I'm not denying that I'm difficult to live with.

This has been said by me innumerable times but for the sake of making sure nobody ever forgets it, I will say it again – my husband really deserves a medal for putting up with me.  I am no picnic to live with and should I have been accompanied with an instruction manual it would have come in volumes and would have read like an IKEA manual but without the illustration and it would have been printed in Chinese.  There are many ways one could sugarcoat this.  For example, I could say that I am complicated, emotionally complex and eccentric bordering on the ridiculous.  But that would just be blowing smoke up your asses.  The truth is I am one difficult bitch to live with and sometimes I do things that annoy the living hell out of my long suffering husband.  To help give you some perspective here are just a couple of my phobias, obsessions and eccentricities that drive him up the wall and why he deserves some well earned recognition.

One of the causes for my husband to be annoyed can be blamed on my OCD.  Not having to switch the lights on and off a 100 times or checking if all the doors are locked for hours at a time kind of OCD.  The type of OCD I suffer from is my germ phobia and the fact that I like routine and for things to be done in a certain way.  In this sense I am not that unlike our bunnies.  They too like routine and for things to be done a certain way and if you deviate from it they throw tantrums and are stubborn just like me.

This has caused me to hate spontaneity, to be weary of surprises and made me allergic to change of any kind.  I like things to be planned and organized or else the world will come crumbling down and we will all die.  Throw in a mild case of agoraphobia and you have the perfect storm that could kill a social life.  All of which drives my husband nuts.

You see for anyone to drag my ass out of the house for any reason other than for work or to buy life sustaining necessities is a daunting task.  I like our home and everything we need is there.  There really is no reason to leave the house other than for a natural disaster or possibly the apocalypse; even then I would be difficult about it because that too would imply impending change.  Besides, we only have one pet carrier and there is no bloody way five cats, two bunnies, a tortoise and a fish would all fit in there.  We would need a fucking Ark.  Also, do you even know how many life threatening germs are out there that could one day turn us all into Zombies?

So for us to go out is a rather big deal, but for some odd reason my husband does succeed in getting me out of the house sometimes.  We do go shopping in actual malls that are not on the internet, go to movies, visit friends, watch shows and also travel.  None of these things have killed me, yet.  But what annoys my husband is the fact that all these adventures are planned, even the “spontaneous” ones.

My OCD is not the only thing that drives hubby nuts, there also is my cooking.  I am a phenomenal cook, if I do say so myself, and I am also very talented at dirtying every single pot, pan and cooking utensil we have while I prepare a meal.  I never use the same tasting spoon twice because that’s just unhygienic.  I am also incapable of only cooking for just two people.  I blame the fact that I possibly lived through the great depression in a previous life and am now overcompensating by always cooking for an army.  So after I cooked a meal and dirtied as much as possible, I will also fill up all our Tupperware with leftovers most of which go to waste anyway. I know there are starving children in Africa. Don't judging me.

As if my OCD and cooking skills are not enough I am also a hypochondriac at the best of times.  I am a relatively healthy person apart from being allergic to the world.  Literally.  I should live in a hypoallergenic bubble.  However, when I do get an ailment I tend to self-diagnose with disastrous consequences and for this I blame WebMD and the internet in general.

I have been convinced that I was dying from exotic diseases more times than I think my husband would care to count.  In contrast there were also times I thought I was fine but was in fact dying. Like a while back when I thought I was suffering from severe constipation on an island holiday and it turned out I had double pneumonia.  There was also that time when I thought I was having a heart attack and it turned out to just be severe heartburn.  I tend to get it wrong most of the time and all the while hubby had to stand by my side through real medical emergencies and the ones that were not so real.  Even that one time I thought I was infected with the Ebola virus and nobody wanted to believe me.  It would frustrate most people.

And then there are the animals, as you all know I love animals and as a result not only does my husband have to share our house with a person with OCD, impeccable cooking skills and a hypochondriac, he also shares it with our ever growing menagerie.  You all should know by now about my obsessive search for a gay donkey and most recently I fell in love with another animal called an Alpacas.  They are ridiculous animals with one fabulous set of hair.  I mean really, who could resist an animal with buck teeth and a jerry curl?  The Alpacas could just possibly trump the gay donkey, and I am so getting one, just don’t tell my husband.

Hubby has threatened that if I get one more animal that we need to buy a farm.  So in response to his threat, now every time I go to the pet shop to buy supplies I send him pictures of kittens, bunnies and reptiles.  You know, so that he is never sure what he will be coming home to that afternoon.  I know it’s cruel but I am doing this with a plan in mind:  If I desensitize him enough to the possibility of a new animal joining our zoo then when I do get the Alpacas or gay donkey he will not be that upset, although the neighbors might be.  I am aware that my obsession with our ever expanding zoo is a problem, but animals make me happy and we can’t naturally have children and God knows we try.  If Brad and Angelina can collect children then who are you to judge my animal collection?  Besides we are adopting a child and I suspect this might just cure me of my zoo obsession.  The universe works in mysterious ways.

