Roll-Ups

Have you ever had a friend concoct some really bizarre snack, said that it's really good and told you to try it. You wince, staring at the unappetizing food in front of you and in an attempt not to be rude, or a fit of hunger, decide to at least try a bite. Then your taste buds jump out of their seats, delighted with whatever the heck it is that you're eating. Then you eat the whole plate and feel slightly guilty for ever doubting your friend...yeah, so if that hasn't happened to you it has certainly happened to me.

One of my favorite weird snacks a friend showed me is a turkey cream cheese wrap, called the turkey cream cheese wrap, for lack of a more original name. You take a tortilla and spread cream cheese on it, about as thick as you would spread peanut butter on a PB&J sandwich. Then, you take a couple slices of deli turkey and lay them flat over the layer of cream cheese, making sure most of it is covered. Then you roll it up. I usually cut it into bite-size slices, which can sometimes be difficult because the cream cheese slides around and it unrolls a little if you haven't wrapped it up tight enough. But that's beside the point. I like this snack so much that I've started showing it to some of my other friends.

Occasionally, they don't believe me when I say that it's really good so I'll tell them that another friend showed it to me. This way they know that I'm not that alone in liking it...it sometimes gets them to change their mind about trying it. However, the rare times that I don't have to resort to telling people that a friend showed me the recipe I sometimes feel like I'm plagiarizing. I know, it sounds silly, plagiarizing a snack, but, it's still the whole idea of taking someone else's idea and claiming it as your own, right? I know this situation is a little different because I can't get into legal trouble for telling other people to try cream cheese, turkey roll-ups, but I still sometimes feel like I'm taking credit for some one else's genius snack ideas...

Presentation is Key

When you're writing a letter to your best friend, to your boss, sending a text message to your cousin or writing a research paper, you use a different tone of voice in each one. Your science teacher would most likely not appreciate you using slang to talk about how osmosis occurs. Voice, tone, and the presentation of your thoughts completely change the feeling of your writing. Turning in a coffee ring covered, crumpled, hand written hard copy of a five page analytical paper using language you'd use to describe last night's party to your best friend is like going to a nice restaurant and receiving a plate of over cooked pasta with red sauce on a styrofoam plate.

Pasta can be served in so many different ways, some classy, others not so much. The way that it's presented changes the feel of the entree. It seems like when you eat out at a fancy restaurant and order pasta it's one of the most elegant meals you've ever eaten. Reading the name of the Italian dish to the waiter, the uniquely shaped, white, shiny plate and the freshly cracked pepper make eating pasta a whole new experience. When you make pasta at home it's not the same. You have to make sure the noodles are cooked correctly, that they don't annoyingly stick together, and the sauce is the right temperature. Your plates and utensils seem boring compared to the ornate one's from the restaurant, but in the end it is just pasta. Maybe they use a different brand or freshly made noodles with some random type of sauce or meat that you don't usually buy in the store. Despite these differences, pasta is pasta. In terms of writing, words are words; it's just a matter of which words are chosen and how they are strung together to represent your thoughts.

I have a sister who is vegetarian, so my family has started eating veggie products so that we don't have to make two different meals every time the family eats together. So, my Dad has taken to making an original, vegetarian pasta sauce. We mix together a jar of red sauce, a box of this 'meat' crumble that's made out of veggie product, and a packet of pre-made herbs and spices that's supposed to be made with taco meat. When the pasta's almost done, you heat up the sauce in a sauce pan and it tastes pretty good. I love the taco flavoring; although, I my San Diegan taste buds might be biased...