For Tightwads Who Have Considered Filet Mignon When Burger Chef Is Enuf

You can learn everything you'd ever want or need to know about a family — either your own or somebody else's — just by listening to what they talk about over dinner. Do they discuss literature, the economy, celebrity gossip, how the government is screwing them, which relatives not currently in the room are assholes? There are a myriad of possibilities, and they all speak volumes about their collective familial personality.

I've been spending a lot of time recently with my in-laws. They also live in Florida, which the Dame and I are (at least temporarily) calling home. It's easier to blow off your family when they're 2000 miles away. But if your parents or closest equivalent are just one town over, it's a little trickier to dodge their dinner invitations. So we've been eating together a lot, and with very few exceptions, their meal-time conversations involve the same general topic.

Food.

That's right. They talk about food while eating food.



I don't know why this is so confounding to me. I just can't wrap my head around it. It's like playing a sport and suddenly announcing to your teammates, "You know what I really love? Sports! Like this thing we're doing right now, with the balls and the scoring and stuff? I just can't get enough of it! Whaddaya say we keep doing it?"

KEEP ON READIN', FATTY! (I'M SORRY, WOW, THAT WAS TOTALLY UNCALLED FOR. MY BAD.)

It might seem less bizarre to me if they were only making short observations on a need-to-know basis. Something like: "Good lord this burrito tastes good." That, to me, would make some sort of sense. That's like saying "I love you" to your partner during sex, especially when she does that thing with her hips you like so much. Not saying anything would be rude. A burrito may not have ears or sexy hipbones, but it needs to feel appreciated nonetheless.

But my in-laws take food exposition to another level. Sometimes they come dangerously close to simile abuse. ("This steak is so pink," I've heard them say, "it could be its own float in a gay pride parade.") But more often they discuss food with the poeticism of physicists debating string theory. Just by being in their presence, I've learned more about mash potatoes than any one man should ever want or need to know. I've listened as they've argued over the ideal consistency and how to determine if the cooking water has enough salt. Fluffy and light or creamy and dense? I've heard both sides of the argument. Should mashed potatoes have skins or is it an affront to all that's good and decent? What about gravy versus sour cream and chives? The classic recipes versus butter-infused French purée? Thanks to my in-laws, I now have an opinion about these hot-button topics.

You'd think with all their glassy-eyed devotion to food, they'd be massive, like those people who can't leave their homes without hiring somebody to cut open the roof and lift them out with cranes. But they're unfairly attractive, with the lithe, angular bodies of marathon runners. They rarely exercise and consume every meal like they expect to be stranded on a desert island in the very foreseeable future. Either they were genetically blessed with the metabolism of a Bond villain's death ray, or simply talking about food is enough to burn calories.

Of all the lessons they've taught me, this is probably the most significant: Regardless of whether you've ever eaten a _________, if questioned by a "foodie" with strong opinions, you should always, always, always claim that you have. Trust me on this. If you're dining with my in-laws and somebody says, "Oh my goodness, have you ever tried Maine lobster? Not from a restaurant, but straight from the boat?", the only reasonable response is, "Yes, and it was fucking fantastic." Otherwise, it's like announcing to a banquet hall full of Born Again Christians that you don't see what the big deal is about Jesus. You're not leaving without a fistful of brochures and a throbbing headache.

Sometimes they go too far. Their descriptions can be lurid, occasionally even inappropriate, like a confused letter to Hustler Magazine. "I never thought it'd happen to me, but then I met a pastrami sandwich that wouldn't take no for an answer." They use adjectives that are only dirty when used in two very distinct circumstances: To describe a pair of naked tits, or hot corned beef. Words like "glistening" and "juicy" and "voluptuous" and "flirty". (How can corned beef be flirty? You'd be surprised.) And then there's the bread — always plump and pale, like an asscheek ready to be spanked. And don't forget the mustard, squirted onto the pastrami's face like the filthy whore it is. Pastrami sandwiches, cockteases that they are, are usually just asking for it, the way they stare at you from behind the glass partition of a deli counter, like strippers in a peep booth. "You want me to eat you? Is that what you want, you dirty corn beef bitch? Oooooh yeah, that's it, right there... juuuuust like that...mmmmmm.... oh god, I've been such a baaaaaaaaad boy!"

But here's what really puzzles me about my in-laws' love affair with food. They rarely, if ever, comment on the food that's right in front of them. They talk about food from their past, long since consumed and expelled from their large intestines. I couldn't tell you what I had for lunch yesterday, but my in-laws can recall exactly what they ate between 3:15 and 3:35pm on May 13th, 1978. And they'll also remember the temperature, what they were wearing, and the nearest highway intersection. They reminisce about meals like they were notable events in their life, waxing nostalgic about the highlights of their culinary history with the same reverence most people save for weddings or funerals. They share stories of their dining adventures with the hyperbolic abandon of shirtless gladiators after a few flagons of mead.

