Food: A Love Story

by Jim Gaffigan

  Then there’s the awkward decision about how much you should tip the delivery guy. Everyone knows that at a restaurant a 20 percent tip is appropriate. Who’s supposed to give us the guidelines for the delivery guy’s tip? I always feel like saying, “Look, I’ll give you twenty percent if you stay here and wait on me while I eat. Could you do something about the music in here? And bring me a glass of ice water right away.” In reality, the delivery guys should probably get more of a tip, since they are going outside and getting in a car or on a bike and in my case carrying my food up five flights of stairs, which is actually way more than a waiter does. But still you just give him a couple of bucks and loudly lock the door behind him so you can open the paper bag and start eating your delivery before it gets cold.

  I don’t know why they include all that extra crap in the delivery bag. Even if I’ve only ordered food for one person, they still always stuff in twenty-five of the flimsiest paper plates imaginable and a bunch of tiny plastic utensils that look like they would break while cutting butter and that I imagine are from the stockroom of a prison. Why are they bringing disposable utensils to a home that presumably has a fully functioning kitchen? It’s not like I’m ordering from a campsite. Judging from the poor quality of these “free” items, I am guessing that they are just trying to get rid of them. “What should we do with these five thousand worthless plates?” “Uh, just stuff them in the fat guy’s bag. Let him throw them away. He’s lazy enough to be ordering food from a block away, so he probably doesn’t care about the environment.”

  Also in the bag of the delivered food is usually a menu for the restaurant. What is the purpose of that? Didn’t I just order from the menu? I didn’t just guess what they had at the restaurant. Did they get too many menus printed and they are hiding the mistake from their boss? I also have about five thousand pairs of chopsticks that came with random deliveries cluttering up my drawers. Who the hell is using chopsticks when they eat by themselves? Everyone knows you only eat with chopsticks to show off when you are actually in a restaurant. Also, in the delivery/garbage bag are enough condiment packets to get you through a zombie apocalypse. I never know what to do with all the packets. I feel bad throwing them out, but it’s not like I can give them to a homeless guy. “In case you ever get that food you’re begging for, here’s some ketchup.” Aside from these minor inconveniences, getting delivery remains my favorite nonsleeping activity. I mean, besides eating cheese.

  SAY CHEESE

  Drinking milk is a rather disgusting thing when you think about it. We are, in simple terms, drinking the breast milk of a cow. Growing up, we all heard, “Drink your milk.” I wonder how we would have responded if our mothers had said, “Don’t forget to drink that liquid that comes from one of the cow’s six nipples.” By that last statement I may have just killed any opportunity for me to do one of those creepy “Got Milk?” campaigns. I still don’t understand why that advertising campaign worked. “Oh, this actor or athlete has a disgusting milk mustache. I guess I’ll buy some milk.”

  Some people can’t drink milk or ingest any dairy because they are lactose intolerant. For a short period I thought I was lactose intolerant because one night I drank four milkshakes and my stomach hurt pretty bad. Eventually I remembered I had also eaten four green-chile hamburgers that probably had bad meat in them. If you are lactose intolerant, you shouldn’t be ashamed. It just means your sensitive tummy can’t handle that spicy milk. “Do you have anything milder than milk? But not water. That gives me the runs.”

  While I find milk generally unappealing, what we make from the cow’s breast milk is truly amazing: cheese, ice cream, whipped cream, butter. Cow’s breast milk is really rather resourceful. Cheese is probably the most all-purpose dairy product. Everyone loves cheese. Supposedly the average American eats twenty-three pounds of cheese a year. That seems kind of low to me. I guess I’m making up for the non-cheese eaters. I’m not just referring to the rugged, lactose-intolerant folks. I’m including the people who don’t like cheese. I don’t mean little kids or people who don’t like a really stinky blue cheese; I’m talking about people who don’t like ANY cheese. I know. I can’t believe those people exist either. These are usually the same people who don’t like foods of certain colors or shapes. “I don’t like eating food that is yellow, or square hamburgers.” These food-complaining people are the first people I would eat if I were in the Donner Party, even though they probably wouldn’t taste as delicious as the people who ate everything.