As you can see, it is a miracle that I am not single.  Finding a person who would be prepared to put up with all this shit is very difficult and I got lucky.  Very lucky! The only real issue I think my husband has that he really wishes I would part with is my obsession with horror movies.  I scare the living shit out of him by means of the horror genre at least once a week.  I do this probably in an attempt to convince him that living with me is not as bad as being possessed by Lucifer, being tormented by entities, kept chained in a basement by a serial killer or being kidnapped by aliens.  I mean compared to that sharing your house with a zoo and a somewhat eccentric blogger who believes that the Zombie Apocalypse will happen isn’t so bad, now is it?

Till next time.

(PS:  The Zombie Apocalypse is real people.  It will happen.

PPS: And when the Zombie Apocalypse does happen, stay the fuck away from my house!  I will cut a zombie bitch.  I really will.)

The Cock I Refused to Eat

Sometimes we put things in our mouths that we really shouldn’t. Come on, you know what I am talking about. We have all done it, whether you were 5 years old at the time or in your thirties. Sometimes the curiosity of something not normally considered palatable overrides reason and the allure of human curiosity takes over and before you know it you have snacked on something that, in retrospect, leaves you disgusted.

I must admit that I am not the most adventurous person when it comes to experimenting with bizarre foods especially food with which I have an emotional connection. This is one of the only aspects in my life that I do consider myself to be somewhat, dare I say it, full of shit.

Yet, when I was 5 years old I once snacked on a dog pellet and by the age of 10 I chewed on a dog vitamin. Thirteen was a good year for “insect dares” and during that year I ate both an earthworm and a moth and recently, I am dreading to admit, tasted one of my cats’ vitamin snacks. Why did I do it? No I was flying in KooKoo Ville I was just curious, that’s why. But sometimes we find ourselves in culinary situations that challenge our personal biases.

When I was a child my sister and I use to have many pets. The one I most vividly remember was a rooster we called Andre. Andre was one bad tempered, domineering and spiteful cock who hated humans and especially despised children. Every time my sister and I would be within 10 meters of him, he would get this psychotic look in his beady little eyes and storm us forcing us to flee screaming to the safety of the house while being kicked, pecked and bitch slapped by our poultry nemesis.

One day when my sister and I returned home from our after-school activities, we were surprised when we entered our backyard. It was ominously quiet – no psychotic cock insight. It wasn’t until I sat down for dinner that I realized why our rooster from hell didn’t, yet gain, surprise us with another unprovoked violent ambush.

As my mom presented the roast chicken to the dinner table it was soon clear something was amiss. The chicken on the plate looked different to what I was accustomed to, yet there was something perplexingly familiar. You see the chicken had the same build as our beloved Andre. Could this be? I pondered worryingly. Not being one shy away from difficult issues, even at that age, I braved the question. “Is this our pet cock... is this Andre... did you... kill him?”

Our parents profusely denied this, so naturally my sister and I carefully and curiously made our way the chicken coop and lo and behold, Andre was missing! Returning to the dinner table we confronted our parents to which they reluctantly admitted that the perfectly roasted chicken was indeed our malevolent and now deceased and well basted pet rooster Andre. Now shocked and slightly devastated we were faced with our dead pet for dinner and neither my sister nor I had the stomach to devour our former friend, nemesis and tormentor.

Our parents tried their utmost to persuade us to at least try a piece, after all we eat chickens from the store, so why was this any different. “Free range chicken is healthier for you anyway” they said. “Remember Kentucky Fried Chicken pieces also once were somebody’s Andre and you still like KFC don’t you?” they said. “Andre tormented you, hurt you and it was time to get rid of that damn rooster so we may as well eat him” they said.

In retrospect my parents can be damn lucky that I didn’t turn vegetarian there and then! I mean honestly who looks at their pets I thinks about eating them? The difference was that I didn’t personally know the other chickens before they became chicken mcnuggets, I didn’t name them and I didn’t consider them my pets. Needless to say both my sister and I had hot dogs for dinner that night, chicken wasn’t served in our house for well over a month and all of our other chickens (Betsy, Hen and Leila) died of old age.

The demise of Andre didn’t really teach me the lesson I suppose my parents intended at that time; at the age of 7 I was not really ready to face the hard facts of where our food really comes from. In my mind I refused to make the connection between the steak on my dinner plate and the cow crazing carelessly in the field, the chicken patty on my burger and the other Andre’s of the world. If I didn’t personally know the cow my piece of steak came from it was fine eating it, after all we didn’t fight our way to the top of the food chain to starve, now did we?!

As I matured I have come to appreciate the cycle of life with much gratefulness that I never grew up on a farm. Now I pay more thought to what I put in my mouth, where what I am eating comes from and whether the animals were treated with care and dignity.

