Taste of Awesome

Good evening my peoples.

I hope you're world is grand and significantly lacking in ritual torture.  If you have recently been ritually tortured, then, um, I apologize for bringing it up.

Speaking of torture, how many of you have ever been to the "Taste of Chicago"?

Perhaps I should start with, how many of you have ever heard of the "Taste of Chicago"?

While I will admit right up front that city living is probably not for everybody, it does come with some perks.  There is always something to do.  You can get to most things you need to by walking or riding a bicycle (you know how I currently feel about that bit of joy).  And, there is more food and food diversity than you can shake a truck load of sticks at.

From my apartment, I could throw a rock and probably hit three or four restaurants.  With the same rock.  I'm totally that good.  (I'm not even close to that good.)

If you feel like traveling at all, within one mile in any direction, I can find enough culturally diverse foods to name off most of the countries of the world with.  And they are all (mostly) so good.

Chicago is known for many things, and food is right up near the top of that list.

But once a year there is this week long phenomenon called "The Taste of Chicago".  Every year, a bunch of eateries set up shop in Grant Park between Michigan Avenue and the lake.  Then, roughly every human on the planet (except you if you've never been, and all the other people who don't come) squeeze themselves all at once onto the one street to sample all the good eats and drinks and listen to the live bands playing.

It's really pretty great.  But it can get expensive very quickly if you like to eat a lot.  And, because there are so many things to try, you wind up stuffing yourself like a thanksgiving turkey to the point where walking is much more akin to an egg wobbling across the counter as it tries to roll away.  And even then, you still haven't come close to sampling everything.  You just can't do it.  There is simply too much.

So, you get tortured on two fronts.  One because of how much you ate, and two, because of how much you didn't get to eat.

And then, again(I guess this is technically three), because you feel bad about this food and how much more you want, and then you think about people who haven't had food in days as a normal course of life.

Huh.  Suddenly I feel guilty for going.

Hmm.

One thing my wife commented on this year was something only tangentially related to food.  This is one of the few things here in the city where you get people from all parts of town, North, South, East, West, all hanging out in the exact same spot.

You might be thinking, "But isn't Chicago one of those great culturally diverse places where everyone is sort of lumped together in this great melting pot of people?  You know, in a non-cannablistic-melting-pot-sort-of-way?"

Yes.  Yes it is.

However, if you spend any real amount of time in Chicago at all, you find it's a lot like many places.  The different groups have a tendency to stay in their own areas.  The south Chicago people tend to stay in the south and the north Chicago people tend to stay north.  Add to that how the city is broken up into "neighborhoods" and how many of the "neighborhoods" are relatively culturally specific.  It's true that there is overlap and the mixing of peoples, but if you zoom back and take a look at the city as a whole, you actually see a lot of groups just hanging out with themselves.

It's sort of strange when you think about it.

But at the Taste?  Everyone shows up.  Everyone all in one place.  And by "everyone" I do actually mean a sampling of everyone.  

And they all show up because of food.  Food, the great equalizer.  Everyone needs it, and most people like it.  Food is one of those things you can't avoid.

And historically, this has always been true.  The equalizer part, not the need part.  Clearly the need part has always been true.  

In the ancient times, when people came together for any reason, whether it was a festival, or a negotiation, or even to work out their differences, they would often sit under a tree and share a meal.  They would do the thing everyone had to do.  The thing that made them equals.  The thing that gave them common ground.  A need and love for food.

And the beauty of this is how it shows that, cultural differences aside, all people are largely the same.  I eat, you eat.  We need to survive, and hope to be happy doing it.  We like to love and laugh and make babies.

Everything else is self focused (not necessarily selfish) world view commentary.  Important, but not absolute.  Or maybe meaningful, but not important?

I'm not sure what the correct way to say that is, but what I do know is, the moment you bring out the food, most of that stuff suddenly vanishes and then we become this group of people who don't know each other and may not even speak a same language, sharing a meal, passing napkins, making space in the line for them, smiling as they walk by.

If only the rest of life were that simple.

Maybe, it is.  Or it would be if we let it happen.

Wouldn't that be something?

Lesson 15 - Guacamole Is Awesome

     I really like to eat.

    If there is one thing my wife and I have in common, it’s that we like to get our grub on.  Some people eat because they have to.  We eat because we love to.

     As a result, we’ve had to make some significant changes to the way we approach food.  If we hadn’t done so, our combined weight would have begun to throw off the planetary alignment.

     Instead, we’ve forced ourselves to exercise, watch our portion sizes, and keep an eye on nutritional value.

    You see, as we got older, we noticed how the pounds didn’t stay off on their own any longer.  We recognized that, perhaps we had a “problem” (not the food… the food is heavenly precious and yummy filled… you know you like it too…), and decided to make changes that would make our lives better.

     It’s not always easy, but we do it.  And we are glad we’ve done it.

     But there is a period of adaptation to any change.  It’s rarely an instantaneous success.

    Previously, I have mentioned my time in chemotherapy.  But I haven’t said much about it other than it sucked horribly.  One day I will tell you all about it, but it hasn’t been pertinent for this discussion.  Instead, I will tell you one of the side benefits it gave me.  You know, other than not being dead.  That was a good benefit as well.

