Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Good Food

At dinner last night, several of us were talking about how good the food is here--and it really is. Several different options, a good salad bar, good deserts. But talking about food always brings up the perfect meals that someone's mother, grandmother, wife, even a mother-in-law got a nod in this list of roast chicken, sweet potato pie, meat loaf chocolate cake, and other memorable foods.

I got the table laughing telling them that I loved military food from the first day. My Mom burnt nearly everything. In basic training when the other guys we moaning about the meat loaf I was saying, "You gonna eat that?" She did cook things I like, but I remember I got into the habit of drinking coffee only after I left home. My Mom had a plastic percolator.



She made a full pot of strong coffee in the morning then unplugged the coffeemaker when she left for work. She plugged it back in when she got home and drank the re-perked coffee in the evening. I grew up thinking that when you put milk in coffee, the resulting liquid was gray. I liked Army coffee. But when I went home on leave, I only drank coffee at Dunkin Donuts or diners. I let my Mom think I didn't drink coffee. She still had that percolator.

"Blindness" by Jose Saramago--terrifying look at society falling apart

  Blindness  reached out and grabbed me from the first page.  A very ordinary scene of cars waiting for a traffic introduces the horror to c...