Mild Amusement

For much of my life, I have had a really large appetite. I never really intended for this to happen, but it just did. In fact, people around me would occasionally notice the amount of food that I ate , and there would inevitably be some good-natured ribbing about it. It was just one of those random tidbits that was true about me, sort of like the color of my hair or which of my hands is my dominant hand. However, that started to change as I got older. I'm not geriatric, but I wrote over a decade ago that my appetite was starting to look more like the average person's  (also, it's more than a little crazy to me that I can reference something I wrote 10+ years ago. That seems like a lifetime ago). Time and age have definitely changed that particular fact about me. What's more, as it's become more of the norm for me to eat less, I have started to feel uncomfortable if I eat too much. It's not even a matter of comparing how much I eat now versus what I used to eat; ...

 Sometimes, the weekends get a little busy. We don't really go anywhere these days, but we still have obligations that pop up on Saturdays and Sundays. It's not really an aberration, it's just that we have some responsibilities that we have to deal with outside of the traditional Monday through Friday schedule. It's not really a huge deal, but it does have one very interesting side effect. You see, this occasionally means that the Mild Wife don't eat our meals at the same time. Let's say the Mild Wife has a meeting at 11AM on a weekend. We do tend to have a hearty breakfast or even a brunch together that morning, but we will get hungry after that. If the Mild Wife's meeting goes long, I have to make a decision between having a snack to hold me over, having a full blown lunch, or waiting longer to have a late lunch. Depending on the situation, the Mild Wife and I will choose one of the three options. In fact, we have chosen all three of those under different ...

 Every now and then, the Mild Wife and I will crave a particular thing for dinner. Sometimes that's something that we make and sometimes that's take-out from a particular place. Basically, it's just a matter of feeling having a particular something for a meal. It can be as simple as making some quesadillas because we felt like having it as a snack, so we're really not talking anything extravagant here. Really, it just boils down to preferences for food popping up occasionally. I don't think that's particularly noteworthy, as that basically boils down to, "what do you want for dinner?" Since it's just the two of us, it's not a huge deal, and we tend to stock up on enough of the basics that we can make a good chunk of our craving foods at home. However, there is a bit of a twist here. I've noticed that the Mild Wife will have a craving for a dish several days in a row. It doesn't happen all the time, but it has happened enough times that ...

As I've mentioned a couple of times now, grocery shopping has gotten a lot more creative lately. We are being very conservative about going outdoors during the pandemic, so we try to get many of our groceries delivered to us where we can. As we have discovered, though, there are times when that means that we end up with surprises about what the actual item in question consists of. It's not a huge deal, but it does lead to some confusion and some laughs when it happens. This time around, we had a slight variation on that general theme. You see, we decided to buy groceries from Whole Foods because they deliver and because Amazon is still a thing in our household. Specifically, we chose to purchase a frozen berries pack. It had a mix of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, so we figured it'd provide a little variety. Now, we do tend to favor fresh produce when we can find it, but we are not above buying frozen fruit or frozen vegetables. At the end of the day, they sti...

I'm sure you've heard stories of shenanigans in the work break room. It's an interesting space for food-related adventures, because of the various cultural norms around food. If you haven't experienced these wonders before, the work break room is a common place to leave food that you want to share. For example, a coworker of mine had a ton of lemons from their tree, so they brought in a bunch and left them in the break room. People picked up a couple if they wanted some, and by the end of the day, the lemons were gone. So, there is a certain expectation that some food will be shared within that space. However, there is usually a fridge there where people put their own, private lunches. It's usually not that hard to tell when the food belongs to someone els; if it's in tupperware or in a lunch bag of some sort, that's usually a dead giveaway. Heck, my rule of thumb is that if it's in the fridge, it probably belongs to someone else. People put their own ...

Every family and every culture has its set of home remedies for common malaises. I'm sure you've lived through a few of them, or you can probably rattle off a few of them that you swear work. It's just one of those things that people do. It's sort of like a combination between a tradition and a life hack; people gravitate to the ones that work for them. For example, when I was younger, we would sometimes have flat soda when we had a cold or flu symptoms. I don't quite know what the rationale was, but I do remember that as a child, I was happy when that particular home remedy made an appearance. If I had to try to reverse engineer why it became a thing over time, it probably had something to do with the sugar in the soda. They're empty carbs, but when your body is feeling down, it might actually do you some good to get a quick burst of energy. The interesting bit, to me, is that every family and every culture has its own set of home remedies. When it comes to...

The Mild Wife and I like to prep meals for the entire week, in part because it makes the logistics for us easy during the week. It's that much easier to bring lunch if you just grab a Tupperware container from the fridge. There are associated benefits with that (it's probably healthier to make your own food), but, honestly, the biggest draw for me is how much time it saves on a day-to-day basis. I just don't have to think about it. Grab a container, stick it in the lunch bag, and be on your way. However, no plan that involves people is completely fool-proof, so there are inevitably miscues during this process. You see, we usually the Tupperware containers for both individual meals and for left-overs that are meant to be shared. That means that some containers are meant to be used for lunch, and some are decidedly not meant to be taken to work for lunch. Guess who screwed that up once before ? Now, I like chili, and I will happily eat it alone for lunch, but that was not...

