I laughed so hard last night, I got a cramp in my jaw. Just thinking about it makes me chortle.

It was brought about by green Jello.

I grew up with a lot of Jello. My Mom made it often, dissolving the packet of raspberry or strawberry Jello in boiling water, then stirring in fruit cocktail and cold water. And then she put it in the refrigerator and waited for it to jell.

Watching her put the bowl of bright red liquid in the fridge, I developed a deep-seated fear. What if, this time, the Jello didn’t jell?

None of my fears came to pass. Mom’s Jello always jelled. I’d open the refrigerator door, and there would be a happy little bowl of the stuff, jiggling as if to say, “Welcome to the fridge!”

Potluck nightmares

When I was in high school, Mom fixed a Jello fruit salad for me to take to a school potluck. It was a hot, humid spring day in Ohio, and over the course of the evening, my offering melted into a puddle of fruit cocktail and red liquid. I was so embarrassed, I wanted to abandon it! I knew I had to take the bowl home, so I slunk over to the potluck table with my head down. I was afraid people would point at me and say, “Oh, that one was yours?”

The joke that backfired

A couple of years later, I was a college student living on the cheap. Free food was always welcome, so when someone gave me a box of lime Jello, I made it and put it in the fridge.

My two best friends were coming over for the afternoon, and when Robert arrived, we came up with a practical joke to play on Dave. I was to give him a welcoming hug and in the process, slip a Jello cube down the back of his shirt.

Somehow, Robert and I thought this would be funny.

But Dave did not think it was funny, and his reaction was like a bucket of cold water. His puzzlement turned to dismay and then to a very gentle anger. After removing the offending blob of green Jello, he put his coat back on and left, shaking his head at the immaturity of his so-called friends.

I learned my lesson. I would never do something that dumb again.

Scaring my spouse

The story above explains why I was laughing so hard last night. Last night, I made a batch of plain green Jello for the first time since that incident in 1982.

Barry was in the other room when I made it, but when I took it out of the fridge, he came into the kitchen to see what I was up to. Often, when I’m rustling around in the kitchen, it means something yummy for him, so he has a kind of Pavlovian response.

The Jello came out of the fridge, in its green, jiggly glory, looking for all the world like congealed Kool-Aid. Barry looked a bit disappointed.

But I had a completely different reaction. First of all, I was delighted to see that it had jelled, alleviating my deep-rooted childhood fear. Second, since I hadn’t eaten Jello in so long, I was actually looking forward to tasting it. Without thinking, I reached in the pan and picked up a piece with my fingers.

What a wonderful feeling! Sort of squishy and solid at the same time.

But I had committed a major tactical error, because Barry was still standing next to me. Had I used a spoon, he wouldn’t have freaked out. But he had heard the story of Dave and the green Jello, and here I was, picking up a cube of the stuff with my fingers.

Barry panicked. First, he backed across the room. Then he buttoned his shirt all the way up to his chin, and just for good measure, zipped his fleece up all the way, too. He stood across the kitchen, keeping the table between us and looking like a deer in the crosshairs.

That’s when I started laughing so hard I got a jaw cramp. The truth is, I had no intention of putting it down his shirt. I simply wanted to snarf a piece of Jello with my fingers!

There’s something really hilarious about standing in the kitchen, holding a jiggling blob of green Jello in your hand, and watching your spouse run away in terror. At that point, he started laughing, too. But you know what? He laughed a lot harder after I ate my blob of Jello and put the pan safely back in the fridge!

---

Although I haven’t made plain Jello in many years, here are a few Foodie Gazette recipes that feature Jello as an ingredient:
Savory Tomato Ring
Snowball

These next three are Midwest favorites, but how can they call them salads?
Pineapple Cream Salad
Mandarin Orange Salad
And my favorite recipe with Jello, Fluffy Salad

We may think of Jello as 1950’s (or 70’s) retro, but it actually goes back much further than that. These boxes, in a Newfoundland museum, date back to the early 1900’s. As a result of intensive advertising (I’ve seen one of the ads in an old Harper’s magazine), Jell-O sales in 1906 reached $1 million.

This piece was written in honor of the launch of the brand new Foodie Gazette. For the first time, my recipes are flying solo, rather than being an adjunct of mepsnbarry.com. That brought to mind the first time I ever flew solo in the kitchen. It was traumatic, to say the least.

I’m hoping that the transfer of these recipes from mepsnbarry.com to foodiegazette.com will not be traumatic. But if you find anything amiss, please let me know!

---

What’s the most challenging cooking you’ve ever done? Was it a romantic Valentine’s dinner for someone you had a crush on? The first Christmas dinner you made for your in-laws? A catered brunch for 50 people?

