EATING WITH THE EYES

As part of my morning routine (which The Husband has learned is not to be interrupted for any reason whatsoever) I read cookbooks while I eat breakfast.

Recently, at my mom’s house, a book on canning was left open on the table. Knowing my ["weird"] proclivity, Mallory just assumed it was mine. (Though of course it was not! Canning? I’m not that hard up for a recipe book to read. Besides, that thing was published in the early 70s and looks like it too. Oh, crap, I just revealed that I did, in fact, read it. Well, it was already open . . . )

In my own home I have plenty of cookbooks (reminder: I don’t cook), and in order to make it into my beloved collection, a cookbook has gotta have pictures. Because that's what I actually do; I don’t read the recipes during breakfast—I look at the pictures.

Near the bar in my kitchen, I have a basket of photo-laden cookbooks with a rotating inventory, and when my breakfast is ready for consumption, I grab one, open it up to any old page, and revisit my friends. For, sadly, though my house holds many, many cookbooks (all too many of them Vegetarian-themed, and those losers don’t include a dessert section), I have been through them all many, many times. And though I don’t know the recipes they hold by heart, I sure am familiar with the food photos and the stories of those cooks that submitted them, if we’re talking Taste of Home.

Problem is, I often do scan the ingredients. And they have a propensity to make me gag.

(Granted what I eat for breakfast is enough to make a lesser mortal gag. If it’s not a cup of fiber-intense cereal drown in skim or light soy milk, it’s a Boca patty crumbled in egg whites with a side of dry wheat toast, made moist with poisonous no calorie butter spray. (I so know I should have nothing to do with that stuff; yet another one of my exceptions.) Hey—I totally just did what ticks me off; it sounds as if I just bragged about what healthy junk I eat for breakfast. Surely that wasn’t the intent, but didn’t the voyeur in you just dig that action? And don’t tell me there’s no voyeur in you; you’re probably an American—and baseball most assuredly is not America’s favorite pastime. Voyeurism is.)

So—gagging: A bad thing during breakfast. If I read (and I almost can’t believe I’m actually typing these word combinations; if you gag, I’m on the cusp of sorry) cream cheese, sour cream, mayonnaise, hollandaise or, cream of [insert defenseless vegetable here] soup I gag. So while munching my fiber or eggs each morning, I stick mostly to the dessert and breads sections.

Less of the creamy stuff to gag over.

(Unfortunate pun unavoidable.)