Mike Food

I’m an incredibly picky eater.  And I’ve been diagnosed with obsessive / compulsive disorder.  And those two things very neatly feed into each other like they were designed to do so. 

What comparatively few things that I will actually eat belong to a category that my sister has dubbed “Mike Food”.  

Hot Lunch

When I started 1^st grade, my parents stuck me in the hot lunch program.  I hated it.  I begged and begged them to let me take a cold lunch to school.  To no avail. 

In the 2^nd grade, I started getting horrible stomachaches that eventually led to me seeing the doctor.  Test were run, and it was determined that I had developed an ulcer.  How does a 2^nd grader develop an ulcer, you ask?  They examined my life and realized that I spent almost all of my time worrying about what the school was going to force me to eat the next day.  I got my cold lunch after that.  

Fruits and Vegetables

I’m fine with fruit, just so long as it isn’t melons.  Or berries.  Or plums or prunes.  Or—Hmm.  Let’s just say I’m fine with some fruits.  I’ll eat apples, oranges, bananas, peaches, pears, mango, pineapple, and grapes.  I think that’s about it. 

Vegetables are another matter entirely.  I don’t eat vegetables.  When someone who knows I’m a picky eater asks me what vegetables I will eat, my responses are, “Technically, potatoes are a vegetable,” or “If forced to, I’ll eat corn.”  They typically frown at my inclusion of potatoes, and then inform me that corn is a garbage vegetable with no nutritional value. 

After my first pulmonary embolism (the fancy name for having blood clots in the lungs) they put me on anti-coagulants.  Blood thinners.  The bad news was that I’d now bleed more easily and for longer than before, and I’d also start to bruise like a peach. 

The good news, on the other hand, was that they wanted me to eat a ‘consistent’ amount of green vegetables.  Consistent with what I typically ate.  They informed me of this, and – after I quit laughing – told them that I had no problem with maintaining my ‘normal’ amount of greens.  

The Special Case of Watermelon

I won’t eat watermelon.  In fact, I won’t even touch a watermelon.  Not because I’m a picky eater, but because watermelon is evil, and it makes me fear for the safety of my soul.  Because even after all these years, watermelon still frightens me. 

You see, when I was a young child, I used to have recurring nightmares about the demon-looking creatures that would hatch from watermelons and then crawl about wreaking havoc. 

Yes, it sounds weird.  But that kind of weirdness sticks with you.  

The Other Three Food Groups

Milk – I’m not lactose intolerant or allergic to dairy products, but long ago my doctor warned me off of them because they would make my asthma worse.  So, instead of cow milk I use coconut milk.  (Which I prefer the taste of, anyway.) 

The doctor’s warning doesn’t stop me from wolfing down carton after carton of Ben & Jerry’s though.  Nor does it keep me from melting shredded cheese onto things. 

Bread – I eat lots of bread, but it all seems to be either white bread or sourdough.  None of this whole wheat, multi-grain nonsense for me.  The ‘bread’ group also includes pasta, and both macaroni and cheese and angel hair pasta are staples of my diet.  

 

Meat – Outside of things like breakfast sausage, hot dogs, and hamburgers, I never used to be a big meat eater.  After I started eating other people’s cooking, I discovered why.  My dad apparently liked his meat relatively bland, and so that’s how mom cooked it.  Salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and nothing else.  Properly seasoned meat now, that I love.  

Condiments

There are two condiments that are considered Mike Food.  These are barbecue sauce and sweet and sour sauce. 

Everything else in the condiment family isn’t even food.  Mayonnaise is the devil.  Mustard isn’t much better.  Ketchup is a definite no-go.  And as for relish?  Wow.  I’ve got to stop naming condiments, as I’m making myself sick just thinking about them.  

Eggs

I love breakfast foods.  (Not necessarily at breakfast time, but at other times of the day.) 

