This is what occurs when I have conversations with Jes

The other day I was talking to Jes and she was sharing with me her love for Vietnamese food as well as Indian food. She then stated that if she could she would open her own restaurant and it would be called "A Multicultural Experience Everytime You Walk In The Door" or AMEEYWITD – if you can figure out how to pronounce it. And she would decorate the restaurant multiculturally beginning with a Kleenex box that had children of the world dressed in local garb.

As she shared this little nugget of Jessicaism with me I had many different thoughts run through my mind. I will share them with you now.

#1
This made me think of when I lived with Jes and made her traipse around to multiple fast food sites with me to make the perfect meal. Jes liked Taco Bueno (I think) Taco Bell and I liked New York Sub sandwiches (turkey, cheese, and mustard only please – yes I know I eat like a four year old and I am secure in that), French fries from McDonalds, and a drink from Sonic (Dr. Pepper with the crunchy ice, oh how I love the crunchy ice). So if we were on a dinner run we would make FOUR stops for us two girls, three of these stops being on my behalf. Jes recommended to me that I open my own fast food restaurant that served all the specific things that I like. I would call it, “Appeasing Jes who has is forced to turn a 15 minute food run into a 45 minute experience on my behalf” or AJWHTTA15MFRIA45ME.

#2
This also, for some reason, made me think of the time that I lived with Jes (the first time) and we had a rather large Valentine’s dinner party at our house. There were five of us living together in this great old historic house and we all worked with the youth group at our church. We planned and planned like perfect hostesses to have a fantastic dinner party and invite all or friends (I think we ended up with about 25 40 people(I was originally going to guess 50 people but I thought I might be exaggerating a bit, obviously I was wrong). In all our planning we forgot to get salt and pepper. Our idea was to be fancy and have little bowls of salt and pepper on each table. So it was up to Jes and her room-sharing roomie Taryn to go get some salt and pepper while the rest of us held down the fort of massive cooking. I remember distinctly noticing that Jes and Taryn had been gone for much longer than the 15 minutes it would take to drive the mile and a half to the store and then return. After a LONG time they finally returned and produced from their pockets handfuls and handfuls of little salt and pepper packets. The ever resourceful Jes and Taryn had decided to raid every fast food restaurant up and down the main road so that they wouldn’t have to buy salt and pepper. Thinking back, I would have paid money to watch them go into fast food joints walk up to the condiment counter and without drawing attention to themselves stuff their pockets with salt and pepper. Knowing Jes, this became a secret mission that she exacted with skill and cat-like reflexes. The best part was that even with Jes and Taryn’s thrifty thinking skills they had failed to realize that they would have to rip open every little packet to fill our large number of individual bowls. I will just say that I did have a tiny bit of joy watching them grouse as they quickly became frustrated by all the little packets.

#3
As Jes listed off her culinary interest in multicultural food I realized that I was only exposed to Vietnamese food by eating with Jes and will sometime in the future be exposed to Indian food again on the behalf of Jes. As I mentioned before my food tastes tend to stay in the four year old range. In fact as a kid I was a huge nightmare for my parents because I’m pretty sure I was the pickiest eater in the world. (Well that might be an exaggeration because one of my friend’s sons will only eat nachos and pizza – I wasn’t that bad). I just always had this issue with how food looks and smells. If it anyway appears a bit “weird” then I have already decided it must taste horrible. The ironic part of all of this is that I am Cajun and we eat weird food to begin with. I also grew up pretty much on the Gulf of Mexico coast and have eaten seafood since I was a little tike. If it comes from the ocean I will eat it. I will say that my food tastes have widened quite a bit since I’ve grown up and I’m pretty open to most things now (I still like my plain sandwiches and hamburgers though thank you very much). And I still love all the fun seafood and Cajun food that my family gets to eat on holidays and get-together. Although I could never get behind boudin (a rice and pork mix that looks like sausage or is deep fried in little balls). So I guess I still have some hang ups.

#4
And as Jes described her multicultural Kleenex box I was reminded of our second grade program as school. We did a production of Christmas around the world. The elementary school I went to for K, 1st, and 2nd grade was VERY multicultural. In fact I think I was the only pale skin blued eyed blonde girl in my class. This of course set me up perfectly to be the little Swedish girl. My grandmother sewed my costume and my mother did my makeup. I remember that I wore blue eye shadow and thought that I looked very grown up. Now I think I might have looked a bit like a Swedish hooker but that was the 80’s and lots of blue eye shadow was in.



This post was in honor of Jes, who has the ability to make me laugh at all times AND may be the bestest most randomest girl I’ve ever met.