Straight People: A Spotter's Guide to the Fascinating World of Heterosexuals (19 page)

This isn’t a specific kind of food; however, Heterosexuals
love
cooking their meat in Crock-Pots, electric devices that slowly cook meat to juicy perfection. When asked why they love
Crock-Pots, Heterosexuals will
always
reply, “It does all the work, and when I come home my house smells like roast beef!” Heterosexuals are one of the only species on planet Earth who desire a home that smells of roast beef.

Meat
and
carbs!!!

Heterosexuals
love
these spicy, insanely messy to eat, delicious wings of small chickens. Especially when dipped in ranch dressing. These treats are usually served with a side of celery sticks that, when being served to a Heterosexual, will never be touched. I recently went out for wings with a Heterosexual Male I know, and when I reached for one of the celery sticks on the side of our wings basket, he looked at me as if I’d just whipped my penis out at a church picnic, then watched me, lost in thought, and said, “Hmm. I’ve just never seen anyone actually eat those before.”

Heterosexual Herbivores are a vastly different group within the species. These meat-free Heterosexuals tend to enjoy things like yoga, independent film, folk art portraits of Bob Dylan, and wearing the organic cotton clothing sold on racks next to those weird massage chairs by the condiment table at Whole Foods.

Oftentimes, Heterosexual Herbivores can be a little too boastful about their vegetarian lifestyle. The really aggressive types are usually members of the Raw Food Movement, which is when you only eat foods that are uncooked and raw. I’m all for healthy living (I own running shoes, or, rather, my boyfriend does, and they happen to fit me, too), but I think that the Raw Food Movement is taking things just a little too far. But then again, who am I to judge? I made a sandwich out of stale graham crackers, grape jelly, and wasabi peas at 3 in the morning a few nights ago.

Here are some commonly enjoyed dishes among Heterosexual Herbivores.

Kale is the “in” food of the moment. It was all about pomegranates a few years ago, and for a brief period it was beets in the early 21st century, but nowadays it’s all hail kale!
*
Kale is
a leafy green that is known for being extremely healthy and is recommended by all sorts of health officials and talking heads. Heterosexual Herbivores go nuts for this kind of thing, and, in turn, kale has become as popular among Heterosexuals as spinach once was with Popeye. But I think it’s safe to say that if Popeye were alive today, not only would he be under some
intense
investigation for steroid use, but he’d also totally trade in his can of spinach for a nice plate of kale. Oh, and Olive Oyl would
totally
be a lesbian.

If Jif Peanut Butter’s slogan is any indication, Choosy Moms always choose Jif Peanut Butter for their Heterosexual families. And if the six months I spent in college are any indication, 20-somethings who smoke far too much pot choose it, too.

Most Heterosexual Herbivores hate gluten as much as Mario Lopez hates carbs. What is gluten?, you may ask. It comes from wheat and is found in many, many foods. No one really talked about it until a few years ago when literally overnight just about half the people I know announced they were allergic to gluten and could only eat gluten-free things from now on. I’m sure some people
are
allergic to gluten, but it definitely seems like the kind of thing people merely claim to be allergic to because they don’t like it. The way a lot of people do with mayonnaise by saying, “No mayo on the sandwich, I’m allergic” or
the way I do with Nicki Minaj’s music by saying, “No Nicki Minaj, I’m allergic.”

Heterosexuals
love
to spend way too much money on cupcakes, and, honestly, who can blame them? Nothing says living like waiting in line for 10 minutes to pay $10 for a cupcake the size of a tennis ball. But a very, very delicious tennis ball.

Jasmine rice is basically like any other rice except that it includes the word
jasmine
in its name. Heterosexuals enjoy requesting this rice at dinner to let their waiter know they are both worldly and a fan of Disney’s
Aladdin
.

Nothing says comfort to the Heterosexual like a grilled cheese sandwich. Add in a bowl of thick, creamy tomato soup for dipping, and the Heterosexual in question will roll over and let you rub his or her belly. Does anyone know if Justin Timberlake likes grilled cheese, and, if so, what’s his address?

I love almost all Heterosexual foods, but I draw the line at egg salad. Those two words together make my stomach turn. I like eggs and I like salad, but the two together sound pretty lethal to me. Heterosexuals, however,
love
egg salad, and enjoy making
it for picnics and cookouts. My least favorite kind of cookout is when the only side options are egg salad or one of its ugly cousins, such as potato salad, pasta salad, or tuna salad. Sure, they use the word
salad
in their names, but all these dishes are just whatever the first word is, mixed with mayonnaise, and, to me, that is a criminal offense. The same thing goes for . . .

