 July 2021