I believe my native tongue is Synonym. I have this tremendous ability to find words that mean exactly what I want to say. It’s just one of those gifts that I have. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked “what’s another word for ______?” and been able to come up with a synonym on the spot.

As an ancillary trait, I have a very broad range of adjectives to describe people, places, and things. Especially food. I’ve had amazing meals. I’ve had stupendous appetizers. Terrific entrees. I’ve completed meals with epic desserts. On the other end of the spectrum I’ve had disgusting desserts, awful entrees, and gross appetizers. You get the idea, my descriptions of food follow a rollercoaster, from the depths of yucky to the heights of stunning. Seldom, if ever, will you hear me describe a food or meal as average or acceptable. Sure, those meals happen, but I can always find something to rave about from either a positive or negative perspective.

Frankly, my family gets tired of it. I know they do…they’ve told me. But my enthusiasm, as well as my expectations, for food don’t seem to change. I’m still ranting and raving about food after all these years. It’s not likely to stop. But there is one phrase that drives me crazy:

It’s fine.

Oh what I would give for that phrase to be banished from my family’s vocabulary. Especially my wife’s. You see, we’ve been married for 29 years, and I’ve been our family cook the entire time. It’s taken me 29 years to come to grips with the fact that it’s fine isn’t derogatory in any way. You see, my wife sorely lacks for food adjectives. Food is merely something to provide sustenance. It’s not to revel. Not an object to savor. You sit down, you eat, you finish. To her a meal is something you simply consume. She doesn’t see the point in pondering something that is (1) fleeting and (2) will be digested away in a short while. Food is just food to her. Meals aren’t an experience but rather a short respite in an otherwise busy day.

For years I would ask her how she liked whatever I had lavishly prepared. I would get the answer it’s fine and I would be devastated. Fine is the flatline of meals to me. It’s a way of expressing that the meal meets sustenance needs and nothing more. I would spend hours pondering how to improve my cooking. How to add flavor, texture, or improve the presentation. It never dawned on me that it’s fine meant exactly that. I would have killed to hear delicious or even gross from her. I would have loved to know that my time spent in the kitchen had impacted her in some way other than merely as a means to energy consumption.

When the kids came alone, we taught them to be polite and never say they hated anything. But every time we corrected them, a little bit of something inside me died. If they hated certain foods, then they also loved others. It was as if we were flattening the curve on both he bottom and the top. I dreaded the day that the kids would tell me the meal they’d just eaten was fine.

As the kids got older and began to help out in the kitchen, I taught them about flavors. I taught them about the different kinds of spices. We discussed aromatic spices at length and how they differed from savory spices. The kids smelled and tasted all the different ingredients as we prepared meals. They learned that the salsa you make today won’t be any good until the flavors had a chance to blend. They learned that it could take days for that transformation that turned the mixture from tomato goop into delicious salsa. They learned how to marinate to infuse flavor. They learned the art of slow cooking to imbue smokiness into ribs or chicken. Each day was an adventure, and the adjectives of food slowly entered their vocabulary. I thought I’d won, teaching my kids the adjectives related to food.

Yet things took a disappointing turn during our dinner the other night. I made bierocks and was quite pleased with their outcome. If you’re not familiar with bierocks, they are a dough filled wth a ground beef and cabbage mixture then baked to perfection. Honestly, I haven’t made bierocks in a while, so I was curious what everybody thought of them. When I asked “How do you like the bierocks”, my wife answer “It’s fine”.

I almost died as the kids followed suit. To me they were saying average, mediocre, just barely sustenance. My sense of disappointment was enormous.

When I asked for clarification I was told that my rollercoaster of adjectives wasn’t necessary. In the family’s opinion bierocks were to be somewhat without flavor, just meat and bread. Nothing more, nothing less. These met that requirement, so they were fine.

Obviously, if I’m writing a post about it, the idea of it’s fine is really bothering me. Even though I should be able to accept that just fine is acceptable to everyone else, it’s really hard for me to see that description as a reasonable way to describe anything, especially food. In the back of my mind I’m wondering if I would rather have had them hate the bierocks, or called them gross to that alternative of fine.

But don’t worry about me. I’ll get over it. For 29 years I’ve fought this battle, and I’m not giving up yet. I’ll be fine!