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BY BECKY SELENGUT I have a wicked, insatiable, genetically pre-programmed, completely out of my control addiction to sweets. It was my grandmother who taught me that if you are on a doctor-ordered low cholesterol diet and you sneak candy from your nightstand when your 8-year-old granddaughter is supposed to be napping next to you, there are no calories and no consequences. When I woke up, and leaned over to see what all the crinkling paper was about and where my cut was, she whispered, “shhhhh… you’re dreaming!” My sugar addiction is not my fault. Before you jump to judge this blatant shirking of personal responsibility, might I paint you a picture of the inherited double helix that I share with my grandmother. Where there should be adenine and thymine, there are nonpareils and jujubes; cytosine and guanine are replaced with Nerds™ and Hot Tamales™. The whole strand of DNA is woven through with flexible rock candy, like a scarf knitted by Willy Wonka. Anyway, this is all just a pseudo-scientific way of saying that my impressively stratospheric sugar highs and stunningly cranky sugar lows, all cavities, and any future health problems are my grandmother’s fault, not mine. Sweets are so significant in our family that we have the following words engraved on our silver—carpent tua poma nepotes. Roughly translated: your descendents will steal your candy stash. On a recent trip home, my grandmother hardly touched her dinner and then ate a bunch of cookies. “Grandma!” I said, “You are such a fibber. You said you were full!” And she replied, deadpan, “That’s not fibbing, darling—that’s called planning.” “My grandmother is all of 80 pounds, soaking wet, and she only eats cookies,” I told my friend Tam. “Maybe she’d feel more like eating if you dried her off,” Tam replied. I’m reading this book called, aptly enough, Candyfreak by Steve Almond. It’s like my Bible and autobiography all rolled up in one giant Idaho Spud™ of goodness. It’s hilarious and historical. If Mr. Almond ever reads this, I want him to know that when he wrote, “The answer is that we don’t choose our freaks, they choose us,” I knew he was speaking directly to me. It’s true. My sugar freak picked me. Oh, how those freak signs showed up early. When I was growing up, my brother Jesse and I would pillage an entire package of Double-Stuf Oreos™, systematically break them down into their parts—chocolate cookies in one pile, fluffy white middles in another pile. We’d throw our older brother the tops and bottoms (he had NO palate) and then—the pièce de résistance—we’d form a huge snowball out of the middles. Once formed, we’d take a knife to it and cut it in half to share. With that mountain of corn syrup and shortening, and a side of General Hospital, our after-school ritual was complete. Why are you judging us? If Oreos™ were unavailable, we’d grab the brownie mix—and here’s the anarchist bit—we never intended to actually bake the brownies! We’d follow the directions right to where normal people would pour the mix into a pan and then we’d just eat the entire bowl of batter. In desperate times, butter would be nuked and then mixed with sugar. Or Country Time™ lemonade mix would sub for Fun-Dip™. You might wonder what kind of parental supervision went along with these sugar binges. Well, Judgey McJudgerson, it was the 70s! We practically raised ourselves. My sugar-soaked genetic inheritance will probably kill me one day. Then again, my grandmother is 100 years old, sneaking candy as I write this is South Carolina. I can give you her address if you’d like to send her a letter blaming her for your sugar addiction, too. I’m a giver. But I require, at minimum, a king-sized box of Whoppers™ in exchange. Chef Becky Selengut is the author of Good Fish: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the Pacific Coast. Her favorite candies are Zours™, Nerds™, and Theo’s Fig, Fennel and Almond Chocolate Bar. |