At this point, the "sensuous life" bit has been thrown around enough that it deserves its own series. The first post was, understandably, about defining the sensuous life , and the second was all about a tongue-in-cheek suggestion to rename mac and cheese (to "pasta a la fromage"). Basically, we just like adding a touch of pinkies-up to our lives. It's neither hard to do nor ridiculously expensive, but it always adds some hilarity into our lives. In this particular episode of the Sensuous Life, I'd like to discuss cheese platters. You see, one of the very first documented instances of the Sensuous Life was when we decided we wanted a cheese platter as part of our dinner. We sliced up a couple of cheeses from Costco, arranged them on a plate, mixed in a few fruits, and enjoyed the heck out of eating it for dinner. Every now and then, we mix in some cold cuts to go with it, so we often refer to these plates as " charcuterie boards." Strictly spea...

Coffee is an interesting beverage to me. I actually went most of my life without drinking it, so I don't have a long history with it. Still, in the few short years that it has been a thing in my life, it's led to some interesting, and therefore amusing, stories. This happens to be one of them. I should probably start by mentioning that I mostly started drinking coffee around the time that the Mild Wife and I got together. The reason was fairly simple: she likes it, so we had more of it around. Prior to that, I used to mostly drink water, tea, juice, or the occasional soda. Still, the Mild Wife enjoys her coffee, so we started having more of it together. In theory, this should've been simple, but it led to quite a few laughs. The first amusing bit was me trying to learn how to make the coffee. You see, I wasn't familiar with the whole world of coffee, so trying to internalize what filters, pour over drippers , and mocha pots do was a bit of a struggle at first. If h...

As the last couple of blog posts pointed out, I was recently on a trip to Kazakhstan . So far, I've regaled you with stories about, essentially, pieces of paper. Sure, they were important pieces of paper (the postcards were important to me), but they were just that: paper. In a way, though, they highlighted just how different things were in that country compared to what I was used to. I don't normally have to track customs forms or have that much trouble finding a way to mail something, after all. Today's post, on the other hand, is the opposite of that. The more things change, the more they stay the same. As I mentioned last post, I was in town the day before a local holiday. That led to shenanigans when it came to the operating hours for the post office, but it also led to the set up for this post. Specifically, I needed to have dinner the night before this holiday, and I wasn't feeling particularly adventurous. So, I figured I'd wander down to the hotel restaur...

In the latest round of stories about our recent Argentina trip , I'm going to talk about pizza. It's not the first time that pizza has been the subject of a blog post , and it probably won't be the last time, either. It's just one of those dishes that shows up a bunch in life, y'know? First of all, I should start by pointing out that Argentina has its own special brand of pizza. There may actually be several of these varieties, but the one I kept hearing about was the fugazza . The first time I heard about it, the Mild Wife had had some during the day, and mentioned to me that it was both different than the pizza we got at home and tasty. Given that she liked it, I was more than a little intrigued. As it turns out, I was not the only one intrigued by this pizza. One of my other coworkers on the trip also had his curiosity piqued by this local pizza. I don't remember how it came up in conversation, but someone must have mentioned it at some point. Well, from ...

So, we were in Argentina for a while . Specifically, we were in the Buenos Aires area for a good amount of time. I normally leave off some of those details because I figure they won't really add too much to the story, but in this case, it might be relevant (I will allow you to decide). During that time, we got to explore a little bit and see a bit of the city. More importantly to the Mild Wife and me, though, that also meant we got to sample some of the food. We had actually scouted out particular dishes before we got there, so there was something of a list to try. Argentina is known for its steak and wine, so those were givens. However,  empanadas and medialunas  also made it on to the scout list, in part because the Mild Wife did a bit of homework (side note: in looking for good sites to link the two items in this sentence, I discovered a piece that says the pastry names are actually a form of political dissidence . Who knew?). Basically, we had a few items that we were i...

In case you've missed the last few blog posts, the Mild Wife and I headed to Argentina. Now, this was a work trip, so there were a few shenanigans related to speaking Spanish in the office . I was not the only one responsible for these language-related stories, however. In some cases, some of the others caused a lot of laughter when dealing with the fact that we didn't all quite speak the same language. In this particular case, the laughs occurred when we all went to lunch. Since the American coworkers  obviously didn't know the area as well as the locals, our in-country coworkers picked the place and led the way. All I knew before I got there was that we were going to a sandwich place. It actually took a decent walk for us to get there, though I didn't really notice this since I was busy making small talk with someone. I probably would've done the same thing if we'd been in the States, but I also figured I should make an extra effort to practice my Spanish....

