Author: Bev

As Labor Day approaches, I find myself reflecting on the summer that has been.  “Same difference” seems an apropos way to describe it.

Last summer was filled with care for my elderly mother-in-law and her estate.  And I had to deal with one physical malady after another, which was unusual to say the least.

Mother-in-law passed this February, and this summer has been different.  For several years, we had developed a “routine of care” for her and her belongings, which quite frankly was consuming in many ways.

This summer we have gradually been playing “catch-up” with housework and yard-work, which had been set aside as of secondary importance, relative to various care-giving duties.  Coping with the ninety-degree weather is a perfect example of “same difference.”  The differences from years past are negligible, but we think they are significant.

The early twentieth century use of the phrase, “same difference” originated as a witty way of combining the concepts “same thing” and “no difference.”  So, there is little difference in how we feel ninety-degree weather.

There were some ninety-degree days when we just had to sit in the air conditioning and stew, literally.  There is a reason for naming heavy humidity, oppressive.  Humidity just sits on you like an elephant sitting on a mouse.

But was this summer any different than last, as to heat and humidity?  Same difference, I’d say.

The yard-work part of this summer has changed.  We’ve been able to “keep up” more than in the past several years of preoccupation with my husband’s mom who was afflicted with increasingly debilitating dementia.

For me, it started with the erection of a “corn tent” for our grandson.  It was placed near the firewood piles.

I use the word “piles” loosely as I have created Jenga-like puzzle stacks in our woodlot.  I did this exercise for many years but just couldn’t manage it for the last couple of years, what with other areas of life taking precedence.

My husband is quite proud of my wood stacking skills.  He even sends pictures to his friends.  It’s my penchant for order and love of puzzle-solving, that fuels this “natural” skill.

At any rate, as one chore completed, seems to lead to the next chore, it was Charlie’s corn tent that led to my need to clean up the woodlot.  I wanted a safe space for him to play.

The corn tent seemed like a clever idea and Charlie loves it.  However, so do the squirrels.  They conveniently chewed holes in each corner and side of the tent to gain entrance to a treasure trove of free corn.  Since most animals don’t defecate where they eat, I just threw up my hands and said, “oh well.”  The tent wasn’t expensive, and Charlie has had a fun summer with Grammy’s creation.

As the summer wanes, I have become a pruning machine.  The growth from early and prolific rain has been phenomenal.

Many of our trees, shrubs, and plants have become overgrown in the last couple of years.  I made it my mission that before Labor Day I would have this growth under control.

I have become quite intimate with the ground, as I sit on it.  I’m all about the “grounding” movement and my bottom has become one with it.

While pruning the underside of many shrubs and trees in our vast Arboretum-like yard, I began by scooching around the perimeter of the plant on my backside rather than bending over in a semi-permanent U-shape.  Then I remembered we came into a little garden trolley which I then toted with me to every tree and shrub.   Some tools make our jobs easier.

I will say that the bugs have given me a slight reprieve this summer, notwithstanding the little green repellent patches which my son-in-law gifted me with.  I’ve only had a few mosquito and spider bites, which thank God have not been of the toxic variety of last summer.

Speaking of the same, but different, it was a few years ago that when tidying up an underbrush beneath a grove of pine trees at my mother-in-law’s house, unbeknownst to me, I triggered a severe allergy to urushiol, the oil in the poison ivy plant.  Those of you who have followed my columns will remember my anguish with the aftermath.

This year when tidying up our old apple orchard, I noticed a familiar woody vine with big browning leaves, literally attached and seemingly growing into a Braeburn apple tree.  Yellow caution lights went off in my head before I dug in and ripped that thing off the tree.

Thank you, Google, for clarifying that that vine is none other than an old poison ivy vine.  What to do?  Touching it is out of the question.  I learned my lesson from that one.  But phantom itching has taken hold of my mind.

What about tidying up plants that gets me into trouble?  Sometimes I think that maybe nature just wants to be left alone.

Then there was the snake, a garter snake, but a snake nonetheless, that jumped out of the leaf debris in our cluster of white birch trees in the front yard?  I was glad that hubby was involved in that endeavor, he took the fear away and made it a giggle.

