Playing with your food? Funny.

I love food.  I teach Foods class, which has challenged me to come up with recipes that teenagers will actually eat and can make in less than an hour.  I cook at home, and have a group of friends who get together every couple months to enjoy some kind of themed meal.  I am not terribly picky, although I do have a couple rules: Bob would describe one as “Don’t eat anything cute” (lamb, veal, other baby animals, game meats, beef); I would describe the other as “Don’t eat anything disgusting” (bugs.  Or garbage parts.).

I like eating at home but of course I also like eating at restaurants.  I am getting choosier about which meals I am willing to pay for, because of the incredible inflation of prices at restaurants and the decrease in quality of service in Calgary, but there are still places I like to go and when I travel, I eat at restaurants all the time.

Trent and I go out to eat a lot, and we are both fairly adventurous when it comes to food.  We’ve made up two games to play at restaurants.

ScaryFoody

(like scareoke, only less singing)

When you go to restaurants that serve “cultural cuisine”, sometimes you get menus that are printed with poor English, or no English, or only pictures.  To play this game, you have to go to a restaurant with no English menu available, and no pictures for the items on the menu.

If they try to give you a menu in English, insist that you are fine.  If you can do a bit of research ahead of time and figure out the phrase for “No thank you” in the local lingo, all the better.

Then, you choose at random.

At least three items, if you can afford it.

And then you eat!!!

This is best done at a place like a Chinese restaurant.  The Asians are notorious for serving the garbage parts of animals and trying to pass them off as “specialties”.  Chicken feet.  Tripe.  Eyeballs.  Fermented anything.  Gross.  So, if you get to a Chinese restaurant that only has a Chinese menu, you know that you’re going to get the best of the gelatinous, the most garbage-y of the parts, the slimiest of the slime.

ENJOY!

Variations:

1.Order for each other.  Can be played with an English menu.

2. Combine with the following game…

Foods in Other Foods

“Garcon?  Oh, garcon?  Please bring me your most expensive food, served in your largest food.  Yes, that’s right.  No, I don’t care what those foods are, you oaf, just bring me my dish!”

To play- don’t look at the menu.  It doesn’t work if you know what the foods are.  It won’t be nearly as funny.

You have to order one food, served within another food.  Hopefully they have something large enough on the menu to contain another dish they serve.

We got this idea from regular foods served in other foods- soup or chili in a bread bowl, drinks in coconuts, salad or rice served in a pineapple.

Why aren’t more foods served in other foods?  Since people don’t seem to be getting on board with this concept, simply get restaurants to do it for you.  Perhaps, after seeing the innovation of your lovely creation, they will start to serve it to everyone.

And finally, an anecdote to up the funny factor…

In an entry about playing with food, I feel that I have to include this story.  I mentioned before that I’m a Foods teacher, which is both a blessing and a curse.  It’s a curse in that I have to deal with junior high kids and their shenanigans all day.  It’s a blessing in that…I have a job.  I’m being a bit facetious- there are other perks to the job, none of which come to mind because I’m at the job right now…

For junior high boys, everything is about penises.  You know that scene in Superbad, where Jonah Hill confesses that in grade school, he was sent to counseling because he drew dicks all over everything?  It’s not unusual.  In fact, the boy NOT drawing dicks all over everything is the exception.  He’s the one that needs therapy- he’s not thinking about enough dicks.

I’ve learned a few lessons over the years- like, never make anything called “balls”.  Popcorn balls.  Meat balls.  Snowballs.  Balls is a word to be avoided.

I was surprised when “schnitzel” drew only one snicker.

However, I cannot avoid doing at least one lab with dough.  Kids love cookies and it’s important, I think, to teach them how to measure and mix and bake. 

This leads to Phallic Cookies.

You know how I know you’re gay?

Because you make dick cookies.

You know how I know you’re gay?

Because you are eating a dick RIGHT NOW.

Apparently, in the homophobic world of junior high, making, cooking, holding and lovingly eating while saying “mmmmm” a big plate of penis-shaped cookies is NOT gay.  It’s expected.

So I have yet another group of boys, forming cookies.  I notice they are not going for the standard cookie shape…and I comment “Oh how nice, you’re making heart cookies!”

Snicker snicker snicker “Yeeeahhhhh, HEART cookies!” snicker snicker.

Apparently, those heart-shaped cookies are NOT hearts but are actually very poorly rendered penises.  As usual.

So, I, in my infinite wisdom as a teacher and professional, think “I will embarrass them.”

I get out my camera and start taking pictures and tell them I’ll put them in the yearbook and everyone will see them holding their cookies.

Apparently, this is not embarrassing.  Alas.

Those pictures made it into my master file, which I eventually made available to my colleague, who was putting together the slide show for the Celebration Assembly.

This assembly was supposed to be a feature of the best academics of the term.

There were a grand total of THREE pictures included of Foods.

I gave her a file with maybe 700 pictures in it.

Which three pictures are featured, the size of a gymnasium wall, in front of 600 people?

DICK COOKIES!!!

I’m the greatest teacher of all time.

Moral of this story: If you are what you eat, I’m not eating those damned garbage parts...and most teenaged boys are dicks.