Good Food, Bad Food

I don't know about everyone else, but I have a food dance. If I take the first bite of a meal and it is especially delicious, I do a little shuffle with my shoulders. It is almost involuntary, like when you hear your favorite song and you just have to move to it. When my boyfriend and I eat out, it is the meter by which we measure the quality of the meal.
"How is it?" he'll ask.
"Pretty good"
"No food shuffle though?"
"Not shuffle-worthy, no."

I think this speaks pretty strongly about my relationship with food. (And maybe a little bit about my relationship with my boyfriend) I'm an emotional eater, on several levels. There is the classic, downing-a-whole-bag-of-chips-after-a-bad-day kind of emotional eating, of which I am guilty. But there is also the fact that food just makes me happy. My sister, a splenda and skim milk kind of girl, thinks this is ridiculous, that food is for sustenance and not for entertainment. But how boring is that? I realize that I can't depend on food to make for my happiness, but why shouldn't I take joy in something I am going to do anyway, even if it means eating real butter and sugar instead of the "healthier" chemical substitutes. If the food is good, food-shuffle worthy good, I don't feel bad about eating it, even if it is full of dietary sins.

Also, logically speaking, if good food makes me happy, does that then mean that bad food makes me unhappy? And what is bad food anyway? For the first question, the answer is pretty simple. After a mediocre meal I do feel a little let down, a little saddened. Somewhere in my mind I see each meal as an opportunity for a positive experience where I might try a new flavor or find a new favorite dish. So when the food lacks flavor, is not well-cooked or is just not something I like, it is a bit depressing.

The second question is infinitely more complicated. As far as adjectives go, it doesn't get much more general than "bad". There is food that is bad for you, full of salt and nasty fats and things your body was not meant to absorb. In the emotional sense, I would not call this bad food. Sometimes when you need a french fry from McDonalds, you need a french fry.

And then there is food that just tastes bad. Maybe the textures are wrong or the flavors don't mesh properly. This is food will probably leave me displeased and unsatisfied at the end of a meal, even if it is healthy and nutritious.
The most depressing is when these two kinds of bad meet in an unholy union of terrible cuisine. To me, the epitome of this is bowling alley pizza. I've heard the saying, "pizza is like sex, even when it's bad, it's still pretty good." This is false. Some pizza is just bad. At Roseland Bowl in Canandaigua, New York, the pizza is bad. The crust is doughy and soggy, the cheese is lukewarm and the cheap tomato paste sauce coagulates in a ring around the outside of the cheese. This is a meal that would leave me feeling sad. Sad because I just ate all kinds of "bad stuff" and it wasn't worth it; it didn't even taste good.

To get the bad taste of that pizza out of my mouth, I'm going to leave you with a list of a few of my top shuffle-worthy foods (in the order that I think of them.)

1. Caprese salad
2. Well-prepared guacamole
3. My Mama's chili, with sour cream and tortilla chips
4. Tostadas from Rio Tomatlan mexican restaurant in Canandaigua
5. Homemade mashed potatoes and gravy

So go forth and eat good food. That is, food that makes you happy.