What’s that iffy definition of insanity – “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome?”  While a popular idiom, I don’t know if it’s insanity, but it does seem to be a universal mental health oxymoron, “same difference,” that is.

My mother-in-law may be gone, and this summer is nearly gone, but everything has a way of sticking around in memory or in symbols or the cycles of life.  Same difference seems to be one of the few permanent facts of life, which seems to be going nowhere.  I think maybe that’s a good thing.

 

 

 

 

 

On the week of my birthday in the year that I graduated from high school, a new movie was released.  It was The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, two of the hottest hotties of the time.

I guess I remembered this movie title because I too was reminiscing about the distant past and how the me of today relates to that person from so long ago.  Some things are recognizable as the same as today’s me, and others are so very different I don’t recognize her.

Does it make you chuckle when you think sometimes about the way you were back in the day?  I think it’s funny that my first-grade report cards, each marking period had a note in red ink under the social skills category, “talks too much.”

Apart from having grown up, filled out, and gone through many, changing life circumstances, have you changed much? I still talk too much.

I can talk to just about anybody about nearly any topic, given my interest in the subject.  And, as you know, I write about everything under the sun.  You get my drift then, some personality traits do not change, they evolve, encompassing all the matter that has accumulated in our DNA, since.

One can be quiet but not shy.  We can be introverts who are the life of the party.  Extroverts can be tortured by social anxiety in certain situations.  Some people can be orators but avoid small talk.  Have you met someone verbose for whom social gatherings are an endurance test?

In high school I was in a lot of clubs and extracurricular activities.  I dabbled, as to my interests.  Today I guess I still dabble.

I will write a lot about a little of everything.  My husband and I don’t always leave the tree where we first planted it.  Our property has within its bounds, one of these, two of that, totaling a whole lot of various plants.  That’s the way we like it.

I went to college, not at the traditional time.  I dabbled in business and travel first.  Have you ever noticed that some people knew what they wanted to do as their life work, way back in their past?  Others have had fits and starts where they tested their fit.  They moved their trees, so to speak.

Today, I’m not yet retired, but probably should be.  But the takeaway is, variety is still the spice of my life.

Having a home-based business is not for everybody.  There is a strange discipline, yet scheduling freedom built into such a business.  Some stuff has got to be done, like it or not.  This reminds me of an internet saying I recall, which fits the self-employed to a tee: “Do it tired.  Do it sad.  Do it unmotivated.  Do it scared.  Do it alone.”

I can in one day, prepare an extravagant home-cooked marvel, oversee the shipment of multiple packages to one part of the world or another, schedule the payment of this or that invoice, play with my grandson utilizing his on-site corn tent and multiple diggers, shovels, rakes and so on; I can stack firewood, at which my husband claims I am a master, do the laundry, organize the database to accommodate a new computer system, jog for at least twenty minutes, mow part of the lawn; oh, and write a blog post.

This is not a litany of complaint.  Instead, it is an example of the variety of activities in which I thrive as a fully grown adult.  However, this list of potential daily activities is not uncharacteristic of the teenager who stayed active in a whole bunch of clubs, in and out of school.

My lifestyle is neither here nor there but to show you an example of how a personality evolves but doesn’t necessarily change.  I challenge you to look for the thread or tapestry that has run through your life.

You and I are likely not the way we were.  The way we are now, like it or not, has a glimmer of that self from a while ago, but with a twist.  That’s called evolution.

 

 

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Our “overflow refrigerator, housed in the garage, is on the blink.  For years, it has tried to tell us that it doesn’t like the temperature extremes of that less than temperate space, freezing liquids in the winter and panting its way through the harsh summer heat in a pseudo-defrost.

The plight of the less-than-optimal functioning of that extra refrigerator is neither here nor there as to the focus of this piece.  Yet, when I pondered the existence of an extra appliance for storage, it got me to thinking about the contrast between wealth and want.