Bacon, sausage, ham, pancakes, waffles, french toast, hash browns, oatmeal, cold cereal, the list goes on and on.  And, of course, includes eggs.  However…

I don’t eat egg yolks.  And I don’t eat egg whites.  The only way I’ll eat an egg is if you combine those two into a proper fusion:  The scrambled egg.  Be it an omelet, a mess (more on that in a minute), or just plain old scrambled eggs themselves, it’s the only way you can get an egg into my stomach. 

And please, for the love of God, scramble it in a container before pouring it into the pan.  Cracking the eggs into a hot pan and ‘scrambling’ it with a pancake turner creates a ‘mostly scrambled’ egg, with streaks of inedible egg white throughout it. 

My favorite way of eating eggs is as part of what my parents used to call a ‘mess’.  (I have in the past referred to a mess both as a chaos omelet and eggs schizoid.)  The classic mess contains some kind of breakfast meat (usually sausage in my case), potatoes (either frozen hashbrowns or sliced canned new potatoes), cheese (ideally shredded, but sliced works in a pinch), and eggs. 

(You can make a three-legged mess by leaving out one of the key ingredients.  A meatless mess for Fridays during Lent.  A potatoless mess when you’re out of potatoes.  A cheeseless mess when you’re out of cheese.  And there was one time – and one time only – when I wanted a mess but was out of eggs.  Meat, potatoes and melted cheese on a plate is not a proper mess.) 

You fry up the meat, fry up the potatoes, cover them with cheese and let it melt, then cover that with the scrambled egg mixture.  Stir it around until the eggs finish cooking, and voila!  A mess.  

Diabetic Friendly Foods

I’ve looked over the traditional diabetic diet from time to time, and it always frightens me.  There’s no way that I could stick to such a diet.  Which really sucks, as I’m diabetic. 

The problem isn’t just that the diabetic diet people want me to eat stuff that is in no way, shape, or form Mike food.  The problem is that they want to take away most of what is.  First they take away the food that contains what I call obvious sugar.  Candy, pastry, ice cream, cookies, etc.  But then they also take away bread.  And pasta.  And potatoes.  They take away so much potential Mike food that there’s nothing left to me to eat. 

Frustrating!  Which is why I’m not on the diabetic diet, even though it (along with medication and exercise) is one of the standard three factors in managing your blood sugar.  

Food Repetition

With such a limited selection of food in the Mike food category, you’re probably wondering how I maintain variety.  The fact is, I just don’t. 

A big part of my obsessive / compulsive disorder is repetition.  I can listen to the same MP3 playlist for weeks on end.  In the 7^th grade I read the same book (David Gerrold’s “A Day for Damnation”) over and over and over again.  And it’s the same with the food I eat. 

For example, I used to eat yogurt for breakfast.  My stomach doesn’t really want a lot of food in the mornings, and yogurt was enough to take my “Take With Food” pills.  Two small containers of yogurt, every day.  I did this for over six years.  Then one day a couple of months ago I got up, ate my two yogurts, and then declared, “Nope.  Done with yogurt.” 

I have since moved to two packets of Quaker Instant Oatmeal for breakfast (Maple & Brown Sugar flavor).  It’s heavier than my stomach likes, but so far it’s worked. 

Every time I see my therapist, one of the questions he asks is. “What’s the food of the week?”  Because he knows that I tend to eat the same thing for dinner night after night. 

I recently spent a nearly six week period where dinner was two hot dogs and a handful of potato chips.  I just ate and ate until all of a sudden I couldn’t stomach them anymore.  They were delicious up until that point. 

For the past month or so I’ve been eating two grilled turkey and cheese on sourdough for dinner.  

Questions of Nutrition

Is my Mike food diet healthy?  Probably not.  (Okay, definitely not.)  I suspect that I’m probably malnourished. 

But there’s nothing I can really do about it.  In order to circumvent my picky eating you first have to cure my obsessive / compulsive disorder.  Because as long as my mind won’t let my hand bring non-Mike food to my mouth, my diet is what it is.  

The List Goes On (and On, and On…)

I could continue with lengthy lists of what I won’t eat, or much shorter lists of what I will.  But I think this post is long enough, and I suspect that any more would just bore you.