I was a bit different as a kid. I mean compared to other of my peers. You see, I actually liked some vegetables better than sweets. I suspect that many of you mothers and fathers might be wishing that you had a perfect child like me. My preferences might have been tied to the reality that my mother kept me on baby foods until I was twenty-eight. As I reconsider it, the people at Gerber didn’t produce a pureed version of German chocolate cake.
I also ate very little candy. After I would come home from trick or treating every Halloween night, my mother would make me dump my goodies on the floor, where we would both seat ourselves, cross-legged. We would sort my collection into three piles. I didn’t really get to assign anything to a particular pile; I was mostly an observer in the annual ritual. In one pile would go the things Mrs. Robertson made. Those went straight into the garbage, because Mom was sure that Mrs. Robertson let her fourteen cats walk all over the kitchen counters. The second pile contained a couple of apples and a small box of raisins. That pile was mine. I was never too sure what happened to the third pile, the one that had candy of every sort imaginable and popcorn balls. As soon as the sorting was finished, my mom hastily took those into my parent’s bedroom. They never again appeared. The only time I ever was allowed to have candy was when I visited one pair of grandparents. (My other grandparents just read me Bible verses all day, and convince me that God was not particularly enthusiastic about any behavior of a typical child.)
I subsequently learned not to blame my mother for my almost sugarless upbringing. I now know that somewhere there is a hidden school for mothers where they learn to protect their children from all things with a pleasurable flavor. I know this because my wife exhibited the same behavior with our son on Halloween that my mother employed. That was typically followed by a couple weeks of repeated, “Do I look fat to you?” It didn’t take me long to realize that such a question demands a very rapid response; one should not even pause for a breath.
When I became a full fledged adult at the magical age of twenty-nine, I began to learn that applesauce, vegetables and meat in their natrual form do not really have the same texture. I also discovered the wonders of dessert in the wonderful form of a gourmet cheesecake. Well, I guess it really wasn’t gourmet. It came from a discount food warehouse, in a flimsy box with a cellophane peep hole that revealed the only attractive portion of the product. Remember that my taste buds had been accustomed to the miracle recipes of the baby food makers. To me, the cheesecake was the definition of heaven.
Some years later, as I went through my gastronomical adolescence, my recreational use of foods helped me to realize that cheesecake didn’t really taste like cardboard, as my first experience had led me to believe. (Please don’t ask why I know how cardboard tastes.) In addition, I discovered that cheesecake, the wonder food, actually comes in lots of different flavors.
Dessert is now my favorite time of day. The best way to top off a well balanced meal of two jars of meat, three jars of thoroughly squashed squash and a banana is with a turtle cheesecake. Don’t allow this news to leak to my mother, though; she’ll just take it to her bedroom.
The saddest part of this story is that I don’t even know how to make a cheesecake. Please tell me if you have a good recipe. Make sure that your recipe doesn’t require using either an oven or a whisk. I do know how to use a blender, though, because I watched my mom prepare the Thanksgiving turkey one year.
Author’s Remarks: It’s possible I may have exaggerated just a bit here and there, but don’t mention it to my mom. She doesn’t have a computer and thinks the Internet is a type of support stocking. I don’t have to worry about her actually reading this.
