An Uneducated View of Sex, Food and Politics - Derek Haines (beach read book .TXT) 📗

in acceptance or rejection? It is in the end an individual, and possibly an emotional decision. Emotion you ask? How could emotion be a part of the simplistic consumption of food? I can here the cynical saying, “Oh yes, I get so emotional about my food? Well, I say to you, yes, I am passionate about food. I love food. I love the taste, the texture, the sensual pleasure I derive from tasting, eating or simply looking at food. Listen to chefs and presenters of television cooking programs, watch food lovers preparing food, and watch as they almost reach orgasm as they explain their passions for aromas, textures, tastes, subtle flavours, exotic spices and often the aphrodisiac properties of foods.
Cream! Let me wander through the magic of this heaven sent liquid. It is majestic to me. Nothing compares to cream. It is the wonder ingredient in almost as many dishes as the imagination can hold. It is also a food that excites and entertains. We all laugh at a cream pie to the face. We have all fantasised of making love to a partner covered in whipped cream. (For those who are reading this book for the parts about sex, this mention was a mere slip. The juicy chapters follow a little later.) The mere thought of strawberries and cream invokes the thought of love (and of course tennis at Wimbledon). One of my later life discoveries was a simple use for cream. In mashed potatoes. Never again could I eat mashed potatoes without the magical addition of cream. My pre-cream days of mashed potato eating are dead forever.
10 Recipe 3. Creamy Mashed Potatoes.
Just add fresh cream to stiff mash potatoes and then whip until smooth.
Variation: Creamy Scrabbled Eggs
Just add cream to scrambled eggs when nearly fully cooked.
As I have the good fortune to share my life with a cream aficionado, I have resigned myself to being a little wider around the girth for the rest of my breathing days. A small sacrifice for the oral bliss bestowed upon me almost daily. It is an oddity I have noticed since I have been living with my devo, that we often, as all do, run out of milk. But never do we seem to own a cream deficient refrigerator!
The discovery of cream as an essential ingredient in so many recipes has been a late arrival in my life. It has taken many years, two divorces and many changes of address and innumerable bouts of depression and anxiety to lead me to the exact moment of meeting my devo. As it was she who awoke me to the wonder and versatility of cream, I can only say that the painful road I travelled on my life journey to find her has been rewarded. It is impossible now for me to imagine my pre-cream life. You may certainly think I have gone completely overboard here, in relation to the importance I place on cream, and the role it plays in making my life a happy, pleasant and meaningful existence. And I will leave you to your own judgement. For it is not for me to try and convince you on this subject. I find blissful contentment in the consumption of cream, and have not a shred of concern that it may induce narrowing of my arteries, or raise my cholesterol count, or take two weeks off my life expectancy. Cream simply makes me happy. I enjoy it. I love the sensation it brings to my taste buds and tongue. I adore the contented feeling my stomach sends to my brain after a rich cream sauce settles into my digestive system. How could I listen to the health doomsayers when all they can promise is a few extra days of a life without cream?
If there is a point to this book, (which is highly unlikely because I tend to lose the point rapidly in a verbal conversation, so there is a one hundred percent chance of me losing my point completely in thousands of written words) it is this. What is the point of worrying, questioning and pondering the point of human existence, when there is only one salient fact to work with? We have only one life to enjoy. The prospect of another life (afterlife, reincarnation, spirit existence or any other form contemplated by religious belief, hope or cult doctrine) is pure speculation and hope. Surely clinical logic and sensible reasoning would say that this one known life and existence we have been given should be enjoyed to the fullest. And if, after enjoying our last breath, we discover that we do get another life, (in whatever form) what a bonus!
In the title of this book, you will notice, if you are observant, that I did not include the subject of religion in my uneducated view list. The simple rationale behind this omission is that I did not want to discuss a subject that is sensitive. My God, if you look at history and take away a couple of minor wars that were economic in their beginnings, what you are left with are wars started over religious bickering. Not being a military man, I do not profess any profound understanding of war. Neither do I profess to have any theological education. With these two deficiencies in my knowledge, it seemed logical to leave the subjects well alone.
I will say however, that to live your whole life in a manner governed by a creed, decree or doctrine that offers as a reward for sacrifice of many of the joys of this one life, a vague hint at the possibility of another similarly bland life, leaves me wondering. This is probably the time to exit this subject that was not listed in the book title, and head straight back to the far safer and enjoyable topic of food.
