Preppy Foodie...one "show" the Food Network may want to pass on

Ahh, a little bit of Haagen-Daz....always such a perfectly Preppy treat!

A Prepster's in-town cottage's fridge: pretty basic, boring but healthy-ish

Preppy work-snack: going healthy since martini-lunches are now archaic.

Today I trotted off to the grocers... eventually one must re-supply the pantry, fridge and such...

Grocery shopping is for me almost akin to a trip to the dentist- I am not a person who loves to wander through the produce section, gaze upon the glass-protected shelves stocked full of deli options or even steer my cart towards the smells and bread-basketed decor' of the store's in-house pseudo bakery. I am much like my father in that...have a list, grab a cart and work quickly through the aisles.

Perhaps one of the Preppiest things about me is that, frankly, I am "not interested much" in food. Now, yes, I do (you bet) get hungry and eat food on a regular basis and obviously am not the startlingly-skinny of certain movie industry starlets, runway models and various members of royalty who are young, in love and constantly monitored as to their fashion, hair-do's and dress size. No, I eat a' plenty and when I do, it's more towards healthy-options though I am hardly one of those Yoga-Moms who get quite militant in their vegetarianism, organic-obsessions and raw food, pure food, slow food and localized food stringent life quantifiers.

Yes, I do like to buy fresh, local and the-least-chemicaled-possible but I do not make it a big issue, a universal absolute or something toward the application of personal postmodern sainthood. I leave that to others.

I grew up in a family who paid scant attention to food. When we lived in Georgia, our house, my grandparents' houses, other family members' houses and our friends households as well all had fulltime cooks. No, not fulltime family foodies who loved to be in the kitchen whipping up something and no, not professional chefs either but actual regular ole' hired cooks who doled out our 3 Square Meals a Day in the manner of 1970's and earlier-styled Southern Cooking...that we all didn't die early deaths of butter or bacon fat grease overdosing is a miracle! That all of us kids were skinny things looking like we actually needed some more butter on our toast was a funny outcome indeed from the food we consumed set down before us day after day.

IF my mother, grandmothers, aunts n' such actually HAD to make a meal for some odd reason, it was literally an opening-of-cans debacle' with toast or some cheese toast burning included in...

When we moved up-north, we left that lifestyle behind and from then on dinner was always a choice in my family of one of two options: more Campbell's cans of soup and cheese toast slightly burned on the edges OR "your father's coming home in a minute and we're going out to dinner"...so saith my mother who'd be getting dressed for it after her long tiring afternoon of playing away some Mozart, Bach and so forth on either her piano or on her organ in our living room still attired in her dressing gown and robe. My northern friends thought it a riot to see her like that if we popped into my house on school-day afternoons in the farmhouse my parents were busily restoring whenever the renovation-mood hit my mother but in my Deep South vernacular, well, this was just er, normal. Didn't every one's mothers lounge around like that? My late mother did "do real estate and estate sales consulting" for a few years while I was in high school and thus was up fairly early and dressed for work but that wasn't a chapter in her adult life which lasted for very long. It was like playing-at-normal before once again going Deep-South-Faulkneresque as the true roots of her upbringing pulled her back into the Spanish Moss shaded depths of what it means for born-Southerners to live-under-the-Live-Oaks.... but anyway.... I'm digressing a bit, and so....back to the food tales storytelling.

It was about 3 years after James and I had married that on one of our trips up to Wisconsin to see my parents before Dad retired and they moved back South, my mother attempted to cook a meal for us. Now, my James is from a family where everyone loooooves to create in the kitchen and is appropriately talented as such with the most lovely of culinary cuisine outcomes. He's from a long line of Preppies who are Culinary: rare but true. They do exist but much like Preppies who will Buy and Wear Chanel couture, they're exceptions to the general rules within the basic parameters of Preppyhood. And so, James soldiered-on through this big-deal-meal in my parent's dining room that evening and started to sincerely understand why, for his wife Lachlan, while I truly enjoy fine food and delicious meals, I'm just not really drawn to food, meals, wine, wandering around in the grocers and such as he is..........

If such a thing as a perfectly-pitched plated meal IS placed right in front of me, I sooo enjoy it of course but if not, I'm perfectly fine with weeks and weeks of simple salads, cheese toast and soups, cheese slice sandwiches or what I like to "make" most: a turkey or chicken wrap with lotsa' fresh veggies and lettuce in it n' a tad of mayo or Ranch dressing- yum.

In the midst of alla' this, I do have an occasional sweet tooth that pops up every now and then and if I let myself, I'd err a bit in the potent sweet forms of petite fours, cup cakes, beignettes and thick-slab slices of chocolate cake! And that wouldn't be healthy or wise or keep me fitting into the fashions I love so... I've learned how to deal with this: keep a pint of Haagen-Dazs super chocolate ice cream like the one pictured above in my freezer. I am not a huge ice cream eater and so this pint will last me a good month and take-care-of the occasional chocolate craving that has me eating just one spoonful of this late at night and being satisfied.

Preppies like Haagen-Dazs, oh yes! It came onto the better-ice cream-scene long before Ben and Jerry's and doesn't have that we're so righteous saving the world superiority which can get harder to swallow than the Chunkey Monkey's fudge chunks and bits of walnuts. I'm all for giving back, making right, doing what we can and alla' that but heck, sometimes just sometimes I want to indulge in pure sweet tooth decadence without being reminded of my civic n' global duty.

That being said....sometime later this evening you'll know where I'll be....over here at the cottage with that Chocolate Chocolate Chip pint in-hand and a spoon perched to dig out a delicious bit of it! And that would be the most exciting moment of this Preppy's "foodie moment" this weekend and why....I don't think there will ever be something like Pink and Green in the Kitchen showing up in new programming for the Food Network any time soon ;)