Oddities and Obsessions

The Brussels sprouts pictured are awesome. 

I recently made these Brussels sprouts, and at sometime, either before of after making these amazing sprouts (I’m really not kidding, people who don’t like Brussels sprouts like this dish) I chomped on a medium-sized handful of pine nuts.  It was only about an eighth of a cup of these sweet, resinous kernels--not a big handful. But, something strange occurred in my mouth the next day. First, my morning oatmeal tasted so BITTER. Was there something wrong with the oatmeal? Was there some sort of cream on my face that I was inadvertently licking (?!!?).

Later on that  same day, I ate a few Marcona almonds, and I couldn’t believe how horrible they tasted--and they’re so expensive. At dinner, food tasted fine while I initially chewed it, but after swallowing, the aftertaste was strangely metallic. My condition (that lasted only 2 days) subsided, and I forgot about it. UNTIL, I worked at the BON APPETIT magazine offices last friday, and learned that three people there had all recently suffered from the same bizarre ailment!

Why is a mimosa called a mimosa? The flower is sort of pink and spikey. The drink is spiked...? The drink is actually orange, fresh orange juice and preferably good champagne and it was first served (or first served under the name mimosa) at the Paris Ritz.  But I’m still not certain why it’s called a Mimosa.

Cherries Jubilee is easier to determine.  It was invented by Auguste Escoffier who prepared the dish for one of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Celebrations in the late 1800’s and paved the way for other fruit flambéed desserts, notably Crepes Suzette which legend has it was created in 1895 at Monte Carlo’s Cafe de Paris by a 14 year old sous chef by mistake – he got too close to a chafing dish and the alcohol caught fire– as he was serving the Prince of Wales who was dining with a young lady whose name was, you guessed it, Suzette. 

For decades, women’s magazines had basically three subjects: food, dieting, and sex. Gradually, a fourth one evolved, and now it has literally taken the lead. The January issue of Better Homes and Gardens proclaimed “Get Organized!” The February Good Housekeeping promised “More Calm, Less Stuff: Declutter Closets in a Day,” while the February Ladies Home Journal announced “Banish Clutter: Your New Organized Life Starts Today.”

And these are just the tip of the home-organizational iceberg. I haven’t checked Cosmo in a while (I’m more of an EcoSalon kind of girl), but we can probably expect it to jump on the clutter(ed) bandwagon fairly soon with “Less Stuff, More Sex!”

It was George Carlin who was the first to call our attention to stuff, and although we laughed, we pretty much went on our merry collecting way, blithely adding more and more, well, just plain stuff (and fancy stuff, too, along with electronic stuff). Here’s a measure of how far we’ve come—or fallen.

My husband’s and my first house was half of a double. The house was three stories tall, and you had to climb all the way to the third floor to find even the semblance of a closet. It was so shallow that it wouldn’t accommodate a clothes bar with hangers, and we settled for storing a few seasonal pieces by hanging them on the row of six wooden pegs lining the back wall. Recently I came across the following suggestion for managing the detritus of our consumerism: just turn the smallest bedroom in the house into a walk-in closet. (Ah, but where, then, would I store all those piles of papers sitting on the shelves and floor of that room?)

Imagine life without Twinkies? A year ago Hostess Brands went into bankruptcy. This week, in the wake of a labor strike, it sounds as if they may be winding down operations permanently.

I've never been a Twinkies fan, but I love the word. Just for example, from a Seinfeld show, Jerry describes Newman: "He's a mystery wrapped in a Twinkie." It doesn't even have to make sense to be funny.

And in Blue Man Group, the blue men watch intently as a volunteer from the audience tries to eat a Twinkie with a knife and fork. Do not ask me why this is hilarious. It just is.

And even though I may have eaten four of them in my entire life, just say the word and I can smell those sugary vapors that escape when you tear open the package. I remember what it's like to bite the yellow sponge-rubbery cushions of cake and into white filling with the resistance of shaving cream. I can feel the oleaginous residue left (for hours) on the roof of the mouth.