Food: A Love Story Read Online Free

soda, all-you-can-eat buffets, and a Wendy’s Triple only seem like logical options to me. I love the rare moments when I’m truly surprised by American eating.
    A while ago I was back in Indiana in my hometown walking around the Kmart, or, as we called it, “the mall.” You can typically find just about anything you need in one of these “big box” stores like Walmart and Kmart. What I especially love about Kmart is the ambience. I always feel like I’ve entered a store that was just attacked by a flash mob. Everything always looks and feels a little disheveled. There will be some random empty shelf. There’s always a huge corner display tower of sale products that looks like it will collapse on you if you breathe on it. There will be a broken jar in one aisle and an abandoned sock in the next. The selection and layout suggest that this might not be the ideal place to buy a suit or use a public restroom. Anyway, on this fine day I was looking for diapers when I saw a seventy-year-old man walking around the Kmart drinking something I realized later was a cup of KFC gravy.
    Now, in full disclosure, I love gravy. Who doesn’t, really? It’s gravy , after all … but I’ve never considered gravy a beverage. Even in my most private moments with gravy I’ve never contemplated taking a swig. This is coming from someone who drank a product called Yoo-hoo on many occasions as a teenager. The thing I found most impressive was that not only was this stranger drinking gravy, he also wasn’t even trying to hide it. When I first spotted the stranger, I saw the KFC Styrofoam cup, saw him take a drink, and assumed … well, obviously this guy is not drinking gravy. Then I encountered him again standing in front of me in the checkout line. It was at that moment I saw the thick brown liquid in the cup and confirmed that it was, in fact, a cup of KFC gravy he was drinking. And then, almost as if to prove a point, he turned around and took a sip right in front of me. Our eyes met, and he gave me a warm Midwestern smile as if to say, “Hey, how’s it going?” I nodded and said hello and was only a bit more than slightly tempted to exclaim, “You realize you’re drinking gravy, right?”
    I don’t know what the events were that led up to this stranger drinking the cup of gravy in that Kmart. I like to think he walked into KFC with the intention of drinking gravy. Maybe his order was simple.
    “Yeah I’ll have the large mashed potatoes and gravy. And hold the mashed potatoes.” Maybe in order to avoid judgment or scorn, he ordered the mashed potatoes, got the gravy on the side, and just threw the mashed potatoes away. Or maybe he really could have cared less what anyone thought, which is more likely, since he seemed like a proud gravy drinker greeting the cashier while she scanned his heart medication.
    I’m no health nut, but I can only imagine what this guy’s next medical checkup was like. I picture a doctor in a white coat glancing down at a chart as he walks into an examination room with our gravy drinker sitting on the examination table.The doctor would then tilt his head to the right, perplexed by the results on the chart:
DOCTOR: Mr. Jones, I’ve got your cholesterol levels here. ( beat ) Okay, you are aware your blood is not moving?
GRAVY DRINKER: ( nods )
DOCTOR: This is kind of a strange question. Um. You haven’t been drinking gravy, have ya? Because based on the test results you’re, like, 90 percent meat by-product.
GRAVY DRINKER: ( nods )
DOCTOR: We’re going to have to register you with the government.
    I guessed the age of our gravy drinker to be around seventy, but I have no idea how old he was or how long he had been drinking gravy. Maybe he was younger. Maybe gravy drinking is one of those rapid-aging behaviors, like smoking. Or maybe he was an even older guy and the gravy-drinking habit had plumped out his wrinkles so he actually looked younger. I suppose his unique consumption of his gravy cup