Wheat Thins and Beer

One of my favorite things to eat as a snack, when the mood strikes, is a stack of Premium Saltines. It's not a typical food stuff that you would see most people eating when they're hungry, but for me, I'll sit down with a stack of crackers and eat the whole thing for my dinner.

I had never really thought it was anything unusual to eat as a meal. I just thought that eating a large amount of crackers for dinner was just something that people would do when they were hungry. To this day If I'm going to play hockey or volleyball, I'll just take a stack with me to "carb up" before I play. Of course eating a big salty stack of bread-like substance isn't the smartest thing to do then, so I would take a bottle of water with me and finish that off too. That's a balanced meal in my world.

I might be doing myself a big favor by eating some sort of protein bar or something before each game, but those are short term snacks. Me and my crackers? That's a meal. Ironically, Me and My Crackers is also the name of my soon to be written story of my impending institutionalization. Andrew Lloyd Webber and I are working on the musical, stay tuned.

Recently, I was having a conversation with my mother about certain aspects of my childhood and for some reason we started talking about food. It was then that I found out that I had been eating crackers for dinner for quite some time, I just didn't remember it.

My mother is a very strong willed woman, and even that is probably an understatement. She'll probably come around asking for line-item veto power over this site at some point. So, if you see the title of the site change to "Little Butt Items" or "Glen's Ruminations" you'll know my mother is to blame.

I was surprised to find out when I was growing up that she had no idea how much money my father made from his job working for the county highway department. He would take his check, cash it, then give my mother the money that he thought was the right amount to feed the family for the next two weeks. In theory this could have worked, but I think he forgot how many of us there were, as the money he gave us was no where near what we needed for 3 square meals a day for those next two weeks.

As a result of this, my mother would have to make do with that money. So, we would have meals consisting of crackers, with butter, and sometimes jelly.

The thought of eating crackers with butter on them is quite disgusting to me now, but I guess when you're a kid and if someone tells you that butter on a saltine is a meal, you'll tend to believe it. Of course, I believed that Superman lived in house somewhere in the backyard too, so I don't think it was all that hard to convince me of anything.

She went on to tell us that the other primary meal that we would eat would be a soup consisting of rice and chicken necks. This was one was a stunner to me, because whenever I feel sick, I make a soup consisting of nothing but rice and chicken bouillon. I guess it's just a comfort food.

Eventually I think I made my own version of the food pyramid where crackers were at the bottom, rice and chicken bouillon were at the top. In the middle somewhere are pizza and Mike and Ike's. Life expectancy? With all the preservatives that I'm eating, I figure I'm good to last until I'm One Hundred and Twenty or 36.

What's the point of me talking about all of this? Got me. I just felt like being a bit cathartic today. Oh, and to let Sarah know that we need Crackers and Rice on the grocery list.