My experience with Andre also provided me with a deeper understanding and respect for where vegans and vegetarians are coming from (maybe they too had an Andre in their lives). The delicious smell of Andre’s perfectly roasted body and the image of his elongated drumsticks still haunt me to this day, but not enough to have completely put me off cock. Rest in peace our little cock Andre.

Till next time.

Queer Duck - "I'm Coming Out!"

Would You Eat Me?

The other day friends and I were discussion the topic of organic and free range food. The main idea behind this is that certain foods and animals are farmed organically and allowed to roam free, nibbling on whatever they can find in addition to their normal feeding program. Everything is natural, no hormones, steroids or pesticides are used. The produce of this way of farming is then also considered healthier and to some tastier, safer on the environment and more socially responsible. Well I tried some free range lamb chops the other day, and I don’t know what shit the lamb nibbled on, but I didn’t like the taste of it. So naturally, I thought if animals taste different if they eat different foods, wouldn’t humans do too? And if I ever were forced to, for whatever reason, would I be able to taste the difference?

No, I am not advocating cannibalism, but just think about it. In 1972 with the Andes Flight Disaster 16 survivors faced starvation and were stranded for 72 days before being rescued. Facing starvation and fighting to stay alive the survivors eventually started eating their dead fellow passengers. Similar cases have also been documented in our recent past where cannibalism occurred out of necessity, although not many of the people involved are willing to admit to it. As disgusting as eating your mate seems, the reality is that this could also happen to you! With this thought in mind I started asking myself some serious and peculiar questions.

Should I be in a plane crash and survive, would I be willing to cross that line? Well, I don’t know, but this spiked my interest and led me to question the following. Once the repulsion of having to eat another human being is replaced with desperation and hunger, would a vegetarian passenger taste different from a vegan, an healthy meat eating person taste different from a diabetic and would Caucasians’ meat be tougher or more tender than that of an Asian. Would homosexuals be fruitier than heterosexual people? Men taste better than women?  Would South Africans be less or more fatty than Americans?

Naturally if animals’ taste differs due to what they are fed, surely humans would too. Contemplate this for moment. In all countries there are different types of department stores whose products differ vastly in quality and price. Some sell top of the range imported fresh produce, organically farmed vegetables and the meat of animals that lived stress free lives, were pampered and fed only the best. Then there are stores that sell products of lesser quality and the meat of animals that were sent to their deaths screaming in questionable abattoirs. The more affluent in society will opt for the more expensive stores and normal working class folk for the affordable ones, so will you be able to taste the difference between the rich, working class and the poor? Would the rich passengers taste like Wagyu steaks and the working class like rib eye?

Working from the assumption that people would taste different due to their social standing, culinary preferences, race and general health would this influence your pick in dinner? After the plane has crashed and you survived what would the next step be? I would assume that the dead passengers would have to be organized and categorized and the best specimens clearly marked and preserved for once all the airplane food runs out. Now I have no idea how to prepare and cook a person, but one thing is for sure – if I am ever faced with a situation as dire as this I will have to be served the food with condiments, spices and booze. But what goes with human?

Well, I can only assume that garlic, rosemary, cloves, bay leaves and any other strong herb will have to be used. I don’t want to think that we would taste like venison or pork, but in all probability we will taste like chicken. After all whenever anyone eats anything strange and is later asked what it tasted like they inevitably say CHICKEN. So some sage and thyme would be essential. I guess as time passes and the survivors eat their way through the rich, poor, vegans, vegetarians, carnivores, heterosexuals, homosexuals, Caucasians, Asians, Blacks and whatever other race was on the menu, each individual temporary cannibal would identify their favourite. My favourite meat is lamb, maybe in that situation it would be an Indian Vegan or a Caucasian Vegetarian with high blood pressure. Again I hope I never have to find out!

All your French and Italian culinary skills would be tested to the limit in case of such a tragedy. For one, I suspect there would not be many tools to cook with and unless you have a former Survivor cast member on your doomed flight who survived, in all probability you won’t have any fire as well. Secondly, I don’t think there are any classes in human meat preparation apart from anatomy classes in Medical School so unless you were unfortunate enough to have a cannibalistic serial killer on board, whom have had some prior practice in this filed, you won’t have any prime cut meat for dinner. And if you do, chances are good that you may not live much longer anyway.

As so many of us will be travelling to our respective holiday destinations this December, flying out to be with our families and some even travelling by boat, just remember the Andes Disaster and always be ready for the unexpected. You never know when or where you may be marooned and you may have to prepare and eat your mate, fellow passengers and/or your captain. So the next time I board a flight I will be sure to be packing some extra condiments and spices and if you are sitting next to me and you wonder why I ask about your health and eating habits, now you know why.

Bon Appétit! Till Next Time!

The Flames of Hell's Kitchen #1