I've listened to them build epic poems out of bread rolls. I've witnessed entire evenings devoted to the proper ratio of mustard-to-onions on a Chicago hot dog, and how to assemble a structurally-sound spaghetti sandwich, and whether sprinkling Oreo bits on a pancake blurs the ethical line between breakfast and lunch. I've listened to them deliberate over where to find the best orange chiffon cupcakes in Easton, Pennsylvania. I'd stood on the sidelines and watched, slack-jawed, as they discussed the best year to consume Snickerdoodle batter. If I closed my eyes, I would've sworn they were sommeliers reflecting on their favorite vintage of Pétrus.

But their brilliance isn't just in the stories themselves. It's the path to their stories that always leave me breathless. At least on the surface, there's no rhyme or reason to it. There's certainly nothing approaching a context. It's not like they'll be eating burgers and somebody will say, "This reminds me of a steak I had in Cleveland." Their food stories invariably end up miles away from the meal genre they're currently consuming. It might begin with an innocent childhood tale which becomes increasingly complex, the narrative arc twisting and winding, until it somehow (impossibly) ends with: "And that's how I consumed an entire box of pie crust mix in just one afternoon." Listening to the Dame's family talk about food is like watching the last ten minutes of an M. Night Shyamalan film. Sometimes it's delightfully unexpected, and sometimes it's just, "Wait, what the fuck?"

After years of being a silent observer, I've gotten closer to decoding the riddle. It isn't about what's said but what isn't said. There's an implied connection between historical benchmarks that never needs to be mentioned out loud. For instance, take this seemingly indecipherable train of thought:

"These oysters are great, but they're nothing like the oysters we had in San Francisco. Where was that place? In the Wharf, right? And the chef was a toothless Asian man who didn't speak a word of English. Wow, we learned so much from him, like how it's a myth that oysters should only be consumed in months ending in ER, like September, October, November... hey, you know what I'm totally missing right now? The hotdogs from Papaya King. Mmmmmm, so good."

To an outsider, this could reasonably be interpreted as gibberish, the nonsensical logic of a brain on the verge of collapse, if not a full-on aneurysm. But what's important is the trail of crumbs, invisible to the naked eye, which leads between topics. What the in-law in question didn't explain is that just last November, he and his family took a trip to Manhattan, and during one fateful afternoon, attempted to visit MoMa. Following the instructions of a friend who claimed to know the city, they took the 6 train. It would've been fine if they hadn't missed the 51st Street stop, accidentally taking it all the way to 86th. As it turns out, it wasn't a complete loss, because right there on the corner of Third and Lexington was, you guessed it... Papaya King.

For most of my relationship with the Dame, I've been content in my role as dinner-time bench warmer. I'll listen to my in-laws spin their yarns while I nod appreciatively and ask non-disruptive questions like "Are you serious?" and "Oh no you did-unt!" But as they've gotten to know me, they've become more inquisitive about my backstory. While in the midst of a particularly inspired food rant, they'll stop mid-sentence, flashing me encouraging looks, like we're playing a game of improv freeze tag and it's my turn to tap somebody out. They've never come out and asked me explicitly, but I can see it in their eyes. They want to know, "What's your most nostalgic food memory?"



Outside of the Dame's family, I don't think I've ever thought about food in that way before. A story about food seems as bizarre a request as asking, "Tell me a story about fingernails." It's just not substantive enough. Or at least that's one explanation. Another explanation is that all my stories about food are far too personally humiliating to share with the general public. They're the kind of stories that make people mutter, "Oh Jesus, really? Wow, uh.... ooookay, then. I'm sorry I brought it up."

Need an example? Here's a tale that'll chill your blood:

My mother believes that all fast-food restaurants are called Burger Chef. Never mind that the franchise has been out of business since the early 80s. She insists, regardless of the evidence to the contrary, that Burger Chef is not only still a thriving fast food chain, but also the best dining option for a celebratory family weekend.

I've come to believe that it's a Freudian slip, a peek into her culinary unconscious. For my mom, the reign of Burger Chef was a golden era of discount dining. The words "Burger Chef" trickles from her mouth the way "Camelot" escapes the lips of people who idolize John F. Kennedy.

