It wasn’t meant to be a competition it was meant to be lunch.

In fairness, by comparing my lunch to the one she served the week before, I don’t think my wife meant it to be a competition as much as a compare and contrast kind of deal.

Also in fairness, when looking at the two lunches there was plenty to compare and to contrast. What it was, I think, was one of those Mars and Venus things.

It was Saturday and I was out running errands when I started pondering what I wanted to do for lunch. By the way, I’m not much of a ponderer. Assuming ponderer is a word.

Now that I look at it, I’m thinking it’s not a word. So let me rephrase things here and say I’m not one to ponder much.

That, right there, is one benefit of being your own editor. If I were still working for a newspaper an editor would make me cut out the paragraph where I wondered if ponderer was a word. But since I’m my own editor I just left it the way it was. I mean, life’s too short, right?

Now then, where was I?

Oh right, I was pondering what I wanted to do about lunch last Saturday. After pondering a minute I decided rather than stopping somewhere to pick something up I would just make do with what we had at home.

So, when I got home, I opened the refrigerator, grabbed some cheeses, Italian salami, and mustards and then I opened the pantry and took out some crackers.

I then sliced the cheeses, peeled off some salami and tossed them on a plate. I then added some chips, crackers, and mustards and just like that, I had a plate of food perfect to snack on while I watched a baseball game and sipped a glass of wine.

I should point out that I usually don’t sip wine while I watch baseball but it was Saturday afternoon and I decided to try watching baseball like they do in Europe. But in Europe, I think they call baseball football.

I think.

I should also point out that because I’m nothing but a kind and generous person I made sure to lay out enough food so my wife would be able to snack while she watched whatever cooking or decorating show she was watching.

The reason I should point that out is because my kind and generous nature is what turned my lunch into a compare and contrast event.

What happened was my wife came into the kitchen, saw my plate of food, and started laughing. Since I long ago got used to women walking into the same room I was in and laughing I didn’t even wonder what my wife was laughing about. I just assumed it had something to do with me.

“What?” I said.

“Your charcuterie board,” my wife said.

“My what?” I said.

“Your charcuterie board. It’s pathetic,” my wife said.

“Oh, OK,” I said and sat down to watch baseball.

See, I really didn’t care if my wife thought my charcuterie board was pathetic. The reason I didn’t care was because I wasn’t trying to make a charcuterie board. I was trying to make lunch. I was trying to make a plate of stuff we could snack on and I thought I did just that.

What I didn’t think about was what it looked like.

See, that’s the difference between my wife and me. She cares what things look like and I don’t.

Sort of makes you wonder why my wife agreed to marry me, doesn’t it?

I wrote about my wife’s love of charcuterie boards sometime last year. For many years my wife would occasionally lay out some food onto a plate and we would snack on that food. For all of those many years we never referred to the plate of food as a charcuterie board. We just called it a plate of food.

But then my wife found out about charcuterie boards and became obsessed with them. Sometimes my wife will even sketch out her charcuterie board on paper before she actually makes them.

That’s right. My wife sketches out her food plans.

That my friends is an obsession.

My wife thought the contrast between our two charcuterie boards was so funny she took a picture of mine and posted it on her Facebook page along with a picture of the charcuterie board she made the week before. Here are those pictures.

See if you can guess which one’s mine.

But keep in mind.

It’s not a competition.

Oh, and the wine was very good.