Team Butter

Food is not only an expression of culture, but also of upbringing. I'm pretty self-centered, so I had no idea that there was any debate on food preferences or names of dishes (see the Great Tortilla and Cheese vs. Quesadilla Debate of 2006) until Eric and I got serious enough to cook anything together or combine grocery lists.  Let's just say that's pretty serious with me.


Not only does Eric favor cheesefoods, such as the orange power found in Kraft Mac & Cheese, but he eats margarine.  Like, he'd choose margarine if given a choice.  Now, my mother taught me that "margarine is for poor people" and the "no one actually eats Kraft Mac & Cheese, it's just for the church food bank bin," so imagine my surprise when long after Eric and I got married he bought both margarine and a box of Kraft.  He then dropped more bombshells, like he craves SpaghettiOs and he has been known to kill a bag of beef jerky in one sitting.  So, bottom line, he could do all of his shopping at the gas station if need be. Okay, Eric's low maintenance, cool.  Gross, but at least he's practical.

To be fair, misguided food naming and preferences are not limited to Eric.  I have a habit of calling all members of the soda universe "Cokes" and I think MoonPies are a legitimate food group. As much as I stick my nose up at Eric's Mac & Cheese made with margarine, he doesn't even begin to appreciate the world of ersatz flavoring quite like I do.  "Banana" Twinkie? Yes, please!

That said, I'm a health food kind of girl most of the time, and I like to think I prefer real food - like butter, produce, whole grains - to gas station food.  I also think that meat is yucky and we should eat a balanced vegetarian diet.  But let's be honest here, a least a portion of the produce I buy is guaranteed to go bad every time, but I've never let a Peep even try to expire.  Further, my soy nuggets have at least as much processed goodness as a Tyson's chicken nuggets.

Perhaps Eric and I have more in common than I give us credit for - our diets follow the "better living through chemistry" method and we're darn happy (and potentially diseased) because of it.