When I was 19, I was a kitchen helper at Sherwood Forest, a summer camp on the Long Beach peninsula in Washington. Between camp sessions, the cook and his assistant, who were saffron-garbed Rajneeshees, went to the Ranch to see the Baghwan and get some free love. I don’t know what held them up (maybe it was the free love), but when it was time to cook dinner, the cooks had not returned.

It was time for trial by fire.

As a kitchen helper, I knew how to chop and stir and wash dishes. I did not know how to cook. But I somehow managed, on the first day of the session, to make enough meatloaf and potatoes to feed 50 cranky children and their (cranky) counselors. In over 20 years since then, I’ve never cooked for a tougher crowd. Whew.

At the time, I was one of those obnoxious teenaged vegetarians, the kind that whines at anyone who eats meat and says “Ewww, gross,” a lot. (I’ve gotten over that now.) So meatloaf in particular was kind of a stretch.

How did I do it? I just followed a basic meatloaf recipe.

Since then, I’ve become a reasonably accomplished cook. As I discovered on that fateful day, anything is possible if you have a recipe.

So, way back then, I started saving recipes. I clipped and sorted and filed them. When I got a computer, I started typing them in. After many years, I published the first 300 on the web, just because I needed a convenient place to store them. Now, there are almost 700.

Then I discovered that I am not alone! Because they’re on the web, other people use my recipes, too. I love knowing what people are searching for: “Robert Redford better than sex cake” or “mashed cauliflower” or “cake mix brownies.”

I love to cook, and I love to take photographs, and I love to write. Here, on the Foodie Gazette, I get to combine my passions (speaking of which, do try the passion fruit mousse sometime).

And if you ever need to make enough meatloaf for 50 cranky, homesick children, please, don’t look here. Until today, I had successfully repressed the memory. So I don’t have that recipe.

Every time I look out my window today, I see a solid gray sky, drippy trees, and sheets of cold, wet rain. It’s time for a tropical vacation. Or a hot toddy. Luckily, I know of a beverage that satisfies both needs at once. It’s called quentão, and it’s the hot toddy served at the Brazilian harvest festival of São João (Saint John in Portuguese). I discovered it many years ago when Bahia Street put on a São João festival and fundraiser on Vashon Island. I had a terrible cough and head cold, which just about vanished when I met one of these.

Place 3 tablespoons of sugar in a heavy saucepan, and heat it over medium-high to carmelize. When the sugar is browned and liquid, very carefully and slowly add 1/2 C water. Stir in a thinly sliced lime, a teaspoon of whole cloves, a 2-inch piece of cinnamon stick, and a small chunk of ginger. Simmer this concoction for a few minutes, then remove it from the heat.

If you’re the designated driver, stop here, stir in a cup of water or juice, and enjoy. Your friends are lucky to have a responsible, sober driver like you.

If you are not the designated driver, stir in a cup of cachaça and create a killer Brazilian toddy that really warms up your insides and makes you want to dance non-stop.

Cachaça is Brazil’s ubiquitous cheap distilled liquor, used for all manner of mixed drinks down there. It’s made from sugar cane juice, as opposed to rum, which is made from molasses. Up in the U.S., cachaça is rare and expensive, so we substitute vodka, light rum, or even a mixture of half light rum and half tequila. Cachaça is also used to make the other quintessential Brazilian cocktail, the caipirinha.

To satisfy the need to dance brought on by quentão, look around for some rockin’ forró music from northeastern Brazil. Forró was originally played by country bands, and it only required three instruments: An accordion, a triangle, and a zabumba, the big base drum. It’s a high-energy style of music with a danceable, thumping beat. David Byrne calls it “party music.” My favorite artist is Luiz Gonzaga; many of his CDs are still available, even though he’s been dead for years.

Between the quentão and the music, you might have a party on your hands! It’s just the thing to transport you away from a rainy, gray day and down to someplace sunny and tropical.

Shopping for international grocery items is sometimes like a scavenger hunt. Last week, I triumphed with two 14-oz bottles of rosewater for $2.59 each at a Persian market in Bellevue, Washington. It had been a 2-1/2 year search, and until now, I’d been unable to find anything bigger than 6 ounces at about $5.

Today, I took a bus to downtown Seattle for spent the entire day today shopping. Not at Macy’s or one of those chi-chi clothing shops in Westlake Center. I was continuing my scavenger hunt for pantry items that are absent or dear at my local grocery stores.

The challenge with this type of shopping is that there are two excellent places to get food ingredients in downtown Seattle. But unlike the QFC and Albertson’s near my home, neither one offers cheap and convenient parking.

So I armed myself with a large backpack and a canvas tote bag and took the bus.

My first stop was the Pike Place Market, well-known to tourists as “the place where they throw the fish.” Many retailers in the market target the tourists, selling them dried fruit, nuts, or jam — items that are easy to tuck into a suitcase. They’re priced like souvenirs, not like food, so I avoid them.

