Talking About My (De)Generation

There are a lot of us on Medicare right now, with more to come. I've been dubious about this blessing from the very onset but was persuaded to sign up for Plan B and then for the insurance company that would administrate this for me. Every month I pay $104 and every month I continue to bask in rude health--but, as friends pointed out, this could change at any time. Prudence demanded that I make that payment and for once in my life, I decided to be prudent.

By mid-September I will have paid $1000 for unused medical benefits, so recently I decided it would be a fine idea to have a checkup done, my first in thirteen years. It was basic to the nth degree, weight, eye chart, breast exam, Pap smear, a couple of immunizations, and cholesterol and colon lab work.

This basic examination would have cost $728--were it not for the Medicare discount, which brought the exam total to $329.49, which was paid by Medicare. What wasn't covered was a vaccine for tetanus, diptheria, and pertussis, which clocked in at $86, to be paid by me. Fortunately the $137 pneumonia vaccine was covered, which I appreciate but find illogical--why one and not the other?

Then there is the lab work. A $95 analysis (brought down to $19.06 by the Medicare discount) was covered. Another, sent to another lab and billed at an undiscounted rate of $140, was not. This brings the total cost of my basic checkup to $226, a mere $103.49 less than my entire (discounted) checkup.

Feeling curious, I went to the website of the hospital I very occasionally went to when I lived in Bangkok. This is what I would receive for $248 at Paolo Memorial
http://paolohealthcare.com/eng/index.php/package-promotion/138-health-check-up-program
It includes a vision exam by an opthamologist, which in this country I have to make a separate visit to obtain.

For $21 more than what I will pay for a lab test and a vaccine here, I would be given a comprehensive exam in Bangkok.

Since my health is exemplary, according to this recent checkup, I'm so tempted to tell Medicare to take me off their stupid Plan B and then put that money aside for an annual air ticket. That $1200 would get me to Bangkok and back--and pay for my physical, perhaps even a spot of dentistry. This is absurd and I resent supporting this idiocy any longer.

Some Do and Some Don't (You Never Can Tell with Bees)

My mother's attitude toward cooking could best be described as tepid and when I married, I felt much the same way. My father-in-law owned a roadside restaurant and my husband and I ate there most of the time when we began our life together. When we moved away from this refuge, TunaHelper became my best friend. Then I had a baby and found there were huge amounts of my time at home that stretched before me like the Gobi Desert. I started to read recipes in magazines, and then cookbooks. I discovered I could make things that I'd never dreamed of eating--exotic delicacies like eggs foo yung and beef stew with red wine.

As the seventies progressed, so did the cookbooks,and the minute I discovered Elizabeth David, there was no turning back. One year we bought half a pig and every damned bit of it was served up in the style of the French provinces.

Cooking was the least irksome domestic duty and I immersed myself in it. When my kids grew up, I cooked dinner for friends; after my first three months in Thailand, I came back to the U.S. and found a Thai cookbook and made wild forays into that cuisine with enthusiasm and very little skill.

Then I went back to Thailand for two years, during which time I never cooked a damned thing--ever. I made coffee in the morning and that was it. On the streets were hundreds of people who cooked for me, and in the nine years total that I spent in that country, I learned not to cook.

This is not a skill that translates well in the States.

At heart I suppose I was never a cook or I couldn't have relinquished the task so thoroughly. I've been back from Thailand for three years and the only food I ever cook edibly is Thai. When I don't make that effort, I roast chickens and chunks of pork. or I buy a quart of plain yogurt and eat it, or when tomatoes finally smell the way they should, I eat them. But as far as combining these things into a creative little mixture, forget it. That means cooking and I don't do that anymore.

It's too much effort and too much money for too little pleasure. It's boring--both making the food and consuming it. And face it, a tomato tastes best when  in the peak of summer it's eaten like the fruit it is, uncooked with a sprinkling of salt.

Much of my aversion to practicing culinary arts in this country is most of the food is eaten out of season and very little of it is fresh. The worst thing to happen to food was refrigeration. In countries where that's uncommon, food has to be fresh. And that's a terrible thing to become accustomed to, because when you're back in the land of freezers and refrigerators, you don't want to eat.

It's summer in Seattle and I understand the farmer's markets have fruit and vegetables that haven't been shipped for thousands of miles in a reefer van. There's a butcher shop down the street that has unfrozen meat that is displayed like offerings from Tiffany and cost only marginally less. It's the time to eat, I suppose--if I can afford to pay those premium prices for food that tastes good--food that stands on its own without ruffles and flourishes and with the barest minimum of preparation.

Or I can move back to the nation of good cooks and let them do it all for me...