Further food adventures. Living with people and habits is a constant surprise. Everyone has food quirks and phobias. I'm convinced.
Has to Have Celery
After exploring, explaining, and reaching detente on the Men and Their Fruit issue, a vegetable concern has emerged.
For this one, I do NOT hold most men responsible. This mishigas* is a particular peccadillo invoked by my husband of fifteen years. He can still surprise me with rules and policies.
WHAT I KNOW THAT I DID NOT KNOW BEFORE
To my surprise, I learned that tuna salad does not count as prepared unless it contains celery.
It’s not done, he says. No celery. Where’s the celery?
“Well, I grated onion and added some crumpled bacon into it for a change.” I explain.
No celery?
“Fine. I’ll add celery,”The Agreeable Kitchen Aide says.
Please understand that this is a person who eschews all other raw, crunchy vegetables.
- The same man who complains if the steamed legumes have any snapability left in them.
- The same man who would prefer canned green beans with a meat loaf, instead of fresh.
- The one who insists broccoli be mush.
- The person who walks by the crudites looking for a cheese puff.
So, I ask, “What’s with the crunch?”
It’s part of what tuna salad is.
Oh.
Things have skittered down hill since then. Not the marriage, just the bewildering food rules.
Being a person who insists on Hellman’s compared to any other mayo, and demanding Coke, not any pretender cola, I’m on shaky ground in food arguments, but still...
Here is the conversation, as best I can reconstruct it regarding my intentions for some leftover salmon last week.
“Hon? I think I’ll make salmon salad, OK?”
You don’t have any celery.
“I know. I thought that was a tuna thing.”
No! It’s a salad thing. Doesn’t matter. Tuna, salmon, has to have celery.
I tried to get a salad definition thing going.
“But I make egg salad with tomatoes sometimes, instead of using celery.”
I know. That’s when I don’t eat it.
“Well, what about chicken salad. I make it with grapes. You eat that.”
Yah. But it’s not chicken salad.
“Or I use raisins and cashews and curry powder. You say you like that.”
Yah. But that’s not chicken salad.
“What IS it?”
Something else.
SOLUTION
We were not getting anywhere. We were looking at each other as though we were married to morons.
In every situation, you have to pick your battles. I made salmon patties, macaroni & cheese, with canned green beans.
And we were both happy.
* mishigas is a fine Yiddish word that means 'crazyness'
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