During the 70s, when my family was just one missed paycheck away from becoming gypsies, Burger Chef was our budget eatery of choice. Not because the food was nourishing in any discernible way. Far from it. The burgers, as I recall, were pitiful slabs of pseudo-beef, grilled and microwaved and tanned under a heating lamp until it didn't resemble anything that could've possibly come from an animal. Sometimes my brother and I would just sit and stare at our meals, trying to determine where the meat might have originated. Our best educated guess: the chin. Not of a cow, but those Mexican immigrants who hang out in parking lots, waiting for work.

What Burger Chef lacked in edibleness, it more than made up for with savings. You could feed a family of four — and I know this from personal experience — with the change you found in the seat-folds of a car. It was somewhere on the economic scale between McDonald's and a soup kitchen. Burger Chef's customers weren't so poor that we were living in the park, but not rich enough that we could afford those fancy-schmancy Big Macs.

"Oh don't be like that," my mom laughs every time I bring it up. "You used to love Burger Chef."

"You're kidding, right?" I'll ask. "Most of their food wasn't touched by human hands since it was assembled in the factory. You couldn't open a styrofoam container without hearing lukewarm air being released. It was like cracking open a pharaoh's tomb."

An irrational devotion to Burger Chef is just the tip of the Spitznagel iceberg. Cheapness is part of my family's heritage. We'll eat anything if it costs less than a dollar. It doesn't matter if its main ingredient is rat feces or the packaging is covered with FDA warnings about a direct connection to nine different types of cancer, we'll take it if we can pay in penny rolls. I have consumed dishes at my family's dinner parties that could be described with adjectives like "mangy" and "gangrenous" and "paleolithic". When I was a kid, I didn't have nightmares about monsters lurking under my bed. What made me shiver as I tried to drift off to sleep was the thought of my uncle Tom kicking down my bedroom door and roaring, "Good news, I just snatched three pounds of frozen shrimp from the dumpster behind Meijer's! Let's eat!"

I can't come out and tell my in-laws a story like this. It doesn't have the joie de vivre of their favorite tales, where the punchline usually involves a full belly and satisfied burping. When they've tried to include me, setting me up for the perfect segue into a story about Coney Island chicken baguettes or late night Cap n' Crunch cereal combos, I've just waved them off. I have nothing to offer, or at least nothing that wouldn't ruin everybody's mood and make dessert considerably less appetizing.

But last week, I finally caved. I couldn't disappoint them yet again. We were talking about wine — our favorite varietals and how wine often led to poor judgment, with hilarious consequences — when I felt the urge to insert myself into the crossfire.

"Have you ever tried moonshine?" I asked.

They looked at me hopefully. "No, have you?"

I have, actually. I told them about Stefan, an elderly Michigan farmer and one of our family's oldest friends. My parents met him at church and were instantly bewitched by his Hee Haw charm and relaxed "what happens in the barn, stays in the barn" worldview. He was a northern-by-way-of-the-Deep-South good ol' boy who ate what he hunted, didn't own a pair of pants without soil stains on the knees, and like any respectable Michigan redneck, home-brewed his own alcohol.

Stefan, perhaps because his name was vaguely French (although I suspect his parents just misspelled it on his birth certificate), opted to make wine rather than something more pedestrian like beer or gin. He was proud of his skills as an amateur wine-maker — although the only real difference between him and an Appalachian bootlegger was a pair of shoes — and he always wanted to share his latest basement vintage with us.

"I got 'nother batch of vino ready for your belly," he'd tell us, his remaining teeth doing their best to recreate a smile. "Come on by anytime and I'll send you off with a few jugs." Saying no would've been like telling Uncle Remus to go fuck himself.

My parents weren't big drinkers, but they were also cheaper than Depression-era hobos. So every few months we'd journey out to Stefan's farmhouse, where we'd spend entire afternoons sipping wine in his mildewy basement. I was only 22 at the time, but old enough to know that when you have to blow the dust off a glass of alcohol, it's probably going to be undrinkable swill.

And I was right. It tasted... wow, I don't have the words to describe it. Like a fist made out of grain alcohol. It was bitter... and crunchy. We assumed the floating chunks were grapes, but you never know. It didn't help that Stefan's concoction didn't even resemble wine. It wasn't so much red as cloudy, like the water taken from a very, very old well.

My parents, their bloodstreams coursing with the DNA of bad tippers, didn't have the willpower to turn down free groceries, even if said groceries couldn't be delivered across county lines without the driver being chased by Rosco and Boss Hogg. When I visited them from Chicago, I used to tease my parents about the unmarked bottles hidden in the crisper of their fridge. (Stefan's wine had to be refrigerated. If it reached room temperature, he told us, it could get "a little bleachy.")

"Do you have anything to drink that isn't moonshine?" I'd ask them.

