Rigatoni al Dente:

Rigatoni al dente with brine olives and sun-dried tomato crème sauce. Peanut butter, bread, aluminum foil and a can of black beans. I am rummaging through my cabinets for something satisfying after watching Easy Entertaining With Michael Chiarello. A spoon full of peanut butter and a slice of warm bread is all I could come up with offhand. I could have snobbishly buttered the bread and toasted it in a skillet and however wrong it is in the culinary world, it would have to work. Paula Dean stared viciously at me, sliding the knife along the back of a plump shrimp, as I chewed my sandwich.
While watching Mrs. Dean create the shrimp dish plagued with mayonnaise, I note that food is a way of life. Everywhere, food is celebrated as a defining factor in culture. There are dishes that define each country: if you’re eating escargot, then more than likely you are in France, especially coastal regions; when consuming Haggis, you are probably in Scotland and enjoy the taste of the liver, lungs, and heart of a sheep boiled in it’s own stomach with oatmeal and spices; if you are eating humitas, one egg and corn blended together with cheese and steamed in a corn husk, you are more than likely in Ecuador, and depending on the time of day, you are eating humitas de dulce or humitas de sal. If you are consuming grits, buttermilk biscuits and sweet tea every other day for breakfast, then presumably the region is southeast United States. If you are eating polenta, smooth but grit-like, authentically, you would be basking next to Roman ruins, scooping it up with flatbread and washing it down with wine. If you are sitting in your living room watching Food Network, then you’re probably eating Cheetos and not planning your next trip to Iceland to see what puffins actually taste like. There is no need for this, considering these things are handed to you via television.
However wonderful and meaningful food is to every culture, it is underhandedly an acceptable gateway drug, leading to things like obesity, cancer and heart attacks. As fat as America has become, the addiction to food is constantly being fed to us via the media and only moderately discouraged by people like Richard Simmons, who’s homoerotic exercise plan impacts those whose addiction has gotten way out of hand. The influence and snobbishness concerning food has grown recently with the Food Network, a station not only promoting food snobbery, but a fetish-like desire for food and watching celebrity chefs cook food. That’s hot. The flashy Rachel Ray brand knives, expensive and colorful Kitchen-Aid cookware, beautiful ingredients bought from gourmet food stores like Whole Foods and eye-candy chefs like Tyler Florence preparing mouth-watering delicacies are really something to ogle at. As pornographic as it may sound, I am an undeniable fan of this concept, as was a brief friend of mine.
She claimed to be a former fat kid. Flush-cheeked and blonde curls, light freckles and scarfing blue eyes, she reminded one of the daughter of a patisserie owner. In one of our few conversations in the week and a half that we were roommates, Melissa mentioned that, since we all are going to die young, we should plan her funeral. She said there would be a rock band and that I was obligated to make pie. I’m not sure if she met death by food, which she admittedly wouldn’t mind. We would watch Paula Dean especially, and drool at the amounts of farm fresh butter she dumped into the food as she cackled at how horrible she was for doing it. My other two roommates would look at us strangely as they walked through the kitchen and hurry to their bedrooms and shut their doors.
The food culture of our apartment, between the two of us, had become within the week the biscuits and bacon we ate for breakfast, the coffee any time of the day, and the activity of Grease Hutting, which I had never participated in, but Melissa talked about doing. Grease Hutting, from what I understood, is when one actively goes to seek out the unhealthiest fast food for dinner. Taco Bell was a must, then Arby’s and Chic-fil-a. MacDonald’s was deliberately left out of the deal because of the grossness of the workers (but the level of snobbery in the both of us leads me to believe that she did not eat it because it’s MacDonald’s and just shouldn’t be indulged in period). Eating MacDonald’s is a death sentence.
But apparently so is pie. Although the discussion of bringing pie to Melissa’s actual funeral entailed a somewhat radical subject, pie is something every funeral after-party has. Melissa knew that food is an acceptable gift on every occasion. Weddings, bar mitzvahs, la quinces, holidays and funerals especially. Funerals bring in the bacon. After my grandmother died, my grandfather threw out whole chickens, sliced ham, pies and cake, complaining in his rusty voice that he couldn’t eat all of the food in solitude. My aunts talked about how good the cakes were; painfully delicious funeral coconut cakes, moist with remorse and effort. Mountains of fried chicken, multiple hams, bountiful cakes and numerous cookies trashed after a few days because of their purpose. And pies.There was no pie made by me at Melissa’s funeral; in fact I did not go. After planning her own funeral, she would not indulge in the pie, and this injustice gave me such a pain that I cried after the thought. At the moment of her death, I was more than likely watching Food Network and planning for a party. As the SUV rammed into the passenger side of her Mustang, Emeril Lagasse was probably grabbing a handful of “essence” and screaming, “BAM!” maniacally. I didn’t feel that moment at all, and the delayed reaction only came when I was informed over the phone that there would be a funeral after all, and more than likely, people would follow the tradition by bringing over inconsumable food for the family.