I have written before about how important music is in my life, and I’m sure there will be a post about it coming later this week. But if there’s any other thing that I can look back at and say has had a pretty powerful impact on me these past 50 years, that thing…for good and bad…has been food. So I reckon I should talk a little about it.
The Food and The Drink: Chicken Fajitas and Vodka Lemonade (we didn’t have tequila)
The Artist and The Song: The National – Lemonworld (I swear the song choice and the drink choice were not related)
“I was a comfortable kid, but I don’t think about it much anymore”
This may be my favorite song on one of my favorite albums, High Violet. This song NEVER gets skipped when it comes up in the rotation, and it hits me equally hard every time I hear it. I had this song in my head today as I was mowing, and when I came in later to cook, I fired up my “2021 favorites” list on Spotify, and it immediately came up in the rotation, so I figured that should be enough for it to earn the spot in today’s post.
Today was another really nice December day in Kentucky, so we focused our time and efforts on getting outside things done. I had a yard full of leaves that needed mulched. Beck kind of wanted them taken care of before the 50mph wind gusts arrived tonight and scattered them all up and down Riverside. Despite my bargaining with her that that sounded like a FEATURE and not a bug, we came to an agreement that I would go ahead and get them mowed up today.
After fighting with the damn lawnmower for about an hour, I finally got started and the yard looks all nice and tidy this evening. She kept busy, too, and by the time we’d finished up outside, we’d burnt too much daylight to go with our original supper plan, so we had to make an adjustment.
I remembered that we had several colorful peppers in the fridge, so I decided to thaw some chicken, make some rice, and make fajitas. As I was cooking, I got to thinking about how even though they are pretty commonplace now, fajitas, and Mexican food in general, used to not be so easily obtained.
It seems kind of weird to me how much food and access to food has changed just in the 50 years I’ve been around. I’m sure growing up in a rural area made those changes more noticeable than they might have been for someone growing up in a larger city, but there’s still quite a bit that’s changed.
And yes, I realize this is some pretty insignificant shit lined up against all the crazy changes folks like my great-grandmother saw in her 90+ years…I mean, she was alive when they invented FLIGHT, for God’s sake, and I’m writing about tacos…but that’s the clay I have to sculpt with tonight, so hang in there with me.
While true Mexican food wasn’t that prevalent growing up, there were several Tex/Mex joints around that we would visit. I mean, for a while there, I don’t think a trip to Lexington with my friends was complete unless we ate at Chi-Chi’s.
If “authentic” Mexican was rare, “authentic” Chinese food was almost non-existent. (Listen, I’m putting authentic in quotes because I know that what we call authentic is still a pretty far cry from what you’d likely be served in any of these actual countries).
The only Chinese food we had growing up came from a can labeled La Choy and was sprinkled with crunchy little sticks when it was finished. I can remember when the China Garden opened in Morehead. It was the first Chinese place (outside of a mall) that a lot of us had ever seen. I can also remember wanting to try it and hoping they had Chicken Chow Mein, because that’s all we were used to eating from those giant La Choy cans.
I’m not sure I remember when I first had fajitas, but I was thinking this evening about how there ARE certain foods I can remember trying for the first time.
I remember the first time I tried pesto was in Moab, Utah in 1996 while I was at geology field camp. I think everyone there but me knew what it was, but I didn’t make a peep about it. I just watched how they ate it and then did the same…and loved it. That trip would also be my first time trying Caesar dressing, but I did at least know what that one was. I also made some kick-ass fajitas one night during those six weeks when it was my turn to cook. How’s THAT for coming full circle?
As I have been thinking back on my 50 years this week, I’ve realized that that 6 week trip out west, a geology field camp that was required in order to wrap up my degree from Morehead State, looms large in my life and in my memories.
I turned 25 later that year, so I was literally at the halfway point of my life up until now. I had no idea when I climbed into that 15-passenger van on a warm morning in May just how much my life was getting ready to change or how large a role some of the people I wound up meeting on that trip would end up playing in my life going forward.
As my mom drove me to Lexington that morning to drop me off, I can remember how gorgeous all of the locust trees were along the Interstate. They were COVERED in blooms, and I could not remember ever seeing them like that before. For some silly reason, it worried me that maybe the world was about to end and nature was just putting on a show so that we’d have something nice to look at on our way out. The world kept on turning, of course, but my world as I knew it was about to change in so many ways.
Within a year of going on that trip, my dad was gone, a relationship that should have ended sooner would be on its last legs, and we would dealing with the aftermath of dad’s passing, a struggle that would continue for the next couple of years.
However, I would also be teaching classes at UK and learning a set of skills that would end up leading to a business partnership and continuing friendship with one of the faculty I’d met at field camp. That venture would end up being what opened the door for me to start my career at MSU after deciding to move back home…a decision I made not long after a fairly eventful 32nd birthday.
I’m not planning on making any big life-altering decisions after my 50th (and I’m SURE not planning on a night like that one), but if history has taught me anything, you never really know what’s coming next…in food or in life.