A Tabasco Marriage

B.S. (Before Salsa), Americans used to say "If a couple buys a second bottle of Tabasco Sauce, the marriage will last."

That was when Americans liked their food sort of bland, meat and potatoes, spiceless...in short, flat.

Since I've had Bell's Palsy, I like my food flat, too. Oh, not for the same reason: I can't open my mouth more than about 3/4".

I still have the appetite; I just don't have the aperture.

So I specialize in either soft foods, or flat ones, or ones that can be made flat. Spaghetti, Oriental noodles (noodles cut into short lengths to avoid whiplash), rice dishes, mashed potatoes, and the like.

Flat foods include tortillas, fish sticks, cole slaw, sausage, taco chips (although I have to break round ones in half to avoid sawing my mouth, pizza, and so on.

I bought a Whopper the other day. By the time I was done with it, it was a Whimper, a manhole cover of its former self.

The left side of my face is paralyzed, so I've become the king of drool. I remember reading about a musical conductor who carried a little silver box of chili peppers to accessorize his food. My recent accessorization consists of straws and extra napkins.

A bundle of napkins used to last me almost as long as that couple kept their Tabasco. Not any more. I'm on the Kimberly-Clark Preferred Customer list.

What the heck. Maybe instead of having your stomach stapled, a person could just sew half their mouth shut. One eats a lot slower, so when everybody else is ready to go, you're only half done.

As a result, my refrigerator is becoming a historical archive of white takeout boxes. Aren't those why the Chinese invented paper in the first place? Writing? The first words a Chinese sage ever wrote was "Leftover egg foo yung."


Oh, www.golftodaymagazine.com has its July website up, if you didn't come here from there.