Easy Guide to Food And Drinks

I grew up a bit differently from most kids.  I preferred meat, fruit and even some vegetables to desserts.  I know that might sound a bit strange to most parents.  My preferences might have been related to the fact that my mother fed me 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 fudge brownie into a small glass jar.

My candy consumption was also limited.  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 them into three piles.  Into one of those piles would go everything that was made by the generous Mrs. Robertson.  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 only tried to give me buttermilk.  I resent cows to this day.)

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.

At twenty-nine, just as I was beginning to learn that meat, vegetables and applesauce do not have identical textures in their natural states, I discovered dessert in the 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.  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 do know how to use a blender, though, because I watched my mom prepare the Thanksgiving turkey one year.

Author’s addendum:  I may have taken some creative liberties with slight exaggerations here and there, but I’m not concerned about being caught.  My mother is still not sure what the Internet is.