Instead, I head to The Souk, a middle eastern grocery with a wide array of spices, curries, and Indian foods. I picked up items you can only find in a tiny, custom grocery, like a can of stuffed grape leaves (a perfect appetizer for emergencies) and some pappadums. Earlier this year, I’d hunted through six grocery stores for pappadums and, in desperation, ended up buying them from a Pakistani restaurant. Now I’m stocked up again.

At The Souk, I also got a bag of Chickpree, roasted spicy chickpeas. Back in the early 1990’s, in Arlington, Virginia, I lived two blocks from an Indian grocery called “Indian Spices and Appliances.” The name sounded like a bad translation, but when I went inside, I fell in love with the exotic and inexpensive grocery items. I’ve been hooked on Chickpree ever since.

Other things, like pumpkin seeds and turmeric, were simply cheaper at The Souk than anyplace else. At the prices regular grocery stores charge for spices, it’s amazing that people can afford to use more than a tiny pinch.

About a block down, I made my second stop at El Mercado Latino, one of several Latin stores in the Pike Place Market. I was specifically looking for Bijol, a simple Cuban spice blend of cornflour, cumin, annato, and food coloring. It brings back childhood memories of my mother’s famous Arroz Con Pollo, and my jar is getting low. The same crisis had happened to my mother in the 1970’s, when we left the New York metropolitan area for the hinterlands of West Virginia. In those days, decades before the internet, it was a crisis when the family Bijol jar got down to the last teaspoon. Luckily, my father did find a mail-order source.

At the Mercado, I also bought Cafe Bustelo, vaccuum-packed Cuban coffee. It makes a great cup of coffee, although I have to cut it with cheap grocery store decaf in order to avoid hitting the ceiling. During a recent trip to South Florida, I was amazed to see entire aisles of this stuff in the regular grocery store — guava paste, Mexican and Cuban fruit juices, convenience foods from Goya. Down there, it costs half as much, but I don’t mind paying extra. I’m just happy to find the stuff way up here in Seattle.

A few blocks up the street, I picked up a free bus down to the south end of town. My next stops are in the International District, known to Seattle residents as “The I.D.” It’s the place to go for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese restaurants and grocery stores, and the prices are the cheapest in town.

I stopped in at Chinatown Market, on Jackson Street, for black and white sesame seeds, cheap cans of coconut milk, and tiny dried shrimp. By now, the backpack was starting to get awfully heavy, and I almost skipped the uphill walk to Rising Produce, located on the east side of the freeway on King Street.

But I wasn’t done yet, and Rising Produce has the cheapest vegetables in town. You have to pick over their produce carefully, but it’s worth the effort to save 50 to 75% over regular grocery stores. I also worked my way carefully to the back of the store (my backpack and canvas bag were bulging by now, and maneuvering was getting difficult), and bought five pounds of raw, shelled peanuts for a mere $1.25 a pound.

After using up my carrying capacity, I caught a bus back home. Now it’s time to figure out what to do with all this stuff, some kind of Cuban-Indian-Chinese fusion? Thank goodness for the Web, so I can search for recipes for all this stuff. In the meantime, I think I’ll just eat some pizza.

I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the South Beach diet when I first heard of it. I’m not much for diet fads. And the name sounds like something written for a bunch of wealthy society ladies.

This spring, as we’ve been getting to know Bob Knosp, I discovered that South Beach is not just a fad. I never asked Bob how old he is. I just know that he’s got a grandchild, and he doesn’t look old enough for that. He credits South Beach for a lot of his health and vitality.

About a month ago, we went on a weekend sailing trip with Bob. I did the shopping, picking up things that would work with his dietary restrictions. Barry and I decided that we’d been hitting the sauce a bit too much lately, so we warned Bob that we were not going to bring any wine or alcohol. He said that was fine; Bob’s a very light drinker, and the diet doesn’t allow much besides a little wine, anyway.

Raftups with the Puget Sound Cruising Club are usually pretty wild floating parties. There’s often a potluck, with too many people crowding onto one boat, lots of decadent cheese- and sugar-laden dishes, and too much wine, beer, or tequila. I figured our plans to eat healthy and eschew alcohol might cause some eye-rolling among our friends.

Mike and Nita, on Odessa, tied alongside us. Nita is a fabulous cook who’s recently discovered that she’s allergic to wheat. I’d kept Nita’s allergy in mind as I planned my potluck dish, but I was totally surprised by her latest announcement.

“We just went on the South Beach diet,” she said. “We’re not allowed to drink this weekend.”

“Woo hoo!” Instead of a negative reaction, I was delighted. “Great! We’re not drinking, either!”

