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August 31, 2016

Hot Pork Sandwiches As a Metaphor for Life


I made hot pork roast sandwiches for supper tonight.  You know the ones?  You take leftover pork roast, slice it thinly. You chop some more pork into small pieces and fry it and make a nice pork gravy out of the fried pork, chicken stock, and corn starch to thicken. Then you serve it by layering a slice of bread, a piece of pork, and hot pork gravy.  It’s yummy and easy and comfort food.

If I’d really been doing it right, I would have made homemade mashed potatoes, but I was running late on time.  So just fresh sliced apples and steamed broccoli with lemon pepper on the side and some pickles.

It’s funny how everyone has their own system for eating.  Some people eat out all the time. Some people only eat homemade. Some people favor lots of cheese and cream. Some people favor veggies.  I lean toward unprocessed homemade food. Sure, on a week when we’re running late to everything, we’ll grab something at Wendy’s or nuke a frozen dinner, but in general I try to make something homemade.

I have lots of shortcuts.  For breakfast, I buy sausages and cook them all slightly underdone and then freeze them so that they can be nuked to warm for breakfast.  They’re better than the ones you buy already cooked.  I make a parfait by layering fruit and yogurt and cereal or chocolate chips. We have bagels and cream cheese or toast with butter and toppings.

Dinners, I try to have all 4 or 5 food groups: a protein, a veg, a fruit, a grain, and milk. So I’ll roast or crockpot or time-bake some meat of some kind, I’ll steam some veggies, we’ll have bread and butter or I’ll timer some rice, and I’ll chop up some fresh fruit.

I guess my yen is for unprocessed stuff.   I used to go way in for strange diets when it was just myself, and it wasn’t until we had kids that I got serious about trying to balance everything. It seems to be working. The kids, so far, have maintained a healthy weight, fights about food are fairly minimal, and they try new stuff.

Things that surprise me. My son loves blue cheese and tomatoes. My daughter loves corned beef and cabbage.

One of the things that got me thinking about this is that I’m much more thoughtful about my kids food than my own.  It’s easier for me to help them be healthy than it is to make myself healthy, due to the half-hazard way I was raised.  I was thinking recently that I should think of myself as  a third person. That way, I might be able to treat myself better than I would otherwise.  Think of myself in the third person. 

And all this is a metaphor for my writing.  I can’t seem to convince myself I’m worth it, either in food or writing. Something to work on, for sure.

As Robert Goolrick says, “If you don’t receive love from the ones who are meant to love you, you will never stop looking for it.”