The Mild Wife and I both look pretty young. That's not really something either of us can control, it's just a mixture of genetics and other people's perceptions. At the end of the day, it is what it is, and we roll with the punches. However, it does lead to some pretty amusing anecdotes. In this particular case, the story starts with us having brunch at a restaurant. We'd never dined in this particular establishment, but it seemed like a decent choice, so we stopped in for some food. We had a little bit of time before we were going to meet up with others, so we figured it'd be a leisurely meal. That meant that we decided to indulge in some grown-up beverages (read: alcohol). You can probably see where this is going already. Yup, the Mild Wife and I both got carded. We laughed and pulled out our ID's, like we always do. The funny thing, however, was what came next. Most of the time, the waiter looks at the picture, looks at one of us, laughs about how we look...

Even when I'm not being particularly healthy, diet is usually the last of my worries. The Mild Wife and I meal prep our food, so I more or less know in advance what I'm going to eat. That makes it easier to portion out the meal, as well as to plan out the content of said meal. It takes no real willpower to simply eat what's in the Tupperware, and if you make sure that the contents of the Tupperware are relatively healthy, you're basically set. It's also worth noting that the Mild Wife and I try to keep the vegetable content in our meals steady, if not high. I mean, " vegetable forward " is a thing in our household. Trips to the grocery store pretty much always involve going through the produce section, so we're no strangers to cooking with greens. However, the exception to this, at least in my case, seems to be when I travel. There are no Tupperware portions then, so my food tends to lean more towards the unhealthy end of the scale. Generally spea...

I'm always amused whenever things end up with amusing names or labels. In fact, that was precisely what I wrote about the last time this came up . In short, some of the labels on medicine and vitamin containers made me chuckle, and I also learned the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon in the process. This time around, the setting was much different. Instead of scrutinizing product labels, I was having lunch with a coworker. This particular coworker was actually new to the area, so he wanted to go somewhere off-campus in order to explore some of the food options. I don't consider myself super cultured when it comes to the happening restaurants, but I can usually come up with a suggestion or two. In the worst case, my friends Yelp and Google tend to do a decent job of pointing me towards good food. Still, the parameters were a little too broad, so I asked my coworker if there was anything in particular that he wanted. I mean, I wasn't going to take him to a su...

The Mild Wife and I like food of all sorts. We will happily eat dino nuggets (and I will stand by my assertion that they taste better than the normal nuggets) and mac n cheese  with no regrets, even though we also have a soft spot for steak. Sure, everyone likes the nicer things in life, but we don't require those things in order to be happy with a meal. Hell, some of my favorite foods are what you might call "peasant food." Notably, pizza is on both the Mild Wife and my list of favorite items. We just plain like pizza. I don't think I've ever had a slice of pizza that was so bad that I wouldn't eat it, and I could easily have pizza for two meals a day without tiring of it. Like I said, we like pizza. This, however, leads to an interesting observation by the Mild Wife: "how come people don't have pizza parties anymore?" When we were younger, these sorts of gatherings were fairly common for birthdays and other celebrations. Looking back, I ...

For some reason, I find the "pick your top three" discussions pretty interesting. Heck, I wrote a whole blog post about having a new top contender in the dessert category . For me, the fun part about it isn't so much in hearing the actual decisions, it's in hearing the reasons why something is either in or out of that top three. Do you pick the item that you could eat every single day without ever getting bored of it or do you pick the one that's a delicacy that you almost never consume? Being forced to pick just three of something usually forces some interesting decisions about what you like (and don't like). Incidentally, that's also why I dislike sub-categorizing the choices. Your top three American desserts is no fun, I want you to actively consider about whether you like apple pie or kanafeh better. It's even more interesting if the items are nothing at all like each other. Is cold, creamy ice cream a better choice than a warm, gooey brownie? W...

As I've been writing these blog posts over the years (amazingly, it's been over 9 years now), I've noticed that there are certain things that keep coming up. It's possible that I just find certain things funny so I write about them all the time, or maybe I do actually have certain things happen to me surprisingly often. Either way, there seem to be certain themes that routinely make me chuckle. Today's post involves one such theme: food and diet. If you don't understand quite why I say this, let me remind you of a few recent posts. First, there was the puny salad that I had for lunch while volunteering . Second, I point you to the time that I accidentally grabbed a bowl of chili, and only chili, for lunch . The last exhibit in my case that food-related hijinks are a thing in my life comes from an unusual pairing with potstickers . Like I said, we tend to have some food-related laughs around here. The latest in the string of food laughs came up when I went to...

The new Mild Abode has had its share of fun , but it's also meant a fair bit of work. There was a lot of packing and unpacking to do, we had to handle a bunch of administrative details, and there's just the effort in getting familiar with a new place. There are pictures we want to put up on the walls, for example, so we have to figure out where to put them and how we're going to hang them up. Basically, it's not just fun and games. In particular, we have a kitchen that is new to us. I mean, it's not like we were going to lift and transport the stove from our old apartment. For one, there was the small detail that we didn't actually own that stove. For another, could you imagine the cost involved in uninstalling, transporting, and reinstalling a stove ? It's not like you can just pick it up and put it in the back seat of your car. So, yeah, we have a new stove. For the most part, that's fine, unless the appliance or kitchen item in question has a qu...