The dinner was great, and I would have been happy to leave it at that, until my hosts mentioned that there was pie for dessert. Ordinarily I don’t even think about dessert, but the possibility of a warm piece of cherry or blueberry pie piqued my interest.
“What kind?” I asked
“RrrrhhUUU-barb!” the husband announced ceremoniously.
That was his last word. I don’t often kill people over dinner, but a man can only take so much.
I would like to understand the workings of a mind that thinks of making a pie for dessert, and follows that thought with “I’ll put rhubarb in it.” No, I wouldn’t. No doubt there’s some kind of mutant gene at work, which means that, arguably, free will was not a factor in this case. Still, legal fault can exist without moral blame; and, in any event, we can’t have people like that hanging around.
At a restaurant recently, I noticed a reference to the “chowder of the day.” I asked the waiter what the chowder was that day, and he said, “Corn.” Talk about a non sequitur.
“Uh, no, I was asking about the chowder,” I explained.
“Yes, it’s corn chowder,” he said.
We were not connecting. “Well, what kind of seafood is in it?” I asked.
“Oh, there’s no seafood,” he said—”it’s corn chowder.”
I’m not sure why I should have to explain this, but I will. My dictionary defines chowder as “a soup or stew of seafood (as clams or mussels) usu. made with milk or tomatoes, salt pork, onions, and other vegetables (as potatoes).” (Emphasis added.) And although my dictionary is not perfect, it got this one right. (Aside: Salt pork? I didn’t know that.)
Now, here is the crucial point. Corn is not a type of seafood. Corn is not a clam, or a mussel, or a fish. Corn is a vegetable. It comes from Nebraska. If your chowder has corn in it instead of seafood, I have news for you: it’s not chowder. It’s corn soup.
So when I ask you what’s in the chowder, please don’t say corn. You might as well tell me there’s rhubarb in my pie—and we know how that will end.
Every so often, some apparently well-meaning soul offers me some banana bread. This isn’t in the same category of offense as, say, rhubarb pie, but still. Bread is made from wheat, or rye, or some other grain; it is not made from bananas.
Besides, I’m on to the whole banana bread scam. Your bananas go rotten, so you figure you’ll get some extra mileage out of them by mashing them up and calling the product “bread,” which you will then—and here’s the treachery—try to palm off on some else. Have you ever noticed that no one eats banana bread at home? Instead, it is inevitably brought in to the workplace and left on a table with a “help yourself” sign stuck in it. What the sign really ought to say is, “I didn’t want to stink up my trash with rotten bananas, so I decided to feed them to my co-workers.” Nice.
Yes, I know what you’re wondering. Isn’t the phrase “pawn off”? No. “Palm off.” Look it up.
Now. Can I assume we don’t even have to talk about zucchini bread?
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Breaking news: Just today, at the Concord Co-op—the Co-op!—I saw something I’d never seen before (and hope never to see again): chocolate tortilla chips.
Listen, people. Depending on whom you believe, humans have existed for between two million and, um, six thousand years. Either way, it’s a lot of time. Not surprisingly, then, all the good food combinations were identified long ago. We don’t need any new ideas. If you think chocolate tortilla chips sound like something you ought to try, I’m afraid you’ve outlived your usefulness.
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Which brings us to carrot cake. Okay, here’s the deal. There are carrots, and there is cake. One is a vegetable, and the other is an anti-vegetable. They should never appear on the same table at the same time. Carrot is to cake as pumpkin spice is to coffee, or as chocolate is to tortilla chips.
Carrots serve a purpose. They have a decent amount of fiber and vitamin C, are low in calories, and are teeming with vitamin A. They’re good for your heart and your eyes, and they even taste pretty good. It’s hard to believe they’re a root vegetable. But no normal person would eat them for dessert.
Cake, which is made of flour, sugar, and chocolate, serves a different purpose. It is bad for you in ways too numerous to count. It makes you fat, sluggish, and sick; but God, it tastes good.
And that’s the point. Cake is decadent. You want good health, eat carrots. You want instant gratification, eat cake. You make your choices, and you live with the consequences.
Oh, but no. Some people think they can have it all. I can hear the early proponents of carrot cake squealing with delight, “It’s a healthy dessert!” (Not even getting the adjective right. Try “healthful.”) “And yummy, too!” Woof. I’m going to make myself sick here.
Look. Here’s what happens when you put carrots in a cake: you ruin the cake, and you still get fat. Why would you do that?
So if you’re going to offer me dessert, let me suggest that you set aside any harebrained ideas and serve me something filled with chocolate or fruit. We’ll all be happier, and you may just live to make another loaf of banana bread.