I wondered if this particular abundance, which I rather feel is not a rarity in this country, is usual to many Americans.  Then I mused that since the old children’s rhyme, held in my memory, Jack Sprat, originating in my ancestral home in Europe, is not peculiar to America, but to a dream of plenty, everywhere.

In the biblical book of Genesis, Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream of seven fat cows and seven skinny cows, as the cyclical phenomenon of plenty versus famine.  It was a prophecy, predicting seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine, which counseled a sort of savings plan, involving storage during the good times, to waylay the potential for lack during the lean times.

We’ve all heard about the concept of “feast or famine,” if not lived it.  So, extra storage just seems a prudent thing to do, right?

Then comes along Luke, chapter twelve in the Bible, which warns against the tempting hoarding habit associated with the storage patterns of some people, otherwise known as “rich fools.”  The gist of this parable is that the accumulation of material things, indicated by building ever-bigger barns in which to store your stuff, is a foolish distortion of your values.  Instead, we should consider sharing our abundance and considering our mortality.

“Jack Sprat could eat no fat.  His wife could eat no lean.  And so betwixt them both, you see.  They licked the platter clean.”  This made me wonder about the connotations and evolution of the word’s fat, and lean.

I think that fat, in medieval times, was equated with wealth.  Flashing through my memory banks are images of king-like, jolly, Santa Claus impersonators, dressed in furry purple robes imbibing on an overflow of drink and gouging themselves with handfuls of big, fat drumsticks, while boisterously pontificating on some topic or another.

Then there are Raphael’s (Raffaello Santi’s) five-hundred-year-old images of fat little cherubs painted on repeat on many a castle ceiling.  Those chubby, extraordinarily white, nearly opaque, angels often direct our gaze to the dreamy heavens and indicate prosperity and plenty.

Skinny, in those times, meant poverty or lack.  There were no extra refrigerators for the people scraping by in the cold, dirty and dark streets of many a lightless city.  Think Tiny Tim in Scrooge.

Today’s understanding of fat and lean couldn’t be more contrary to those images of old.  Unless you’re plumping up your derriere with a goal toward the ultimate physique for twerking, plump is not the modern go-to concept for the display of wealth.  That’s reserved for the lean mean body-conscious and tan-skinned among us.

Fat in more contemporary times has been rendered by an excess of relatively cheap carb-loaded foods ingested by multitudes of working-class folks.  Meanwhile the rich and famous frequent restaurants featuring humongous white plates with two overly pampered shrimps in the lonely middle, atop a small pond of thick, colored paste, and decorated with a pseudo edible sprig of some herb or flower.  That’s dinner.

Many of us probably have known both fat and lean times.  It’s probably akin to the grandparently line that “I walked five miles in the snow to school,” that our early days, were lean times.  We struggled to make ends meet.  We lived on pasta from a box, and we got fat.

Today, fat is sadly and frequently equated with unattractiveness and laziness.  Unless you spell it “phat.”

Phat is a throwback term coined in the African American vernacular, used particularly in music and fashion.  It takes us right back to the chubby cherubs and fat kings of abundance, excellence, privilege and admiration.

So, whether you’re Jack Sprat or his wife, it’s fat and lean together, that enable you to rise to your best life.  Can you really appreciate the fat in life if you haven’t lived through a little bit of lean?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wake up and smell the coffee y’all.  Then, take some time to smell the roses.

Odor, fragrance, aroma; each elicit an emotion, sometimes a big emotion.  The word “odor,” itself connotes something repellent and negative, whereas the word, “fragrance,” makes you smile and want.

Smells are funny things, figuratively, but sometimes literally.  Are you of the age that you recall the image of the French cartoon skunk, Pepe Le Pew, from Looney Tunes?

When I was growing up, I vividly remember that my parents were away somewhere and we three girls were home, when a skunk got under our sun-porch and lit up the entire place with its defensive stink.  I recall some tomato juice and maybe one of the many dogs we had over the years.

Smells bring back memories.  What aromas trigger you?

For most people, food aromas are probably the most triggering.  If you smell it either you want it or you repulsively do not.  Cabbage, onions, garlic, and spoiled or rotted foods tend to elicit the negative in a sizeable number of people.