Just sometimes, food can be full of surprises. Last Friday evening while enjoying the mandatory after dinner delights of coffee, Raspberry Crumble and Chinese Fortune Cookies with friends and my devo, I cracked open my fortune cookie in the hope of finding a true and complete understanding to my existence. While reading the remarkable insight into my life force, which was written in very small and obviously secretive font, (and struggling to find just the right place in my bifocals to discover and decipher the secret message) I placed a half of the aforementioned cookie in my mouth to obtain the oral pleasure of this two part experience. As I read the secret message, so deep in it’s understanding of my inner being; “You will travel much”, it said, and I was astounded by the accuracy, and lost in the deep and spiritual double meaning clear in the message, I closed my teeth onto the cookie. The first initial ‘crack’ sound that comes from eating a fortune cookie has always been a sound that I have enjoyed. The second sound I heard and felt inside my mouth was a little less rewarding, but no less exciting. It was a different sort of ‘crack’. This one had an enamel and amalgam type of ‘crack’ sound to it. A new and surprising metallic taste, with a condiment of small drops of blood, all melded in to the overall experience of the cookie and the insightful message.
11 Except that a lot of innocent people get killed and maimed for no good reason.
12 I don’t feel this word ‘devo’ is working all that well. From here on in, I will refer to my partner-lover-defacto-girlfriend by the romantic nickname I have given her. Morticia. She was blessed by me with this name because of the severe crush I had on Morticia Addams when I was a child.
As one does in these situations, I immediately called on the experience of my tongue to establish the goings on in the molar territory of my mouth. It reported back in an instant that it had found a rather large part of a rear molar missing in action. I deduced from this discovery that I was probably correct in interpreting my taste buds recent message about the ‘blood tasting’ condiment.
All this activity took a mere few seconds to happen, but all with precision and accuracy you would expect from a highly trained and sensitive set of sensory organs. It was only a mere few seconds more, before another sensation became apparent. Pain! This was immediately followed by an involuntary verbal expulsion. “Ahh fuck! I broke a tooth on the fucking cookie!” This of course bought a totally new ambience to the dinner table. One in which I added little to the conversation before bidding all a goodnight, and travelling home on a Friday night with the full knowledge that dentists do not work weekends.
It was also then that I realised it was a special Friday. The 13th!! This explained all! Now I understood why I lost half of my precious tooth. Why one of our friends lost a fifty dollar note. But, I was lost as to use this theory on the other remarkable event of the evening. How did we win the raffle for the enormous meat tray? Perhaps this was part of the irony? My mouth would not be ready for T-bone steaks for many a day.
13 To satisfy any curiosity you may have regarding the meat tray prize. It all resides in our freezer, awaiting my return to dental perfection.
There is never a good time to experience pain with food consumption. The two just do not go together well. Of course it is well known and might I say under appreciated, that the combination of pain and sex, can be a delightful experience. More on this later. The other combination that is a little more well known and accepted by many is the combination of food and sex. For a multitude of cultures and societies, the two have often been side by side, hand in hand or complimentary in the quest for pleasure. Toga clad Roman rulers and members of the Empire’s social elite, enjoyed nothing better than near naked, or very naked young nymphs serving them peeled grapes, wine and figs, while young adolescent boys in similar attire waved large fans to induce a more comfortable temperature. The eating of food, and the drinking of wine was a part of the sensory experience. As was watching the evening’s entertainment of sexual activity on the rugs before them. The performers of the evening’s entertainment were of course motivated to perform to the fullest of their physical capabilities. The choice between fucking oneself stupid, or conversely, being fucked stupid in full view of laughing, rude, arrogant and glutinous morons, was highly preferable to being the next attraction at the Colosseum.
Gluttony, whether used to describe a person’s excesses of eating, drinking, sex, stamp collecting or accumulation of wealth, is a word that invokes a vision of greed, lust and selfishness in the perpetrator. Could this word and vision be also a reaction to the accuser’s jealousy? Am I one that should be accused of gluttony for my lustful and insatiable appetite for cream? When is excess, excess? When is enough, enough? Where is the line that separates acceptable and unacceptable? And who is the judge? In my uneducated and humble opinion, the only judge worth listening to is yourself. I am of course not promoting behaviour or actions that are unlawful, or would create offence to others who may not share your judgement. I do however believe that the Roman gentlemen referred to earlier were only partaking in what at that time was considered perfectly acceptable and very enjoyable.
A brief glance at food, fashion, morals and behaviour over only a short period of our existence as a modern society reveals the rapid changes that affect our levels of acceptance. Consider the minute period of time between 1960 and 1999 in Australia. Every