  To me cheese is fantastic, and I’ve always loved it. I remember when I was a little kid I was kind of surprised when I realized the word cheesy was a negative. My older sister Cathy was complaining to a friend over the phone, “Yeah, that movie was kind of cheesy.” This didn’t make sense to the young me. I wanted to ask, “What kind of cheese?” Cheese and a movie sounded ideal to me. I wondered, Did they have crackers too? Part of me is relieved that eating tons of cheese makes you feel sick, so you stop. Otherwise I might be dead right now. Below is a letter I recently wrote to a block of Cheddar I met the night before.

  Dear Cheddar,

  Last night was a mistake. Maybe it was the wine, but I acted impulsively and now I’m feeling a lot of shame and guilt, and, frankly, my stomach hurts. I know I said I wanted to see you again tonight, but I can’t. It’s not going to happen. I just can’t! Look, it was fun. I might even describe it as delicious, but it’s over. Just because something is delicious and makes me feel whole for a moment does NOT mean it’s good for me. Fine. I’ll see you in the kitchen at 2:00 a.m. Jeez!

  Yours truly,

  Jim

  Types of Cheese

  Generally I like all types of cheese. Even the really stinky cheese that makes you almost gag before every delicious bite. On more than one occasion I’ve thought to myself, This smell makes me want to hurl, but I can’t stop eating it. Below I give a quick overview that you didn’t ask for on my feelings on the more popular cheeses.

  Cheddar

  When I’m lying in bed thinking about cheese, which is usually every night, I’m typically thinking about Cheddar cheese. It is the utility cheese. It works great everywhere. Great on a hamburger, great on a sandwich, even great with a piece of apple pie! Wow. You go, Cheddar! When I say Cheddar, I’m talking about sharp Cheddar. I usually look for “extra sharp” Cheddar, whatever that means. I just know, the sharper the Cheddar, the better. I don’t understand why “mild” Cheddar even exists. It’s like the nonalcoholic beer of Cheddar. What’s the point?

  Blue Cheese

  I feel I became an adult when I started enjoying blue cheese. My siblings and I would cringe and snicker when my dad would order a salad with blue cheese as a dressing. “Is he crazy?” Blue cheese is an acquired taste. And I acquired it. It’s not my daily cheese, but it is one of my favorites. It’s hard to describe how I feel about blue cheese. Blue cheese is like the ice cream sundae of cheese. On a first-class flight they should fill the parfait cup with only blue cheese. No nuts on mine, please. My favorite blue cheese is Saint Agur’s buttercream blue. I’m pretty sure Saint Agur was the Catholic saint of blue cheese.

  Swiss

  I’ve always viewed Swiss cheese as the grapefruit juice of cheese. Nobody really wants Swiss cheese, but it’s nice to provide a choice for the occasional weirdo who wants something gross-tasting. I keep waiting for people to realize that Swiss cheese tastes like a pencil eraser. Swiss cheese is like an old dirty sock. It smells, it has holes in it, and if it’s hanging on a doorknob, it means “Do not enter.”

  Brie

  I was slow to get on the Brie bandwagon. I was never sure if I was supposed to eat the skin or shell or rind thing. Now I can eat three or four wheels of Brie during one episode of The Biggest Loser. I like the fact that cheese is one of the only food items that comes in a wheel. The cheese wheel is one of the greatest inventions since the actual wheel.

  Goat Cheese

  I’m a reluctant goat cheese consumer. I understand it’s the
healthy cheese (a description that always makes me distrustful), but I can’t get beyond the fact that it comes from a goat. A goat? Goats always seem like characters from one of those Lord of the Rings movies. “Hey, you know that disgusting animal you’d never eat? Check out what we did with some of its breast milk!”