"It is not moonshine," my dad protested. "It's perfectly drinkable!"

"It looks like a potion from a Bela Lugosi movie. The only thing missing is the steam."

I may've mocked them at every opportunity, but that didn't stop me from drinking the wine anyway. I couldn't spend a weekend with my parents without alcohol. I'm not a glutton for punishment. Losing a few nerve endings in my mouth seemed like a small price to pay. It was either that or try not to shout as I explained to my mom, for the umpteenth time, why a magazine that pays $75-per-article probably wasn't going to spring for health insurance.

When you drink enough of something, you eventually develop a taste of it. Within a year, I was drinking Stefan's wine straight from the jug. When my mom questioned my shifting loyalties, I feigned outrage. "I never said it was moonshine. I said Moon's Wine. Jesus, Mom, try to pay attention."

I grew so fond of Moon's Wine that I started bringing cases of it back to Chicago, trying (and not always succeeding) to blow my friends' minds. Most of them barely let it touch their lips before spitting the wine across the room, vaudeville-style. But I was obstinate, insisting that I had discovered some magical pipeline of free hooch. Sure, it was technically sludge. And it tasted like expired Robitussin. But if you managed to keep it down, oh man, Pink Floyd would've hired your brain to direct music videos.

There was only one problem. Because of my rampant consumption of drugs during the early 90s, my immune system could withstand moonshine that'd been aged in a poorly ventilated basement. The same wasn't true, however, for Susan, my girlfriend at the time. I thought I was being nice, making her a home-cooked meal and serving some delicious, farmer-approved table wine. At worst I thought she might crinkle her nose and I'd be punished with an evening of love-making "sans oral". But I never expected her to go blind.

"I can't see!!" she started screaming in the middle of dinner, leaping from her chair and waving her hands in front of her face. "Everything's going dark! Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! What did you do to me?!"

As I drove her to the emergency room, I tried to ignore the growing pangs of resentment in my belly. "What did I do to her?" I wondered bitterly. "Oh, that's just rich. It's not like I slipped her a roofie, for fuck's sake. I'm sorry if her palate isn't sophisticated enough to appreciate basement wine, but... aw, fuck this! I hope she is blind."

As it turned out, the moonshine had nothing to do with her temporary sight loss. The doctor explained that it was just a retinal spasm, quite common for women her age. Then he made a joke about never drinking anything with 'XXX' scrawled on the bottle, and how he might have to report our still to the authorities. He thought he was being hilarious, but Susan and I barely cracked a smile.

It's the kind of story that's really funny in hindsight. Or at least I've always thought so. Susan (who, not surprisingly, dumped me that very night) never saw the humor in it, and neither did most of her friends. But for years, it was one of my most reliable anecdotes. There was no crowd that couldn't be brought to hysterics with an opening line like "That reminds me of the time I nearly blinded my girlfriend with bootleg liquor."

Except, it would seem, my in-laws.

"I don't know if there's a moral to this story," I told them, trying to ignore that I was the sole person at the table even pretending to be amused by me. "Maybe, uh... there's no such thing as a free lunch... or free booze. Or, um, don't drink alcohol from any container that would normally be used to store gasoline. Oh man, hahahahahaha.... good times, right?"

They just stared at me, like you might stare at somebody who has just shown you a photo collage of the woman he's stalking.

Thanks to some quick thinking on the Dame's part, the evening wasn't doomed. She managed to steer the conversation, like a conductor leading an orchestra; first bringing up a spaghetti maker we'd received as a Christmas gift from a distant cousin ("Who makes their own spaghetti?" she asked. "It's not like I'm husking my own oats to make a bowl of Cheerios! Am I right, people?") and then somehow, inexplicably, luring the table into a spirited round-robin debate about the butter cream frosting on sheet cakes from Publix.

I'm not one of those people who look at a Mark Rothko painting and think, "Pfft, I could do that." I know where my talents lie, and when I should just sit back and let the true artists take over. It was a relief to finally have that pressure taken away. My in-laws no longer have unrealistic expectations of me. Now I just relax and let them reminisce, and I can focus my attention on more important matters, like eating. Their meals are always elaborate affairs, at least compared with what I'm accustomed to. Unlike a Spitznagel buffet, they don't serve food that's been "priced for quick sale" or injected with growth hormones or has the minty aftertaste of freezer burn or contains "just a smidge" of salmonella.

It's probably my genes talking, but I feel guilty with every delicious, decadent bite. I can sometimes still hear my grandmother's voice, reverberating through my head like an echo. "I'll eat it," she used to mutter, "but I'll be damned if I'm paying for it."