I don’t expect any sympathy from this post, but the fact of the matter is, food bores me.

Eating to me is a way to get from Point A to Point B. Sometimes I have to pace myself because I realize that other people are eating slowly.  Leisurely.  Enjoying their food.  To me, it’s a distraction.  I could be doing more important things, like drinking or repeatedly Googling my name.

I remember reading Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes.  She has a line in there--and I’m quoting from memory here--where she remarks that her family “would spend several hours preparing food, and then at least two hours eating it, and then immediately begin discussing what the next meal would be.” I’ve never read a line that made me feel more like I was encountering a way of thinking so strange and foreign that it verged on the extraterrestrial, and that includes the six or seven paragraphs I’ve read by Ann Coulter.

People always talk about what restaurants are good.  That’s like asking what gas station is better.  As long as it provides the fuel, it’s all the same to me. Collectively, over the course of their lives, people might spend days discussing this topic.  Didn’t we stop with the whole hunter/gatherers thing so we didn’t have to waste all this time?

I had dinner with my parents the other month.  My mother wanted a glass of pinot noir even though she was eating fish.  The waiter said, in a tentative, uncomfortable voice, “Well, that might end up being a little more oaky that you might want. Of course, that’s just me.” Whatever, Jeeves. If you care so much about quality of life, why do you spend eight hours a day dressed in that monkey suit?  Good taste is for losers. My rule of thumb is: red wine with anything that requires ketchup and white wine with anything that requires mayonnaise.

This weekend I went hiking with a friend and we had breakfast at a place called “Country Waffles.” She was disappointed that the place was more like a Denny’s than its quaint, upscale exterior seemed to suggest.  Me, I was glad.  I only had to flick my eyes and the waitress appeared at my elbow to refill my coffee cup.  At some hip Yuppie-fied, place, I would have had to ask for it.  And then they would have had to grow the beans.  Then pick them.  Then ship them to the United States.  And several weeks later, I might have gotten a second cup of coffee.

I’m in the habit of putting everything into my slow cooker. I get up for work, stumble around the kitchen, and throw in random ingredients.  I pretty much just hope for the best that something will be edible by the time I return home. Occasionally this method has resulted in the creation of new life. I even put cold cereal in the cooker now; granted, it takes five hours on “High” for it to be ready, and the flakes taste faintly like pot roast. Still, it gets the job done.

I read other people’s blogs and they have all these elaborate, trendy recipes.  And it’s not that I wouldn’t want to eat the food.  I just don’t want to make it.  I want to walk up to a replicator and say “One serving of elaborate trendy blog recipe” and then it shimmers into view. Failing that, forget it.

That’s not to say that I don’t understand some of the subtleties of gourmet cooking.  For example, I do understand that presentation is half the meal.  That’s why I can tell you, almost to the millisecond, how long it takes to nuke something in the microwave without having it explode.  Not only does the food explosion look unsightly, but it takes a long time to clean up. Which means more wasted time in the kitchen.

So anyway--who wants to come over for dinner?