  American Cheese

  I don’t want to create a Dixie Chicks–style cheese controversy here, but I hate American cheese. Hate it. I love my country and not just because it’s God’s favorite, but I don’t understand American cheese. Maybe the idea was “Let’s make a cheese that resembles real cheese but has no taste. You know, for people who like to melt things and hate themselves.” Like a responsible citizen, I confronted this issue head-on by writing a letter to Kraft.

  Dear Kraft,

  I hope you are well. I wanted to write you regarding American cheese. I’d like you to stop making it, please. It’s disgusting and completely unsatisfying.

  Let me be clear up front. I am a huge fan of cheese. I love cheese. I realize an out-of-shape midwestern guy like myself enjoying cheese this much might be rare, but I don’t care. I love cheese. Whenever I’m getting my picture taken and someone tells me to “say cheese,” I smile because the word cheese actually makes me happy. I’ve gone to wine-and-cheese events just for the cheese. I bet if cows could talk and were asked what dairy product they are most proud of, they would say cheese. (Let’s admit, ice cream is too reliant on sugar.) Cows even look like they eat a lot of cheese.

  I love all kinds of cheese too, except for American cheese. American cheese is the worst of all cheeses. Well, to be honest, I’ve never tried headcheese. That sounds like it would be pretty bad. I guess I’m not interested in eating any cheese that has a body part in the name. Frankly, I was shocked when I recently learned that headcheese was not an actual cheese. Kraft, didn’t you think headcheese was a cheese and some lame, casual, slang description for the president of an organization? Surprised me too. Can you believe they named a terrine of flesh from the head of an animal “cheese”? Isn’t that like taking the name of cheese in vain? If I were you, Kraft, I would sue the headcheese people for copyright infringement. Wouldn’t it be awkward if the person who came up with headcheese was reading this? “Hey, my last name is Head. I wanted to name it after myself. Jeez, this Jim Gaffigan is really mean. But he sure is good-looking.”

  Anyway, back to American cheese, which, while slightly better than headcheese, is disgusting. It doesn’t even taste like cheese. I think the plastic that you individually wrap the slices in is tastier. You say in your commercials there is some part of a glass of milk in every slice. Is it the glass? I think that blocks of American cheese should be banned from the deli, where it sits like an imposter hiding among all the real cheeses.

  Your cheese product kind of resembles cheese, but let’s be honest, it’s not even cheese. Why are you lying to our children? American cheese is like one of those fake presents that is just an empty box in wrapping paper I opened at the mall entrance last December.

  Okay, here is the real reason you have to stop. Your so-called cheese is unpatriotic. Really? This is the cheese America gets? This great country that gave birth to the telephone, the car, and Jesus gets your so-called American cheese? It seems like every country contributed some important cheese. Even England, which almost prides itself on their nasty, bland food, has Stilton blue cheese and Cheddar. Yet all America comes up with is the shiny, gelled orange grease squares?

  In summation, your American cheese is tasteless, fake, and anti-American. If you can’t stop making it, is it too much to ask you to change the name to “al-Qaeda” cheese or “I can believe it’s not cheese” cheese? Kraft, I hope this letter will not stop you from coming to one or all of my theater shows.

  Your friend,

  Jim

  By the way, those jerks at Kraft never got back to me. I think I can sue for that, right?

  Other versions of cheese:

  Vegan Cheese

  You’d think with all of our technological advances, we’d be able to figure out a way to make edible nondairy cheese. We can pretend to put a man on the moon, but we can’t create a nondairy cheese that doesn’t taste like rubber? Jeannie has purchased every type of healthy cheese created, and they always make me prefer no cheese.

  Cheese Curds

  I don’t really understand what cheese curds are. I guess they are like the cookie dough of cheese. Either way, cheese curds sound pretty unhealthy and are a key element of the Canadian national treasure, poutine. In Wisconsin they have deep-fried cheese curds, which taste like French fries and heaven had a baby.