Even the name bothers me, because you think it’s going to be coldslaw, but it’s not, it’s
cole
slaw. I have a friend named Cole and I love him, but I’ll be honest with you: It took some effort to get past his name reminding me of coleslaw.
Slaw
in and of itself is a pretty nasty word, too. You can imagine a world in which the term
slaw
could be used to describe any number of disgusting bodily functions. Instead, however, it is a side dish made from shredded veggies, and once mixed with the ever-popular mayonnaise, is called coleslaw, which makes about as much sense to me as if they called it shop doo wop pow wow
zing
!

Heterosexuals love food so much that they’ve made celebrities out of some of the best Heterosexual chefs in the business. These food icons have entire empires constructed of television shows, cookbooks, and popular food blogs. Many of them come from the aforementioned Food Network (
page 156
), but the food TV craze doesn’t stop there. These professional chefs have left an undeniable impact on the feeding patterns of all Heterosexuals:

Not just the basis for a really enjoyable Meryl Streep movie—God,
I love that movie! Don’t you?
—however, Julia Child was one of the first television food superstars, the original Iron Chef. She taught Heterosexuals how to cook deliciously classy French cuisine. Also, totally unrelated: She was like two inches taller than almost every actor then working in Hollywood.

I love Paula Deen. She is best known for her adorable Southern charm and mouth-watering comfort food, and has made billions out of saying, “Now you’re gonna need half a cup of butter and half a cup of oil, y’all” 95 times a day. She hosts television shows, writes best-selling cookbooks, owns a line of cookware, and was even in a movie with Orlando Bloom a while back. However, before you get too excited, I’m legally obligated to mention that Kirsten Dunst was in that movie as
well, and also Paula Deen has been diagnosed as diabetic. Sorry to ruin your day.

A Heterosexual Male who looks something like Paula Deen with a goatee. Known for his cooking shows and his unique trademark of wearing sunglasses on the back of his head for absolutely no reason whatsoever, Guy is all about hypermasculine food and energy, which leads many Heterosexual Watchers like myself to wonder just how small his penis really is.

First of all, I wish she were president. Second of all, she is a Heterosexual food mogul who cooks vastly different things than Guy or Paula. Martha Stewart caters to the Heterosexual who wishes to throw the classiest of Thanksgiving dinners or an elegant candlelit dinner party using things found in the Martha Stewart Home Collection at Kmart. Martha also went to prison for insider stock trading a few years back, and even worse, was played by Cybill Shepherd in not one but
two
made-for-TV movies.

A world-famous Heterosexual known for being both a grandmother and a purveyor of apples.

Somehow she’s extremely popular, however, I’ve never met anyone who actually enjoys her. Rachael Ray spends every morning teaching Heterosexuals how to cook meals in 30 minutes, making her extremely popular among busy moms and fugitives on the run.

Many Metropolitan Heterosexuals consider
Top Chef
to be the greatest show in television history, and they just might be right.
Top Chef
has made chefs famous the same way
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
has made Kim Kardashian famous. Except that no one on
Top Chef
has made a sex tape, and I suspect Kim Kardashian has never even been inside a kitchen.

Now most Heterosexuals are
not
celebrity chefs and instead are forced to come up with meals with whatever they have lying around or whatever was on sale at the grocery store. These Heterosexuals represent everyman’s pursuit of making a delicious meal out of a bottle of mustard and a box of noodles. Exploring a Heterosexual’s refrigerator can tell you a lot about said Heterosexual’s feeding patterns and the Heterosexual him- or herself. Check this out:

I have arrived in the Heterosexual Male’s kitchen, and before I can even say hello, he offers me a beer, which I decline because it is 10 in the morning on a Monday.

Let’s begin with the door. I see magnetized bottle openers (including one that plays the theme song to
The Dukes of Hazzard
), one of those create-a-sentence magnet sets, which our Heterosexual Male has used to spell out the phrase
take a dump with love Jim
, surrounded by unpaid parking tickets, a Christmas card with someone’s baby on it, a handwritten reminder to “Call Back Alicia from that Mexican Restaurant in the Valley,” and a calendar from 2009.

Things inside the fridge include:

   
 
A take-out container marked
Moo Shoo Pork
, on which the Heterosexual Male has written “Throw out by Friday.” Today is Monday.