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The Sassy Sandpiper: Food Snob

Wilson | Sassy Sandpiper | Columnist

By M.R. Wilson, TB Reporter

I started cooking at the age of 12.

It’s easily the most useful skill I’ve acquired thus far. I know what the food is and that it didn’t fall on the floor and get thrown back into the pot, pan, griddle or warming tray. Perhaps it’s no surprise that I’ve become an insufferable Food Snob.

I’m still proud of that birthday dinner I prepared for my uncle in 1964: “Nebraska Fried Chicken,” potato salad, and a chocolate cake, if memory serves. (A fresh fryer might have cost 29 cents a pound back then.)

Cooking | Food | Recipes

Years tumbled on and food preferences changed.

Now I’m not here to tell you what to eat or how to eat it, and I know you might have asked your doctor, “Is cooking right for me?” even though you knew unequivocally that it wasn’t. There are legitimate reasons for not cooking: like the challenges of the single diner household, the matter of re-prioritizing your allotted 24 hours a day, the likelihood of wounding yourself with knives, the fact that your kid only eats Pop Tarts. If you just don’t cook no way, no how, I get it.

You don’t have to cook to be a Food Snob.

You might be a Food Snob if:

  • You shop mainly in the perimeters of grocery stores.
  • You read the ingredient list on food labels and snarl.
  • Anything canned tastes funny.
  • Most of your grocery budget is spent at the farmer’s market.
  • You are appalled to learn that high fructose corn syrup lurks in almost every pre-made food product, including your favorite dill pickle slices and microwavable vegetable soup (celestialhealing.net).
  • You’re wary of restaurants but when you do dine out, it’s somewhere that offers accurate descriptions of meal contents, and those contents are things your grandmother would recognize as food.
  • You’ve noticed how hard it is to find sliced cheese.
  • You’ve learned “low fat” translates as added sugar in many guises and at least 10 chemicals you can’t pronounce.
  • You gave up ramen noodle soup.
  • You made my Food Snob salad and liked it. (Toss your way: spinach, avocado, tomato, zucchini, black olives, and hummus.)
  • Sassy Sandpiper | Food Snob | Salad
  • Friends who invite you to a party ask, “What can I get you to eat?”
  • You remember that George Carlin admonished, “There’s no such thing as blue food.”

Being a Food Snob isn’t rocket science but it’s as smart as being a rocket scientist. Just keep it real.

Sassy Sandpiper | M.R. Wilson | Food Snob | Food | Recipes | Cooking | TB Reporter

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