Bakeries nearly universally draw people into their perfumery.  Realtors traditionally suggested that sellers bake a batch of cookies before showing a house.  Why?  Because prospective buyers feel like “this could be our home.”  Nothing triggers wanting, more than the smell of freshly baked bread, pastry, pie, cake, cookies and more.

…Unless it’s perfume from its many sources.  Flowers are not only a delight to the sight, but many of them also either smell good or we think they do.  Whether certain flowers have a poignant smell or not, we instinctively go for the nose test.

“It smells like rain,” people say.  It’s surely not rain itself, but the reaction of rain on earth, dirt, or soil, that births that unmistakable smell of rain.  However, damp also has a not so pleasant smell, i.e. wet dog or wet cat, mildew and the “basement” smell.

The beach and the swimming pools chlorine smell is a distinct summer smell.  If you live rurally, freshly cut grass or hay gives most people a sort of boost of freshness, “ah-achoo” and gesundheit to you.

I’m thankful that all my senses are intact and fully operational.  There was that bout of COVID-caused phantosmia, where I frequently smelled non-existent meat, which has flown the coup by now.

If I were to lose my senses of taste, hearing, smell, sight, or touch, I would hope I would develop grace to adapt, but I’m not so sure.  I truly feel compassion toward people who live without the beauty of any one of their senses.  I’m sorry, folks.

Seals and Crofts 1972 song, “Summer Breeze,” confirms in a pleasant way, that smells are firmly linked with memories.  It could be said that we smell with our minds.  “Summer breeze makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind.”

What if I couldn’t smell jasmine, gardenia, honeysuckle, sweet peas, lavender or lilac?  It’s not ideal, but in a pinch, we could describe the smell, with another smell.  The candle industry has capitalized on our ability to describe a scent via simile.

When something is described as “like” something else, not something that stands entirely on its own, our language calls it a simile, a word that literally translates as “like.”  It is a fact that most of our smell words are linked to their source, i.e. “it smells like apple pie.”

Of course, our perceptions of aromas vary widely from individual to individual.  This is because we’ve had different experiences with the same scent, and the context in which we detect different odors is key to our response to that smell.

The sense of smell is a potent emotional trigger.  For example, to some of us, certain flower scents remind us of “funeral flowers,” and elicit a sort of generalized sadness or dread.  But to others, those same scents remind them of “bathroom spray,” and might just make them giggle.

On occasion, my husband’s coffee clearly smells like skunk.  I’m not kidding.  And he doesn’t even partake in civet coffee or cat poop coffee, made from the treasured exotic beans which pass through the digestive tract of the Asian palm civet and are collected from their feces!

Burn some coffee grounds people, it even scares away mosquitoes.  Just saying.

When smell is an odor, we try to get rid of it, thus the concept of DE-ODORANT, “odor eaters,” and highly commercial fragrance masks such as aerosol sprays, oils, perfume, candles, and such.  Why do you suppose that the smell of money is usually described as a stench?

Our perception of the smell of money as good or bad is probably about as varied among people as our perception of smell itself.  Good to you, may be bad to me, etc.

Take manure, for example.  The occasional manure smell is a part of our rural Pennsylvania aromascape.  It is lovingly spread atop many farm fields to enrich the soil and produce all that farm basket, farm-to-table food everybody loves.  I’ll wager a bet that even AOC, the “cow-hater,” has eaten some fancy “farm-to-table, organic” food, which wasn’t produced without some stench involved.

Christ himself has been described as an aroma.  And certain fragrances are said to be pleasing to God.  What’s your smell simile?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listen up all of you “hotter than a jalapeno’s armpit,” hotties out there, is it hot enough for ya?  In my opinion, it’s “hotter than blue blazes” and “forty dammits.”

I love the southern description of extremely hot conditions, “It’s so dang hot that I just saw a hound dog chasing a rabbit – and they were both walking.”  Can you picture it?

“I’m wilting,” I exclaimed in a slow drawn-out pant!  Or better yet, like the witch in The Wizard of Oz, “I’m melt-ing.”   Are you “sweating bullets?”