    I do not like avocados.  It’s not personal.  They have never wronged me.  We just disagree on some fundamental things, like, what good food should taste like.  And we’ve had this mutually agreed disagreement all my life.

    They just don’t taste good.  As a result, I have despised guacamole for an equally long period of time.

     Then I went through chemo and something curious happened.

    When you are taking heavy doses of chemotherapy, it becomes hard to eat for two main reasons.

    One, you are nauseous all the time.  If you aren’t careful when you put something in, it will almost certainly come right back out.  If you like good vomit stories, ask me about chemo induced vomiting sometime.

     Good times.

    Secondly, all those chemicals running around your body will give you strange “aftertastes” in your mouth that are constant and never ending.  This means, anything you eat tastes “not good.”  The more bland it is, the worse it tastes.  Water, the thing I needed the most, tasted the worst.  But even worse was how the way my taste buds perceived taste, shifted.  Foods that I loved, suddenly became completely disgusting to me.  Every day it became harder and harder to find food I could get down.

    One day my wife brought home my favorite burrito.  It was something we were sure was going to be ok.  But I was able to make it about three bites in before I just had to put it down or else “bad things” were going to happen.  It tasted horrible.  It was like trying to stuff the most disgusting thing I could imagine into my mouth and choke it down.  

    It was frustrating.  Probably even more so to my wife than it was to me.  She was in a non-stop mode of trying to find food I could stomach because I needed the nutrition.  Well, as I sat there staring at my burrito, I noticed my wife was eating some chips and guac.  Seeing the guacamole, I suddenly had the craving for it unlike anything I had ever experienced for food.

     I didn’t just want her guac, I NEEDED it.

    So I stole a chip and dipped it in and shoved it in my mouth.  My world was transformed, the planets aligned, and the babies sang songs with angels.  It was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.  Ever.

     Mind you, until that moment, I had hated the taste of guac.  Now, it was amazing bliss.

     Just like flipping a switch, something in my brain changed, and now I could eat guac.

   Once treatment ended and my taste buds eventually reverted to normal.  My yummy burrito became yummy once again.  I can drink water with glee.  However, for some reason, I STILL love guacamole.  I don’t know why it didn’t revert back.  I was changed in some permanent way and I can’t eat enough of it.  Oddly, I still don’t care too much for plain avocados, but I also don’t despise them as much as I used to.

     If only change was always that simple.

    Believe me when I tell you, I wish it was.  There are so many things in my life I wish I could change instantaneously.  But it’s hardly ever that way.

     Usually it’s the opposite.  Sometimes, it’s even worse than the opposite.

    I once knew a cat named Tristan.  This is an actual cat, not some person who is a real cool “cat” like they’d say back in days of Swing music and prohibition.

    This guy I know is a cat dude, and a number of years ago brought home a new kitten he named Tristan.

    Tristan as a kitten was absolutely the cutest thing you have ever seen.  I don’t care if you love cats or hate them, a kitten is just adorable.

   However, it became clear in a short period of time that Tristan was, how do I say it… insane?  Perhaps not insane, but definitely had some “issues.”  For example, the cat had this ingrained need to hunt everything.  The blanket.  The chair in the corner.  The wind.  Himself.  Constantly stalking, hunting, eating everything.  If you walked into any room in my friends house, you seriously had to do it with your guard up because this cat would launch itself at you every time with the intent of ending your existence and then feasting on your bones.  Once you proved that you had foiled that particular attempt, you were “allowed to live” and he would leave you be till the next time you moved.

     One second good and friendly.  The next hoping to drink your blood.

     The other thing Tristan did as a kitten was to expend energy like a full on firehose.

     I remember cat sitting one time and this kitty would just run laps around the living room at full speed.  Across the floor, bound off wall, on to couch, run across the vertical surface of couch back to the floor and round and round and round always at Mach 7.  It would do this for a few minutes just non stop.  Then, suddenly, Tristan would stop, fall over on his side, and fall asleep.

     A few minutes later, he would wake up again, and start all over.

     This cat repeated that cycle pretty much non stop the entire time it was at my house.

     As he got older, he mellowed some, but never really stopped trying to kill everything and break speed records in the process.

     My friend never really found out why, but one day he came home and found that Tristan had died.  It appeared as though he dropped dead in mid stride doing whatever he was doing.  The suspicion was that his body just gave out.  I don’t even recall if Tristan lived two years.

     It was super sad, because in spite of his insanity, he was a cool cat.

    Sometimes we as people are sort of like Tristan.  We are living in a way that is putting terrible stress on ourselves.  Be it emotionally, physically, or spiritually.  But instead of seeing the need for change, we just keep up the same cycles and habits until something breaks.

     All the while, we just keep hoping things will spontaneously change on their own.  Things will just suddenly happen.  But that is rarely the case.

     Tristan probably never knew anything was abnormal about him.  But we aren’t cats.  We have the ability to be sufficiently self aware to see our need to change before we draw blood in others, or simply destroy ourselves.

     It doesn’t have to be that hard.

     Change may be hard, but the decision to change doesn’t have to be.

     You are more than just your programming.  You are in control of that.  It can be changed.  You can change it.

     The question is, do you want to?