One Plate Wonder

I've come to the conclusion, after a recent string of good but largely unfinished restaurant meals, that I do not like the course-by-course dining template. Naturally, this is the only available template for most cuisines of the world.

The reason is that I fill up pretty quickly. Too quickly to still be interested in more food after I've finished the soup and salad. Add an appetizer to that, and you can just forget it. I'll be unable to do more than taste one bite of the most important part of the meal -- entree and dessert.

Also I think course-by-course encourages overeating, particularly with ginormous American portions and short mealtimes, because people feel obligated to continue eating even after they're stuffed, to get to "the good part." I've kept my weight in check all these years with portion control. No, I don't weigh food or measure, but I can eyeball something and know whether it's all going to fit inside or not. It's become a way of life. Anyone who has cooked for me knows to only serve me about half of what they serve themselves, or basically, a portion you'd give a 6-year-old child. I adore food. But I only want what I can finish.

What I like is for all courses to be served at once, so I can free-float through the different courses; bite of salad, taste of soup, nibble of dessert, bite of entree. I don't have to miss any for being too full.

Aside from breakfasts, the times I have been able to do this in a restaurant is exactly zero. I don't even ask -- I've waited tables and know how this would fuck things up for the kitchen, and I refuse to be the asshole eccentric customer. But I used to do it all the time in the college cafeteria.

Fellow Student: "Why are you alternating bites of jambalya and banana creme pie?"
Mare: "Cuz it rocks!"

Gold Star

When you have a blog or a public journal, as I do, there are many moments in each day when you spontaneously start composing a post in your head while going about life's very mundane business, only to remember (if you're grounded in any sort of reality) that nobody would or should give a good goddamn about what it is you have to share. I'm not talking about sudden deep insights while doing the laundry; I'm talking about posts about the laundry itself.

As a sometimes-fiction-writer, I can put a spin on quasi-retarded topics and make them readable. Case in point: my post just prior to this about liking all my food on one plate. Only a navel gazer would write about that, but a well-mannered navel gazer can, and does, find wording that neither beseeches affirmation nor bores with excessive detail.

That said, I did my taxes today. That's not something you should care about, nor something I should crow about. Getting things done that we're supposed to do, like changing our underwear or doing our taxes, is not an "accomplishment." Yet when you're doing it, and when you get to that candy-like "All done!" moment, the first thing you (and by "you" I mean "I") want to do is tell someone about it.

This would be a non-item if I'd ever in my life done my taxes before April 14th in any given year prior this, ever. But here we are, in a spring-like February as I sorted through the communal 3-household mail basket and found my W2, that I actually skipped an anti-Superbowl board-game party and chose to geek on my taxes instead.

For the first time in 12 years, I'm getting a re-fucking-fund.

Et vous?