You know there’s hot, and there’s freaking hot, as I’m freaking out that it’s so hot.  There’s “hot tin roof” hot, and so hot on our deck that our cat skims across it at lightning speed to avoid hurting his tender toe beans.  PSA, a rug has promptly been installed.

It’s hot “like an oven.”  If you believe in the existence of hell or not, it feels perhaps like as hot as….

We’re sizzling like bacon with a side of fried eggs cooked up on our car hood.  A quart of sunscreen is the only thing between us and becoming human pork rinds.

We’re having a hard time keeping our prayers focused between beseeching God to please stop the rain long enough for us to mow our overgrown green growth, and to give us grace to pay the upcoming air conditioning bill.  Solar power, or mower gas, pick your power, or your poison.  This summer it seems to be one or the other.

Yep, it’s that time of year.  Even here in the Northeast, we can expect temperatures to rise into the nineties at least a few days each summer.

However, each year we act like it’s a new development that it gets hot in June, July and August.  Nowadays we can blame it on global warming.  I’m not sure what they blamed it on back in the olden days, whenever that was, in the past.

Maybe they blamed the summer heat on the writers of the Farmer’s Almanac, with its fifty percent accuracy, which is a smidge better than our trusty neighborhood groundhog.  Many of us modern people, however, tend to put our trust for weather predictions in the weather app on our phones.

But it turns out that those apps can only be trusted generally, not literally.  So, I’ve learned to trust weather predictions, generally.  For example, “it’s gonna be really hot next week,” or “it’s probably going to rain at least a little bit every day for over a week,” suffice for my predictive understanding of the upcoming weather.

One would think that “hot, is hot.”  But apparently “hot” is not the same to everybody.  Generally, most people would agree that ninety-degree heat is “hot.”

However, even though most of us agree that the weather in the nineties is hot, “some like it hot.”  That’s the point on which we differ.  Paris Hilton, in the early 2000s, popularized the phrase, “that’s hot,” which she shared on the front of a t-shirt, while the back said, “and you’re not.”

Some of us, in summer, are prone to wear the t-shirt, saying on the front, “it’s too hot.”  I’m sure, however, as we walk away, a bunch of you summer-lovers guarantee that the back of our t-shirt says, “no, it’s not.”

Oh, my goodness, sweat surely evaporates from your body more quickly than it escapes mine.  Sweat likes to kick off its shoes and dwell on top of my arms, not to mention the God-forsaken nether-regions of the body which I will not mention.

And does the hot-loving population like to sweat?  Please explain what’s fun about a heat-headache?

When we lived in the Southwest, we experienced heat without the notable humidity which characterizes the heat in the East.  The temperatures in Pennsylvania and New Mexico during the time of our tenure between the two locales were nearly identical.  But what a difference the humidity made.  It was discernibly hot in New Mexico, but it wasn’t miserable like the same temperature offered in Pennsylvania.  Humidity makes a difference.

The word, “hot” has for several centuries referred not only to temperature, but to intensity, as in our current cute expression, “he’s coming in hot;” as well as passion and sexual attraction, e.g., “she’s hot.”  Paris Hilton may have enhanced the connotation of hot as something “cool,” trendy, and desirable such as Jessica Simpson’s “I don’t know what it is, but I want it” fame.

How can “hot,” be “cool?”  Both, I think, are relatives, dwelling squarely in the eye of the beholder.  Cool and hot are not the same for all of us.  Hot is personal and general, not literal nor universal.

Hot is one of those things that is left up in the air for interpretation.  We must agree to disagree as to what is hot and what is not.

It has been helpful to me over the years when exercising, to visualize my heart muscle strengthening with each step or movement.  Equally, every time I complete a jigsaw puzzle or hidden object, or matching game, I envision my brain sparking like an old-fashioned sparkler.

Although our brains are not made up of muscle tissue, it’s not amiss to think of the brain as improving its function from “exercising” it.  Like how our muscles grow with exercise, our minds grow healthier by learning new things and making new connections.  The big word associated with this process is “neuroplasticity.”

