"What Chew Want...", or: "What Foods These Morsels Be"

When I was a lad--was too, once--and would go to visit my sister and her family in Connecticut, we'd listen to WTIC AM in the AM; there was a dj there named Bob Steele (CT's answer to Dave Maynard, my favorite dj on WBZ radio when AM was king, before it became hate-speech radio) who, each day, would announce his weight on-air as he fought the battle of Midwaist.  I'm not doing exactly that here, but something similar.  Hey, I said these posts won't always be political, although I could argue, if I were an arguin' sort, that everything is political.  F'rinstance, who grows our food? What chemicals are in it?  Has it been genetically modified?  Should we import out-of-season fruits and veggies from South America, or even Cali or FLA?  How do we cope with the health-care costs of our horrible diet?  And on and on....

Anyway, I'm currently in week two of an Elimination/Cleanse regimen (I hate the word "diet," for its many silly connotations) of caloric consumption, for my gastric betterment.  Both of my grandfathers died from internal explosions: my father's father from a burst appendix before my father was born, my mother's from a bleeding ulcer.  I had my first ulcer at age 7.  How long does it take for a person to come to his senses and change what he ingests in order to overcome a lifetime of Twinkies, Ring Dings, TV dinners, heavily processed fruit and vegetable servings and the like (my family loved all that stuff; maybe it was a way to assimilate and to get out of the shadow of the Depression and WWII deprivation) and, maybe, feel better?  In my case, nearly 52 years.  Hey,  no one has yet accused me of being smart--or mature (pull my finger).

Anyway, as I expect you know at least slightly, these sorts of programs require that one eliminate (meaning "stop eating or drinking;" clearly, all eating and drinking ultimately leads to elimination) virtually everything that a normal American (ooh, now there's a subject for discussion, huh?) would regularly consume.  One breaks the fast with a shake of some sort, protein-and-fiber-based, with some kind of allowed fruit for taste; midday is solid food time: chicken or fish, rice or quinoa, some sort of vegetable (and that list is surprisingly short);  the evening "meal" is liquid again: a pureed soup of some sort, no solids.  The idea is to eat easily-digested stuff and let the whole tract  rest.  For 3 weeks.  Then, ideally, one adds back one banned substance (wheat, sugar, dairy, red meat, eggs, alcohol, oh my god--sorry) at a time for 3 days each to see how the body reacts to each, so one knows what one should eat or drink, and what to avoid.

As I said, I'm a third of the way through, mostly past the cranky snappish misery, the acute stuff, and settled in to the dank, gray, teeth-clenched-forced-march, just-keep-doing-it-until-it's-over section.  It's fuckin' great, really.  And while I genuinely can see the benefits of this regimen, and my guts can certainly use all of the rest and soothing they can get, I do think of the forbidden foods occasionally (hah!).  Saturday, for the first time since starting, I went into a grocery store (Alice, bless her, who is also doing this thing, has done virtually all of the shopping and preparation).  Jesus. It was like being in Amsterdam: Everything I walked past winked at me, whispered my name, beckoned to me suggestively, promised me wondrous pleasures if only I would succumb to their entreaties. I bought some haddock and fled.  It was like being a, a, uh, well, a  mildly hungry and self-deprived middle-class white person in a grocery store.

I occasionally have a firm grasp of the obvious, and try to let that brilliance shine through in my prose.

Since food has been so prominent in my thinking lately, what better way to assuage my pangs   than to play two hours worth of songs about food (no buildings this time, Talking Heads fans) on the radio this week as I sit alone in the studio, stomach growling?  I'll try to hit all of the food groups: I'm sure there'll be some meat, some potatoes, some bread, veggies, pie of various sorts (Honey, American), Savoy Truffle, some Tupelo honey, ice cream and likely some candy.  Probably even some Spam(TM), for you Hawaiian fans (Hawaii has the highest per-capita consumption of any state in the US of that fabulous Hormel product.  You could look it up, as Casey Stengel used to say.).  As always, my show runs from noon til 2 pm Eastern on 100.1 FM, at wool.fm on the interwebs.  Hey--have any of you become members of WOOL, or checked out the aforementioned website?  You soitenly should, and discover how many cool shows we have to offer.  Hope to see you on the radio this Chewsday.

Yours in digestive peace....