Camp Food and More

A little zombie background will help in understanding future posts on dieting:

1) In the two or three decades I’ve spent as an adult I can count the times I’ve thrown up on one hand*.

2) When I was young my parents always plotted these diabolical summer vacations that consisted of putting me and my brother into the station wagon and driving half a day in a north, northwest direction. When they finally stopped, it would be in the middle of some boondockian wilderness, where they would proceed to strap backpacks onto us that weighed approximately five times our body weight and then force march us even further into the wilderness. Miles and miles and miles later (actually three miles), we would wearily set our packs down next to the river and make camp for the next week. Our only sustenance for the entire ‘vacation’ would be the fish we caught in the river and the awful 1970s freeze dried camp food that the ‘rents had so thoughtful crammed into our million pound packs.

Freeze dried camp food from the 1970s really deserves a posting all on its own. Many, many words could be wasted trying to describe the incredible blandness and gag-a-riffic textural qualities. The manufacturers were obviously very proud of the cutting-edge dehydration and vacuum packaging of their products. Which may explain why no R and D money was ever used to improve the actual taste of the meals.

Once, after a long day of fishing and swimming and starving, a fly landed on my forkful of freeze-dried spaghetti as it was being delivered to my mouth. My nine year-old brain made a quick and rational decision: eat it. I instinctively knew that the fly could only improve the taste and nutritional quality of that damned food.

3) I’m a very pragmatic eater, if one meal is blah, so what? I have twenty more chances in the coming week to improve things.

TAKE HOME MESSAGE: I'm pretty willing to eat most anything and can do so without vomiting.


*outside of pregnancy, inside of pregnancy it's a whole different ballgame*

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