Just like we stretch our muscles before and after we use them strenuously, we stretch our minds when we’re challenged with new or difficult experiences or intellectual material.  A song lyric that expresses neuroplasticity from a favorite of mine by Brandon Lake, “Hard Fought Hallelujah,” is that “faith isn’t proven like gold until it’s been through the fire.”  We don’t grow mentally or emotionally until we’ve been challenged.

Challenges to our brains, while sometimes feeling overwhelming, just like that peak moment in brisk exercise, on the brink of feeling overcome, lead to a sharper mind, as the near breakdown at that moment in exercise, leads to a stronger body and greater resolve.   The 1979 Michael Jackson hit song, “don’t stop til you get enough” comes immediately to mind.

Keep stretching your mind.  It’s worth it.

Part of the fun in working a challenging word or number or object puzzle is finding patterns.  Pattern recognition is why we retrace our steps when trying to find our keys or that missing sock?  Not that the latter is a particularly fun puzzle.

You’re looking for a familiar pattern.  Almost everything we do involves recognizing a pattern.  We constantly try to replicate how we achieved success the last time; how did I find that document that I needed to complete that job?

In our jobs, in our hobbies, even in our relationships, we rely on finding patterns to thrive.  Our brains get a little bit of a thrill when we recognize a pattern.  “I know that!”

Drivers recognize road, street, and traffic patterns as well as buildings, parks, and other structures, to arrive at the best time to their destination.  Carpenters do math formulas and geometry in their heads or from pencil on wood, to achieve the physical outcome of a building project.

When we do the laundry, we’re working on “patternicity,” the fancy word for sorting objects or thoughts into patterns.  Sorting dry ingredients from wet ones and extra add-ons to a recipe, is patternicity.

Sometimes in our quest for life satisfaction and happiness we conclude that there is a certain meaning in patterns that we’ve observed when that pattern may just be random.  Our interpretations of patterns may become misleading life choices.

I think that most people want to find the cause behind every effect.  Thus, the nonsensical “everything has a reason” placation we tell ourselves.  Random is real too.

Sometimes finding patterns leads to formulating life strategies and conclusions about things that shouldn’t be understood as “guidance,” but rather thought-provoking one-off.  “I thought that meant…” isn’t definitive.

Equally important to our quality of life and our longevity are daily physical, spiritual, and mental exercise.  We’ve got to keep spiritually, mentally and physically active to thrive on this earth.  “Pattern play” might be a fun way to pump up your daily life and health while enjoying said life.

So, the next time someone accusatorially asks you, “what are you doing with your head in a book?”  You can answer “exercising… my brain.”  Or, if you get a sideways look when you get caught playing a game or completing a puzzle on your phone, you can retort, “what? I’m getting my brain exercise.”

I have a love-hate relationship with food.  Food is decidedly my frenemy.

A portmanteau, “frenemy” is the combination of two words, friend and enemy.  Yep, that’s me and food.

Now, this is an obvious problem.  Unlike other addict able substances such as alcohol or drugs, even pica, food is a necessity, and we must consume it to survive and thrive.

One just can’t stop eating if everything in you wants to eat too much.  All or nothing cannot be your eating plan.  This is regrettable for the over-eater.

I’ve often felt that I’d be cool with eating moderately if it were not for that dastardly thing called flavor.  It’s the taste of food that gets me every time.  I can’t get enough of certain flavors.

If the food doesn’t taste good, I easily push away the plate.  So, I’m not too far gone in that I don’t eat anything that doesn’t appeal to my taste buds, just to eat.

Okay, from here on in I want to advise you, the reader, to “do you.”  We all have different tastes, and, in this writing, I refer to my tastes which will undoubtedly make you occasionally cringe in disagreement.  So, “you do you.”

Some people are put out with certain food textures.  For example, creamy foods like mayonnaise or ice cream make certain folks want to hurl.

I’m somewhat divided on the creamy texture.  Don’t get mayo anywhere near me as an unadulterated condiment, e.g. on a sandwich.  That’s just flat out awful, in my opinion.   However, I don’t mind tuna or chicken or egg salad if it goes lightly on the mayo; and pasta or potato salads are okay, again if mayo is used sparingly.

