Statistical eating

I have been so busy that I missed my blog-iversary. Yes, Saturday, my blog turned one. It has been a good time to be busy because there is nothing to read on the blogosphere. What is everybody doing that they can't keep my 15 minutes-to-waste filled with interesting things to read?

So, I will post about all I have learned about blogging later, when I have more time, but I thought for now, I will share something I wrote last week.


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One night, I am eating dinner a little late because I was writing. My husband had already eaten, but was accompanying me at the table. It was spaghetti and I had heated up some corn because I am weird and that is one of my all-time favorite combinations. I was happily chewing (and talking with my mouth full—how rude!) and I kept coming across little pieces of the cob on the bottoms of the corn kernels. It was a little like chewing straw so I took it out and put it on the edge of my plate (oh shoosh, it's not like I was in a five-star French restaurant).

A few minutes later, hubs points to it and says: “You do that a lot, why don’t you just eat it?”

I told him that it was inedible. He says: “You do that with oranges too, peeling off all the white stuff” (he looks at me like I am so neurotic). I kindly offer that if he doesn’t want to waste the corn cob, he could eat it, and I hold it out to him. He says: “You know me, I’ll eat it.”

Yes, I know, he will.

So I turn it around and say: “Yeah, what is up with that? You talk like I am some neurotic eater, but you eat the entire apple—core and all. I don’t know why you even bother to peel your bananas or oranges at all.”

When he eats something with bones, his prey looks like those fish bones that cats eat in the cartoons—where they put an entire fish in their mouth and pull out just the skeleton. When he eats a chicken leg, the bone is sucked clean—there are no ligaments, cartilage, gristle, nothing. It is impressive and a little nauseating.

Then I added, “But if we polled one hundred people I bet my eating habits would be closer to the norm than yours.

He says: “How many standard deviations away would you be?” (note: SD is the average distance from the average score)

Me: I would be pretty close to the mean (the average). YOU on the other hand, would be on one extreme… you’d probably be an outlier actually (one of those points far away from “normal”).

He is one of those people who will eat things, just so they don’t go to waste. I am all for not wasting, and I don’t think I am “a typical wasteful ‘American,’” but I have food standards. I try to use up what we have and to be conscious of waste etc. But I have limits. I generally don’t eat something past the expiration date. Most leftovers that have been in the fridge past about 5 days are questionable. (I know some people who won’t even go that long.) I’ll go up to a week with something like spaghetti sauce. He’ll eat meat from over a week ago or half-rotten grapes, just so we don’t throw them away. I understand that it probably won’t kill me, but I just can’t do it.

So where are you on the neurotic eating habits? How long are leftovers safe? Do you peel all the pith off of the orange? Will you eat something after the expiration date?

So let's poll my three readers: Are you more like me or are you more like my sweet freak of a husband?