Alisa and I like to try new things and explore other cultures - and we often do much of that through food. We’ve both dined and made some pretty interesting stuff in the past. So, I’m not coming from simple meat and potato land when I say that there are just a few things I don’t have any interest in ever trying. Things like chicken feet, tongue, or tripe. Thirty-two years along and I’m doing a good job of avoiding these things.

Not so much on the tripe anymore. That’s now on my “won’t have it again willingly” list.

So, Alisa and I are in Chinatown and we decide to have a little Dim Sum snack time. Looking over the choices, we decide on some simple potstickers, some shrimp dumplings, and “Beef With Ginger and Scallions.” It all sounds very good and the pictures look reasonable. The waitress does not speak even remotely good English but about our last selection, the “Beef With Ginger and Scallions,” she says, “No ginger, chai.” I’m spelling it as “chai” because that’s how it sounded when she said it.

Then she said it again, “No ginger, chai.” So, I look at Alisa and say, “It doesn’t have ginger, it has chives.” Well, hell, we’re down with chives. “OK,” I say, “We’ll have the Beef With Chives.” The waitress writes it down and then disappears.

OK, so in retrospect, I completely disregarded, for some reason, a major personal rule of dining out: Understand what your wait staff is bringing to you. Let there be no question about what you will be eating. When the waitress left, I was only something like 85% sure of what the last thing was. Not good enough.

So, the dim sum comes out relatively quickly. Something like two minutes later and everything looks decent, smells alright, but why is the Beef With Chives bumpy? It looks like some kind of noodly covering but, kind of covered in short, think hair. We’re both hesitant but, it’s Beef With Chives so I dig in.

It is not Beef With Chives. It is, instead, “Beef With Tripe” or “Tripe With Chives” or “Tripe With Tripe.” I don’t know if anything else was in it. I really think it was just strips if tripe, knotted, and steamed. It chewed like rubber, it reminded me of eating my own tongue, and it was not an easy swallow.

After I downed it, I asked Alisa, “Is that in me right now? I hate that that tripe is inside my stomach right now.”

And there’s my tripe story. I’m sure it’s like any other tripe story - full of confusion, despair, and regret. Oh, and longing for innocence.

You can cook corn on the cob in the microwave!

Did you know this? It reminds me of some kind of crackpot idea from one of those microwaving cookbooks that almost, I say almost, seem like a good idea. It sounds right up there with making brownies in your microwave. Sure, I can make something akin to what you get with a Swanson’s Hungry Man dinner but why would I want to cook something in the microwave that was merely passable at best?

No, no it’s not like that though. Cooking corn on the cob in the microwave is actually as good or better than being boiled like you’re used to. Alisa’s family has been doing it for years. I’ve always thought you had to boil corn. That’s just the way it was. But here are instructions with pictures. I’m told you don’t even need to do the water soak. Crazy stuff.

My daughter loves the corn on the cob. I got her going with it over the 4th holiday and it’s her favorite vegetable format of late. At least she’s been suggesting it at a lot of meals since.

So I made some in the microwave again the other day. One whole ear for each of us. She ate row after row as much as a 3-year-old can and then declared she was finished and handed it back to me.

And just at that moment, with her handing her remaining ear of corn to me, I had this full circle flash in my head of handing my corn to my dad when I was little. Because that’s one thing that dads do. Dads finish your corn. It’s part of the dad code you know.

During your planning and seedling planting for your summer garden, consider the Druzba Tomato. I hear it’s very tasty. Just another option for getting your daily helping of Druzba.

I tend to be efficient and waste-conscious with many of my actions. “Efficiency!” is what I thought to myself this morning, with my index finger pointed to the sky, when I left my turkey sandwich on the passenger seat of my car when I got to work. It’s winter and, of course, it will naturally keep refrigerated.

Turkey on mustarded bread, a slice of Havarti with dill, and alfalfa sprouts because I like me the crunch and it’s better for you than putting potato chips in the sandwich like I did when I was a kid.

Today, I didn’t count on the blazing sun being positioned just so as to properly cook my sandwich. That was not so efficient. I don’t think Havarti is normally a melty sort of cheese.

I’ll tell you this: Havarti is not bad as a melty cheese. Alfalfa sprouts, however, do lose pizazz with heat. This is where my waste-conscious side takes over and tells me, “You are not throwing this sandwich away. You are going to eat this sandwich and you’re going to like it.” My internal voice sometimes prefers the tough love. My internal voice also sounds exactly like my mom used to when she made my sister and I sit at the table until we ate our zucchini.

I appreciate good food. Alisa and I make some excellent meals. I, however, also appreciate a 4-day-old slice of pizza. I don’t seek out the 4-day-old pizza, carefully waiting day after day as I open the fridge and tell myself, “Is it time yet? Is it ready? No! Not old enough! Only 3 days old!” Rather, if pizza just happens to be 4-days-old, I don’t have a problem with it. Sometimes, it’s better that than not eating anything.

Alisa, I believe, has some sort of logarithmic scale of taste. Something like the Richter scale but in reverse. Fresh to leftover takes a 75% drop in appetizing-potential in her world.

Look, I fully realize that 4-day-old pizza is not going to taste even 5% as good as it did when it was fresh and I’m fine with it. That’s what ketchup or barbecue sauce are for. There’s an extra 5% of original taste boost right there. Dip it and you’re up to 10% of original and that ain’t half bad. That’s double digit percents on my taste-o-meter.

I made an industrial-sized amount of Chicken Cheese Enchiladas tonight. I’ve had 8 of 22 of ‘em which reduces to 4/11 which is a significant amount of elevenths. That’s what you do when you’re a divorced dad - you make industrial-sized batches of things like enchiladas and then you eat more than you ought and then you scratch yourself and mutter, “Eep, I shouldn’t have had the last five of those puppies.”

Oh Innanet, I never knew you could be so jealous:

My grandma Druzba would not have put up with that. She probably wouldn’t have purchased it in the first place but if she did and she brought it home to find it all wilted and yellowed, she would have wrapped it all up in Saran Wrap, brought it back to the store’s customer service desk, and got her full $2.49. She probably would not have coordinated this return visit to the market with more shopping, mind you. She would have made a special trip to go back to the store, just to return the cilantro and get her $2.49 (except she wouldn’t have ever been buying cilantro because what need of cilantro does an old Italian woman have?).

It’s the principle of the thing though. There’s not enough of the principle of the thing around anymore. Living during the Great Depression made her not put up with stuff like that. It seems that, back in the day, a grocery store wouldn’t put up with having expired produce out for fear of their reputation being marred. Not so much anymore.

Then again, Grandma sometimes returned ice cream to the store because she didn’t like the taste of it. So, it’s not always the principle of it. I mean, seriously, she would say something like, “This is shitty butter pecan,” pack it up, and return it to the store, telling them that it tasted “funny.”