  Spray Cheese

  We want our food easy. I’ve always found pre-sliced cheese rather pathetic. Nobody likes the double meaning of the term “cut the cheese,” but even I’ve never been too lazy to take a knife to cheese. But we are a lazy bunch. How else would you explain spray cheese? I suppose there are some people who are, like, “You know I like cheese, but it is just too much work. You have to open it up, take the cheese out, slice the cheese. I don’t have time for that. I have a job! I’d be willing to eat cheese if I could press something and have it just spray out. Maybe if I could write with it. Occasionally, I have to sign some checks to Mayor McCheese, and, as you know, he only takes cheese checks.”

  Cheez Whiz

  Cheez Whiz is a cheese that comes in a jar that you can keep on a shelf. Apparently jar cheese is for people who are tired of throwing out cheese that has gone bad. This makes me wonder how long it takes some people to eat cheese. “Do you want this year’s cheese or the cheese from ten years ago?” I’m less taken aback that there is a cheese that comes in a jar and more astounded that there is a product actually named Cheez Whiz. The people at Kraft must have been a little surprised the product worked. “Wow, people are actually buying that Cheez Whiz stuff. It was meant to be an April Fool’s prank.” When they came up with the name Cheez Whiz, don’t you think there would have been one person at that meeting who would have said, “This cheese in a jar is an interesting idea, but obviously we’re not going to call it Cheese Whiz, right?” It makes you wonder how bad the names were that they turned down before deciding on Cheez Whiz.

  BOSS: Okay, let me hear your pitches for the jar cheese name.

  EMPLOYEE: How about Cheez Squirt? Or maybe how about Cheez Runs?

  BOSS: We need something gross that also communicates easy-to-use.

  EMPLOYEE: Cheez Whiz?

  BOSS: Brilliant. Cheez Whiz it is. Now get back to working on names for that jar of fluffy marshmallow insides.

  There are innumerable varieties of cheese. Most of them are too fancy for me to understand, so instead of discussing the rest of them here, I will just continue my research by eating them. There is cheese from just about every country in the world except China. No cheese from China? Maybe tofu is Chinese cheese. No wonder there was a cultural revolution.

  CRACKERS: THE ADULT JUNK FOOD

  Crackers are the junk food of adults. There are so many different types of crackers for adults to eat while they congratulate themselves for not eating potato chips. Of course, kids like crackers too. My children seem to enjoy Goldfish crackers and those Annie’s Bunnies crackers, because apparently food shaped like animals tastes better to kids. Whenever I eat my children’s Goldfish crackers (to make sure they are not poisonous), I’m always a little relieved they don’t taste like fish. The bunnies don’t taste as good as real bunnies either. Growing up, my family couldn’t afford Goldfish crackers, or, in the less romantic version, my mom didn’t buy them. I remember eating Saltine crackers as a kid. I’d grab a sleeve of Saltines, eat them one by one, and pretend I was in jail. Even as a child I had an active imagination and a strange appetite. People don’t really eat Saltine crackers these days. They are mostly known for being the free stuff you get with soup or what to eat when you are sick. I imagine Saltines will have a comeback. If there are gourmet doughnuts, there might as well be gourmet Saltines. “These are Himalayan Salt
Artisanal Saltines and cost ten dollars a cracker.”

  When I was a teenager, my mom upgraded the family to Ritz Crackers, which I guess she felt were classier than Saltines, even though I’m pretty sure Ritz Crackers have nothing to do with the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain. I wanted her to buy Doritos, Cheetos, and Fritos, but when I recommended that we get those, my mother looked at me like I suggested we move to a trailer park. My mom was a classy lady, and Ritz Crackers were more her style. Ritz Crackers do seem less pathetic than a bag of chips or Saltines, but of course they’re not. They are still crackers. Occasionally, when I was out with my teenage friends, I’d buy Cheez-Its, which still remains the worst name ever for crackers. The appeal of Cheez-Its was that they were covered with a greasy cheese powder that was so toxic it would stain your fingers. They were a lot like that other junky stuff I was not allowed to eat at home, but they were disguised as crackers, which had a much better perception than chips and puffs. I think probably it was Cheez-Its that first taught me why crackers actually existed. They are the perfect platform for cheese.