The Gorko Gazette

AN AUTHORITATIVE GUIDE BY LITTLE DAVID GREENER

How many times, sitting down to a standard vegetable/grease/starch/protein dinner prepared by Mother, has the obvious and horrifyingly avoidable mistake been committed: two foods that SHOULD NOT TOUCH have been disgracefully, sloppily juxtaposed on your plate? Here is a brief guide not so much for Peoria area children, most of whom are already in the know, but for their parents and guardians, to WHICH FOODS MUST NEVER TOUCH, taken from Little David Greener’s authoritative monograph What Your Meat Toucheth, That Be Ye (1986, Flounder & Porkskin).

All opinions are Little David Greener’s.

GREEN ALERT: WHICH FOODS MAY NEARLY ALWAYS TOUCH

According to Little David’s first chapter, ‘Green Alert’, food of like food groups may almost always touch without leading to queasiness, gagging, or outright regurgitation. For example, steamed frozen asparagus and carrots may touch a fresh green salad, not that The Gorko in any way recommends parents to serve this to their babies, and in the same manner there is absolutely no restriction on pork and beef, for example, cuddling up.

YELLOW ALERT: ENTERING THE SPILL ZONE

The bread and mashed potatoes question, for example, is one that has been the center of much debate since the 1950s. Local child reporter and sleuth Nadira made the declaration in Issue 32 of The Nadira Nose that, ‘Mashed potatoes and bread or buns, while pertaining to the same part of the traditional Food Triangle, may easily be compromised by the addition of melted butter or gravy. Under no circumstances, even should the juxtaposition of gravied potatoes be permitted to bread, should any gravy be INTENTIONALLY scooped onto or applied to a bread item. This should automatically trigger most home dining alarm systems’ (April 2023).

Confirms Little David Greener on Page 186 of his guide, ‘There must be no cleaning of plates with pieces of bread or bun. This activity goes in flagrant defiance of the Code of Touching,’ which states that foods must never be swirled together, piled on top of each other, or mixed (Greener, Appendix A).

RED ALERT: WHEN FOODS THAT MUST NOT TOUCH GO A-COURTIN’

Sometimes through gross negligence or intentional malevolence, or in wartime, claims Little David Greener, foods that must not touch simply end up touching. This of course can be avoided from the beginning by taking time to memorize the Greener Plate Schemata, in which are detailed different options for presenting four-food plates in which nothing touches that must not.

‘Of course sectioned plates for all occasions is what we have always championed at the Greener household,’ writes Little David, ‘but unfortunately Mommy insists on using the good china whenever there are guests, and that nearly always leads to red alerts being sounded.’

The most common plate combos to avoid, according to Little David, ‘and this is not a complete list, just some quick rules of thumb to keep things from getting completely out of hand, are: hot sauces and salads, hot sauces and pasta, tomato sauces and meat, meat and cream sauces. Just try to maintain a 2-cm division between all the foods on the plate and no one really will have any need to sound an alert.’

For more wisdom by children, check out the complete guide, available anywhere you can find books about foods that must not touch!

Image generated on Stable Diffusion

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