I was a bit different as a kid. I mean compared to other of my peers. I didn’t sneak sweets. I actually ate only meat, fruit and even some vegetables. I know that the parents reading this are thinking that they wish their offspring could be more like me. My preferences might have been tied to the reality that my mother kept me on baby foods until I was twenty-eight. In retrospect, I realize that none of the [major babyinfant] food companies pour a pureed slice of a brownie into a glass jar.
I also ate very little candy. On Halloween, I would come home from trick or treat, and my mother and I would sit on the floor sorting my take for the evening. 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. Immediately after sorting, that pile went straight into our garbage can. My mother was sure that Mrs. Robertson let her eighty four cats walk all over the counters in her kitchen at will. My mother knew this because Mrs. Robertson’s sister-in-law had told her this (both the number of cats and the freedom that those felines were given.) The pile next to the toxic contributions of Mrs. Robertson was made up of any apples and small boxes of raisins that I had been given. The apples were always provided by the two dentists who lived in our neighborhood. That was the pile I ended the night consuming. I was never too sure what happened to the third pile, the one that had candy of every sort imaginable and popcorn balls. My mother spirited those off to my parents bedroom, and I never saw them again. 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.)
In defense of my mother, I believe that this sort of behavior is taught in the top secret motherhood school. 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. Actually, I now know that the word gourmet is rarely applied to anything that comes from the discount grocery store in an ugly box with a small cellophane peep hold. The cheesecake turned out to be mostly chemicals–delicious chemicals. 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.
Later in life, as I belatedly went through my experimental wild years, I learned that cheesecake could taste much less like cardboard than my first sample. (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 reason for living! 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 slice of turtle cheesecake. Don’t allow this news to leak to my mother, though; she’ll just take it to her bedroom.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the foggiest notion of how to go about actually making a cheesecake. If you have a recipe for one that doesn’t involve using either a mixer or an oven, please let me know. I can operate a blender, though, since I took notes while my mother prepared the Christmas ham 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.
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