It has been said that men are nothing but dogs with feet and opposable thumbs, and in many ways that is correct. Take eating, for instance. We guys will eat just about anything.
We do have our limits, of course. I, for example, probably wouldn't eat an eyeball. Or genitalia. Or brains. I'd also include "butt steak" on that no-eat list, but I'm pretty sure somewhere along the line I've eaten cow butt.
Maybe a pig's too. Odds are, I probably liked it.
That's got to be tough for my mom to swallow, so to speak, since she worked very hard to raise me as a vegetarian. What can I say? Once you go meat, you never ... retreat? Yet, meat isn't the only thing guys consume.
Outside of a very few select items, we'll try just about anything once.
A good example is a conversation I had with a friend, Joe, at a Fourth of July get-together recently. There was a stacked food table at this little shindig, including a carrot cake that didn't make me think I was eating carrots.
Joe and I were discussing the cake, which Tara -- who'd made it -- sometimes sells for around $20 a pop. It's a very heavy cake (and might I add, worth every penny). It was also one of the only things, aside from hot dog buns, that was soft enough for me to eat after having three teeth pulled several days before.
"I can't eat chips or anything hard or brittle," I said, when asked why I wasn't eating much.
"Speaking of chips," Joe said. "You know what I made for dinner last night? A Cheeto Burrito."
"A what?" I said.
"A Cheeto Burrito," he said. "All it is ... get this ... you take a big tortilla, right? You throw some Cheetos on there, roll it up into a burrito and wala, the Cheeto Burrito."
"Was it good?" I wondered.
"Not bad," he said. "You should try it sometime."
Of course I should. And will, once my mouth heals.
Like any good Man Creation, though, I had to know the story behind the story. How, exactly, did inspiration strike? (This coming from the guy who once made a peanut butter, pickle and mustard sandwich, and then pretended to relish every last bite in front of my mom.)
"Well, there I was in the kitchen," Joe said. "Sometimes, I'll eat tortillas all by themselves, right? I'll melt a little butter on them and heat them up and ... mmm. Good."
"Oh, me too," I said. "Those are the BEST!"
"Right, well there I was with my tortilla," he said, pretending to hold a tortilla in one of his hands, palm up. "All of a sudden, I see this bag of Cheetos. So, I look at the Cheetos. Then, I look at the tortilla. And it just hits me. Cheeto. Burrito. I had to do it, if for no other reason than the alliteration of it."
And that, my friends, is a peek under the hood at the way a guy's mind operates. Beautiful, no?
The Cheeto Burrito also got me thinking about some stuff that either I or other guys I know have concocted, then ate. My brother Curt once told me a little "secret" about doughy bread.
"This bread is the greatest kind of bread there is," he said. "What I like to do is take a piece of it and then MASH IT LIKE THIS! into a small ball. Then you roll it between your hands and you end up with ... a bread ball! Mmmm."
The scary part is that it was no "secret" to me. Also not a secret in my family? If it looks like a cookie, I'll eat it.
This was proven years ago when my brother's three boys decided to have some fun with their "Unkie B."
While home from college one weekend, I spotted a plastic jar on top of the fridge filled with what appeared to be peanut-shaped cookies.
"Try one, Unkie B, they're really good!" said Alex.
"Yeah, they're tasty," said Dan and Steve.
They handed one to me. I sniffed it. I gave it the once over. And then I chomped into it and started chewing. And chewing. And chewing. And then I needed some milk to wash down what turned out to be a doggy treat.
Looking back on it, I have to say that dogs are getting shafted. We hork down twinkies, while they're gnawing on "treats" with the consistency of tree bark. But I digress.
There was also the time in college when, after a raucous party, we had half a keg left the next morning. There was a home football game, and the way we saw it ... what better way to get ready for a morning of tailgating than to pour beer on our Wheaties?
At the time, it sounded like a grand idea. After all, the keg was sitting in a tub of ice and it was only about seven hours old.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Me: "Hmmm ... not bad, huh Mike?"
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Mike: "Yeah, not bad. I guess."
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Me: "Mike, do you think this is as horrible as I do?"
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Mike: "Yeah, it's pretty horrible."
Obviously, not all food brainstorms result in winners like The Cheeto Burrito.
But the point is that we try. We mix and we match. We wonder what something tastes like. We satisfy our curiosity, even if it involves Tabasco sauce and, say, chocolate cake? I'm convinced this is how we ended up with peanut butter and jelly all in the same jar (which is truly disgusting).
It must be one of those primal things. And it starts from the moment we take our first breath.
The moment we pop out into the world, we're screaming for two things -- boobs and food. The lucky ones get both at the same time.
Then, we start crawling around at home. What's the first thing we do? Look for some hidden object lying on the floor, like a paperclip or a pencil eraser. Then we eat it.
As we get a little older, we start to eat boogers. And then mud pies. And it just keeps progressing this way into our "adult years," which I put into quotation marks because, really, no man ever truly becomes 100 percent adult.
There is a little "Cheeto Burrito" food explorer in all of us. If it can be slathered, spread, sliced, diced, crunched, munched or even partially digested, we will at some point make a sandwich out of it.
There is a curiosity inside each of us, whether we're in the kitchen, in the wild or in the garage. Usually, inspiration strikes when we think that nobody's looking.
"I wonder what chipmunk tastes like? Should I grill it? Fry it? If I eat it raw, like Ozzy Osbourne did with that bat, will it kill me?"
"What if I emptied a can of Cheeze Whiz on it?"
"How about if I douse it in beer, light it on fire and then dip it in batter and fry it. Awesome!"
So, we're pegged correctly. Men are nothing more than dogs who walk on two legs, but occasionally scrape our knuckles on the sidewalk. We cannot help it. It's part of our DNA.
We will always be in search of the next great food concoction, even if it results in something truly frightening. Learn to accept our flaws, ladies. We will not be stopped.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Cheetos to purchase.