Once many years ago at Ag Days in State College, I had the unexpected pleasure of partaking in the creamiest ice cream that I’d ever eaten before or since.   And I and my family went back to a beach-side gelato booth in Finale Ligure Italy for seconds of the surely smoothest strawberry gelato (gelato alla fregola) ever made.

That said, creamy textured food doesn’t generally feel satisfying to me.  I don’t feel full or finished with creamy textured food.  I guess something more substantial, with a heftier feeling in your mouth is required for the “I’m done” pronouncement.

Creamy cheeses don’t work for me either.  Brie and its compatriots are frankly icky.  I require dry cheese such as Asiago, Dubliner, or Parmesan and the like.  Even cream cheese, which I like in baked goods, can go too far when melted in a casserole, “bluck!”

Now, smoothness is a similar texture to creamy, but I associate smooth with luscious olive or avocado oil which I slather freely on any and every salad I make and, in every stir-fry, concocted in our kitchen.  Smooth as silk cake frosting, Greek yogurt, and pretty much anything chocolate are dreamy additions to the delicious smooth food category approved in our household.

Hot drinks are also smooth and potentially delectable.  I think most soups, if you exclude the popular chunky varieties, fit into a smooth and satisfying category of food.  I wonder if they are satisfying more because of the warmth, they exude than their smooth texture, though.

When smooth transitions to slimy you’ve lost me.  Okra, escargot (the fancy name for snails), and oysters are on my “no-go” list.  And probably mussel too, although they bridge the firm chewy category.

For the most part I’m good with chewy if it doesn’t go over the precipice of rubbery, e.g., squid or octopus or even some clams.   But for some reason I can take the chew of shrimp.  Why does seafood dominate this food category?

I like the ultimate chewy food, jerky.  There’s a store in the strip district of Pittsburgh, PA, that sells just jerky.  Oh yeah, mama.  One must have sturdy teeth to handle meat jerky.  But what a satisfying mouth experience it is to chew and savor the flavorful marinating juices and chew some more until the final swallow on just one piece of jerky.  That’s all it takes.

Why does the crunchy food category equate to snack food?  One is sort of hard pressed to satisfy a crunch craving without opening a bag of something kept in the pantry or snack cupboard.  The crunch of a carrot or apple isn’t the same as the crunch of a pretzel, a cracker, or any sort of chip.

My husband and I even prefer our protein cooked to a bit of a crisp if possible.  I think the Brits call chips, “crisps.”  If crispy is a food texture, I want it.

Other than texture, we all have our preferences for food flavors.  The principal flavors are sweet, savory, sour, bitter, salty and umami.

Yeah, I didn’t know what umami was either until a few years back when I watched a lot of food shows on television and learned a thing or two.  “Umami” is Japanese and literally means, “pleasant savory taste,” equating to something rich, brothy savory and satisfying in the mouth.  Umami is that element that clinches a meal.  It satisfies so that you don’t get up from the table needing something else.

Therefore, I think that umami is my favorite flavor profile.  There is nothing worse for an over-eater or flavor fan than to have eaten a meal that wasn’t satisfying.  Ones feels literally that you “wasted calories.”  Why bother?

I’m good with all the other flavors, probably apart from bitter.  I’m no food scientist and there are likely bitter bits included in food that my rudimentary palate doesn’t discern.  But when I do taste bitter, I’m unhappy so there’s that.

As to food color, muddy, moussey, brown isn’t a bad thing.  I like most brown foods and do not find them unappealing.  The low carb, multigrain surge in food fads has trained me to avoid white foods. Green is good but blue is just odd, for food, except the blueberry.  It’s cheerful to have a dash of red on your plate and black equates with burnt unless we’re talking about black beans which are yummy umami morsels.

So, there you have it.  We all have food likes and dislikes.  Food is everybody’s frenemy.  Just like human friends and enemies, food is a powerful catalyst for community, involvement, engagement and camaraderie.  Pick a food, any food, and Bon Appetit.