Food Wisdom From Special Ed

Hanfordrose

Some of you know about my remarkable hubbie Ed, who is lovingly known by all our friends as Special Ed. He is a retired pastor with a wicked sense of humor and some disturbing ideas about food. Several folks on MFP have asked me to share more stories about this unique man with whom I share my life.

Here are just a few 'Food Wisdoms' that came directly from 'his line of thinking'.

#1 Special Ed Food Wisdom: "If it's on the salad bar, it must be a vegetable."

I had to stay home from church a few weeks ago, because I had a cold. Ed stopped at our favorite restaurant on the way home to picked up a boxed lunch from the salad bar for each of us. My box contained enough toppings to make at least 6 or 7 salads. I filled up 4 small zip lock containers with 'the right amount' of ingredients for one perfect salad each. A head of lettuce was all added to make those 4 meals. There was still half a box of toppings left...including diced turkey-ham, chopped hard boiled eggs, Parmesan cheese and seafood salad. Ed 'volunteered' to eat the rest of my box. His boxed lunch was mostly that seafood salad made with the imitation crab meat.

I told him that 4 ounces of that seafood salad is 160 calories. "You can't call that a low calorie meal, wnen you eat a dinner plate full of that seafood salad, it will be at least a thousand calories. It is meant to be eaten as 'an accent' with a larger portion of lettuce."

He refused to acknowledge that huge calorie count. Instead he responded with, "It was on the SALAD BAR!"

What has that got to do with calories?

He explained, "If it is on the salad bar, it must be a vegetable...and of course, vegetables don't have ANY CALORIES!"

That is also his logic for...

#2 Special Ed Food Wisdom: "Pudding (especially his favorite banana pudding) would be classified as fruits and vegetables. That's why they are located on the salad bar." Therefore...banana pudding has...(You guess it!)...NO CALORIES.

Somewhere along the way, Ed talked to a nutritionist at the local Veterans Clinic who told him that he should eat more fruits and vegetables to be healthy. She even recommended that he eat from the salad bar, when going out to dinner.

That has lead to some disturbing distortions in Ed's concepts of healthy eating. He is starting to question whether chicken wings and spaghetti are healthy, NO CALORIE food as well...since, "They're near the salad bar, and wings don't have much meat on them. They're mostly bones." As for the spaghetti, "They have those 'high car...ber...ators' that burn fat."

Lord, help me! "High carberators"...What would that nutritionist say to that twisted version of carbohydrates?

#3 Special Ed Food Wisdom: "Peanut butter and butter are protein and contain...at the most...2 protein calories each."

Ed adores peanut butter and applies it to bread by the measurement of "One hunkin' knife full"...which I would say comes in at about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of piled-high peanut paste per knife load. That is just about enough to give a thick covering to any slice of bread.

Ed's use of butter is even worse. He believes in having a little bit of vegetables 'with his butter'. Of course, a baked potato demands baptism in butter. Every bite must drip with butter. "Hmmm. Good stuff!" is Ed's idea, when thinking of his precious potatoes

Lord help him, because "Sour cream is a food group...dairy", and he applies it to the spud after the butter baptism. Of course, you must add a 'healthy amount' of bacon bits, which count as his daily PORK supplement. Ed think PORK should be called a food group...rather than a supplement.

I tried to explain to my darling hubbie that peanut butter and butter contain huge amounts of fat...that peanuts are used to make peanut oil. His response forms the basis for...

#4 Special Ed Food Wisdom: "Oil is necessary for the body to operate smoothly...like a car."

Like a CAR? Where is this idea going? My mind went to laxative, when he said 'operate smoothly'; then, he mentioned a car and lost me altogether. His mind is always taking me on a trip to somewhere else...to Edwin Land.

Ed attempted to clarify his last statement, "Our body is like an engine and requires a good lubricant...like oil." (Now, I am back to thinking laxative again.) "Peanut butter is made from peanuts which contain oil; and oil lubricates my body! So, I can hit on all 8 cyclinders." Then, he smiled boardly at this revolutionary new thought, while I just sat there, shaking my head.

Ed's ideas of diets remind me of a Garfield cartoon that I saw in the newspaper...many years ago. The fat cat was going on a diet. He put a lettuce leaf on a plate then said, "Now for a dab of mayonnaise." The final frame of the cartoon showed Garfield dumping the whole bottle of mayonnaise onto that single leaf of lettuce. Splat!

I will leave you with these remarkable Food Wisdoms from the distorted mind of my hubbie Ed. You can...'to chew on them' for a while. Believe me, Ed is constantly revealing his unique thoughts to me. This is just the tip of the iceberg. He certainly knows how to make my life...anything but boring.

By the way, I won't eat Ed's cooking. That is even scarier that his food wisdom.