“Can you please act like a human boy? For one minute?”

I am not normal when it comes to cooking and eating food. I am a freak of nature, and I fully admit to that.

You know what I like? Not making food all friggin’ day. Planning meals is completely ridiculous. Why would one spend all of their waking time trying to figure out what they are going to eat next? Just grab a menu at a restaurant, and you get like 20 choices, and that’s it. That is a perfect system. What’s not a perfect system is trying to bolt together some semblance of a meal using 2 tortillas, a can of black-eyed peas and a prayer.

I am honestly starting to question my resolve in this 30 day eating-in challenge, and we’re four three fucking days into this ugly little monster. There are a couple reasons for my wavering determination. The first one is simply a difference between my wife and I. Meg likes food that tastes good. She enjoys smelling our spices, looking for that one special herb that will give our meal “that special something” that will elevate it from normal fare to something resembling nirvana, or a least a good taste bud orgy. She likes fresh ingredients, equal proportions of proteins to starches, and plenty of variety.

You know what I like? Something that will keep my heart beating for a few more hours. I could honestly eat the exact same thing at every meal if it had 5 or less ingredients and I could make it in gigantic quantities.

That’s not to say that I don’t like food that tastes good. I just don’t enjoy spending three hours in the grocery store looking for freshly ground bat penises or whatever. I will eat whatever is in front of me, and I won’t complain. Quick example: when I was in the Army, I opened my ham slice Meal-Ready-to-Eat (MRE) a little too quickly, and the gelatin-covered chunk of processed protein went squirting out of the pack, directly into a pile of dirt.

I swear to god, it stood up on it’s own, sticking out of the muck. It created a crater at my feet, right between my jungle boots.

I pulled it out of the dirt, and IMMEDIATELY crammed it straight into my pie-hole. I tasted Ecuadorian shit-covered mud for the rest of the day.

I tell you this story to highlight how difficult the last few days have been for me. I have to force myself to try to experiment with spices and shit, because otherwise I know Meg will get bored with my crappy chicken burritos and we’ll both quit.

Let me say this again: I have made my crappy chicken burritos twice in four days. I consider this a huge improvement compared to how I normally operate.

Every day that I cook I freeze up, staring into the corner of the room with eyes the size of dinner plates, while I ask myself the following questions (rated by importance):