PEARLS & AMBER

FEEDING DOLL CORN FLAKE WITH FORK

It's just I wonder if advertising people really give a rat's ass about reality.

Here's this heartfelt little picture on the back of an organic cereal box, extolling the simple beauty of child with doll.  She is so in love with the cereal, she's painstakingly feeding it to her doll...one flake at a time, the flake hooked onto the trine of a fork.

Well, everyone in the whole world knows that when a child picks up a fork to eat a flake of corn, it means she doesn't like the flake of corn.  It means she is bored with the flake of corn.  It means she'll do anything to look like she's actually intending to eat that flake of corn, to keep the heat off.

This little girl knows absolutely her doll hates the flake as much as she does.  But she's counting on the doll to remain silent.  She's counting on the doll to play along.  She's counting on this because she knows the doll knows if she doesn't there'll be hell to pay later.

What happens in the end is the flake of corn falls off that fork tine.  It falls onto the floor.  So little missy leans down to get it.  This movement causes the doll to knock into the bowl of cereal.  The bowl falls with a satisfying crash onto the floor.  Mutt the dog lunges to salvage the situation.  While Mommy signals to the photographer the game is up.

"She doesn't like the cereal," says Mom. 

The advertising people just hope they got a good shot.  Because it doesn't matter if the kid liked the cereal.  It just matters that someone like me buys the cereal.

I liked the cereal until I zeroed in on that shot.  Now caution lurks.  Because if that's the attention they pay to the decorations on the outside of the cereal box, then I have my doubts as to the contents within.

Ph.D IN SOCIAL SCIENCE OF FOOD

I never thought about getting a degree in Food when I was (morosely) considering college majors, way back, second half of last century (that would be 1968). 

Maybe there weren't degrees in Food?  I mean fun Food degrees.  Surely I would have noticed.  I do love food.

I guess there were serious Food degrees...but these I would definitely not have noticed.  Serious smacked of Science or Math degrees.  No more need be said on that matter.

Well, the latest Food degree, totally new and different and special and better than ever, and furthermore, the most comprehensive Food degree ever, gets its start this fall at the Indiana University in Bloomington...I  nearly wrote Bloomingdale's...I don't know...that word just seemed to want to slip out--

Never mind that--

I want to know why all the fun stuff like this degree is happening when it would so NOT be reasonable for me to drop my life and go back to school to pursue a degree, and not just any ole degree, but a Ph.D, mind you, in Food.  A Doctorate in the Social Science of Food.  These students will also be considered ' academic pioneers'.  The 'scope and breadth' of this program has never been done before--

I can't tell you how that pushes all my I WANT IT buttons.

They will be studying such interesting things as the history of chocolate, the diet of primates, what the study of bones and teeth reveal about ancient diets, the social and environmental causes of famine, followed by fair trade coffee, food and identity, cooking with herbs...I think I just made that one up.

"Hi, my name is Ruth and I am a Doctor of Food.  C'mon ask me, ask me anything about food and everything else, and I'll tell you."

  Maybe it's where I am in my life right now, but this seems like a perfectly sane, indeed soul-enhancing, way to spend the next five years of my life.

 

YOU HAD ME AT GOOEY

There's a new cookbook out called

STICKY, CHEWY, MESSY, GOOEY

I'm in love, and I can't stand it.  I gave up sugar for Lent. 

But lest that totally knock your socks off, it's really nothing.  I'm surrounded here in Southern California, by certifiable saints who've given up sugar forever.  Yes, that's right.  FOREVER.  "Oh, maybe a grape or something, now and then," they say, bliss emanating from their pure, sugar free faces.

What good is life without gooey, I want to know--

No wait.  I don't want to know.  I don't want to feel even remotely convinced that I too, Ruth Yunker, should give up gooey and sticky, FOREVER.

For Lent has been too much, and I won't do it again.

But in the meantime, there are recipes in this book that if I even ate the page they are printed on, I just know it'd be as good as the real thing....

No wait.  Maybe I'd just better cave in early, go quickly to the nearest grocery store, buy items such as heavy whipping cream, dark chocolate baking bars, vanilla beans, eggs, Irish butter, powdered sugar, brown sugar, white sugar, honey, apricots, pink dye?...no, not pink dye...oh, and baking soda and baking powder and gelatin and all those chemistry oriented baking ingredients-

Fire up the new oven--

And promise never to give up sugar again.

REAL HAMBURGERS

I am just about as sure as I can be that every single American I know, and just about every single American I don't know, will recognize what this concoction of food is.

A HAMBURGER.  Yes.  A good ole American hamburger.

Please note the bun. 

A bun is part of a hamburger.  So when one is speaking of eating a hamburger, one should be aware of the fact that eating the bun is part of the ritual of eating a hamburger.

A ritual which in many parts of the American population has lost favor as the perfect meal.  People like  vegetarians, those watching their weight, those who don't 'do red meat', those who have given up fun food for Lent...they no longer eat hamburgers.  These people are not the problem, however.

There are those who persist in saying, rubbing their hands with glee, at a restaurant, in my kitchen, or even, dare I say, at some roadside stand (Tommy's on Rampart and Vine or wherever, springs to mind) "I'll have a hamburger."  And then they say "But leave off the bun."

LEAVE OFF THE BUN?

Reading about some famous hairdresser's diet in Bazaar or Elle or Vogue or Glamour or Marie-Claire (I have to get a grip here--)this person said "Oh I have a hamburger for lunch, but I don't eat the bun."  Then even as I was clutching my heart, she said it again  "I leave off the bun of my hamburger."

Okay, the point I am making is you ARE NOT eating a hamburger if you leave off the bun, okay?  You are eating a meat pattie.  Yes.  A boring, flat, gray (because you are probably also the sort who is afraid of rare beef), ugly, meat pattie.

I know it's all about weight.  God, tell me about it.  Okay?  But I just want you out there who are trying to be one of the guys by ordering a hamburger, a calorie ridden hamburger, and then slyly pulling the meat pattie off the bun, and eating said meat...with a fork...stop kidding yourself.

You have not just eaten a hamburger.  A hamburger is eaten with the hands.  Both hands holding the luscious concoction aloft, grease and ketchup and mustard running down to your elbows with each bite.  It is an item that needs you to open your mouth wide.  A hamburger is NOT a prissy little piece of meat pattie eaten dry, with a fork.

I know I am in the minority here.  Even In-and-Out, which used to make THE BEST hamburgers in the whole of America, now make one that is wrapped in lettuce--

Let me pause here to hang onto the wall while I steady myself--

And they no longer drip.

I'm afraid to see if Tommy's has slipped.

Thank god I can still catch a fabulous, overstuffed, juicy, taste blaster of a hamburger.  Where? you might ask, shriveling up with envy.  Why honey, in my very own kitchen. 

Served WITH BUN.