It's a caution, ain't it. Nobody in my family will eat food I buy, much less will they touch food I prepare, "fix" is our Southern word; if Papa fixed it, ain't no way.
"Oh no, I've had gracious plenty, but thank you. You enjoy it, though."
Friends sent us home with leftover baked shrimp dip, so good, so good in fact that I didn't want it to "give out" so I added crabmeat: now nobody but me will eat it because Mr Papa has fooled with it. Fine by me, nomesane?
Anything about bananas steals my heart: I bought a carton of something new to me: banana milk. That Papa picked it out makes it too suspect to taste, so I'll be drinking the whole carton myself. Of course, as the first ingredient is water, it's too thin, the color is right but the product is too thin, so add milk, but I get enough banana taste and feel that it's a success for once only.
Wine, a friend put me on to a Zinfandel at Sam's Club that's a tasty bargain at about $7 a bottle. Sam's own brand name on the label. But Papa bought it, so tasting it is out of the question.
It may all go back to the oyster dressing that I grew up knowing as the tastiest dish of the Autumn Feast, and that I now bake myself. As it's Papa's strange concoction, no one touches it but me.
When we lived in Apalachicola years ago, I had a large pot of soup that over the weeks grew thick like a stew as I added things to it. It had a life of its own, so I called it Living Stew. After two or three days nobody would eat it but me.
This has been a topic here before, and recently: in 'The Silver Chair' of C S Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, Puddleglum the Marshwiggle suggesting to Jill and Eustace that food for Wiggles is poison for humans. I think that's how my loved ones view my kitchen productions.
It's not always been so. Years ago, Navy days when we lived in Columbus, Ohio, weekends we watched Julia Childs on her weekly television show "The French Chef" and I learned how to make omelets her way. Very thin and crepey, maybe with a sprinkle of shredded cheese before folding it over. Or chopped onion, or broken up bacon, or maybe bits of ham. One egg omelets worked out very thin by continuously swirling the egg in the pan over the stove heat, add shredded cheddar cheese, fold over and roll out onto the plate. I liked catsup or Heinz chili sauce on mine. Made those for Sunday supper for our little family for ages. Somehow the Papa Stigma had not yet attached to my cooking. Linda will eat a steak that I grill, but that's it.
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Why down that route? Because what's on mind is especially the war in the MiddleEast. Trying to mind my years-long sympathy with displaced Palestinians and their bullying treatment by the state of Israel, all that coming face to face with the Hamas Palestinian attack into Israel that so dehumanized Hamas that my sympathy with that cause evaporated. Coming to know, see, that Mark 9:1 word again, "idosin" from "horaw: see, perceive, realize, that when all is said and done, I know nothing. It isn't some sort of Humility for Dummies, it's just plain that I don't know a damn thing. Seek The Truth, Come Whence It May, Cost What It Will, and I wasn't even seeking it, I just stumbled on it. I don't know enough to have an opinion except that my analogy that humans are no different from ants: we kill anything and anybody from the next ant hill, anybody that's different from us.
Just so, the problem in America: a specific class of Whites terrified of losing their place at the bottom of the barrel to Blacks and Browns, is the social political demographic situs, sitz im leben.
Saturday, enough before I ramble on about the antisemitism demonstrations on college campuses by know-nothings who are sincere in their certainties.
T
