Only food that smiles is worth eating.
This burrito, for instance. Not necessarily pleasant. It began frozen. It was microwaved so the outside was no longer frozen, though the inside still was. Any child knows the time has to be set to five minutes or more and then you watch anxiously through the glass until the guts start boiling out of the burrito——then it’s done.
You pull that sucker out of the microwave oven and cut it open. Stick your finger in the middle of the burrito to make sure it’s really got some heat to it.
If it’s cold, finish the five minutes, or add five more. If not, slap a few drops of hot sauce on there in the shape of a smiley face and start eating. You don’t want your food to be ugly.
It may taste like freezer-burn, but at least it looks happy.
The same goes for nachos. Every nacho on a plate should have its own smiling face made of cheese, maybe with a nose made out of a chili bean and eyes of sliced jalapeños. And the best are the round corn chips. Triangles don’t make faces nearly as well as circles. Strips either.
Easy-cheese on a Ritz? Absolutely. Even if you make stars and hearts, you know, eventually one of your crackers is going to smile back at you. To please the child in the house, you’ll make the first one a smiley face.
To please them for a day, you’ll give them crackers with smiling cheese on it. To please them for life, you’ll teach them how to press the tip of the cheese can so they can draw their own smiley faces.
Why do people write about food? Because they’re hungry.
Time for dinner. Tomorrow morning I’ll discuss bacon.
Xenosthesia.com 