We ended up having two potlucks, with the five of us plus Rob and Anita from Decatur. They seemed taken aback by the South Beach dieters, but admitted that they were actually following a very low fat diet, required by Rob’s doctor after some heart trouble.

It was a wonderful weekend, with good company, great conversation, and excellent food. Who would think that giving up sugar, alcohol, and processed carbohydrates could make a party so much fun? If South Beach is the latest diet fad, please, Dr. Agatson, sign me up.

Note: The South Beach diet has recently gotten very commercial, with a subscription website and lots of commercial products in the grocery story. However, if you’re interested in learning about it, your best bet is to pick up a copy of the book at the library and read the first half. It’s only about 100 pages, and it can do wonders for your health, especially if you have a family history of diabetes or heart disease.

Summer is almost here, and soon we’ll be inundated by ripe peaches, boysenberries, blueberries, and blackberries. I love going to the farmer’s market and falling in love with a huge watermelon, a flat of apricots, or a cantaloupe. I can’t pass up a kiwi, and I love it when friends load me up with too many pears. All are perfect smoothie-fodder.

If you’ve never had a smoothie, it’s simply a fruit-based beverage prepared in a blender. They range from high-fiber and healthy to completely decadent, high-fat, and sugary.

I usually make smoothies for breakfast, since it’s a good way to get fruit, fiber, protein, and vitamins all in one easy package. When I worked in downtown Seattle, I’d go out with coworkers and order a smoothie for an afternoon pick-me-up. In the evening, a smoothie can substitute for a light dinner or be served as dessert, with or without alcohol.

Although there are thousands of published smoothie recipes and entire smoothie cookbooks, I’ve never followed a recipe to make one. Creating a smoothie is an art, not a science. I just look at the ingredient lists for ideas, and then I toss in a little of this and a little of that, blend it, and taste the result. It’s kind of like making soup.

Here are the four components of a delicious fruit smoothie.

Fruit

The old standby is the yellow Cavendish banana, which you can use at any stage of ripeness (a good way to use up over-ripe bananas). Strawberries are also common, as are other berries, such as blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Peaches, cantaloupe, and honeydew melon are all good, and speaking of melons, smoothies are a great way to use up excess (and there’s always excess!) watermelon. Tropical fruits are divine; consider mango, papaya, pineapple, guava, or passion fruit.

While you’re cleaning and cutting up the fruit, consider putting some in a bag in the freezer. When you’re in a hurry, you can toss a handful of the frozen pieces directly in the blender without thawing it.

In the winter, when you run out of frozen fruit, try making a smoothie with applesauce or even canned fruit.

Liquid

You’ll need some sort of liquid to turn your fruit into a beverage. Yogurt is my preference, but I’ve also tried milk, cream, soymilk, and water. You can also use tea (lemongrass tea, spiced chai, or peppermint tea add a lot of flavor) and coffee.

I keep fruit juice on hand just for smoothies — try mango nectar, orange juice, or pineapple juice. Pomegranate and grape juice are loaded with antioxidants and great for your health. If you’re trying to pack in extra calories, use coconut milk or chocolate milk.

I often add a splash of lime or lemon juice, but only if there’s no milk. A curdled smoothie is an ugly thing.

Flavorings

I have a habit of gilding the lily, throwing in ingredients that give my smoothies a little extra zing. My favorite are ginger and lime zest prepared on the Micro-Plane grater.

Sometimes I throw in cinnamon, another powerful antioxidant, or a tiny pinch of cayenne. You can also add chocolate syrup or powder, coffee, honey, sugar, maple syrup, and any flavor of sugar syrup, the kind used to flavor lattés. If you have an herb garden, try mint, rosemary, or lemon thyme.

One class of flavorings can elevate your smoothie to a whole new plane: Extracts. The old standby is vanilla, featured in the Orange Julius: Orange juice, sugar, ice cubes, and vanilla. Other extracts can also add a huge amount of flavor without changing the texture. Try a few drops of lemon, coconut, or orange.

Additions

To turn your fruit smoothie into a meal-on-the-go, add some protein. We’ve used protein powder, cottage cheese, sour cream, tofu, and cream cheese. Toasted, ground nuts or natural peanut butter are also delicious. Boost your energy level by adding nutritional yeast, chock-full of B vitamins, flax seeds, or powdered vitamins.

If your fruit is not frozen, you can toss in a few ice cubes to give the smoothie a nice thick texture. You can even add sherbet or ice cream, although that sounds suspiciously like a milkshake instead of a smoothie.

Assembling Your Smoothie

It doesn’t get much easier than this: Clean the fruit and cut into chunks. Pour the liquid into the blender, add the fruit, flavorings, and additions, and blend. Stop and taste it, and adjust the flavorings. I often find I need to add more zing in the form of lemon juice, ginger, or a teaspoon of sugar.

If the result is too thick, add more liquid, 1/4 cup at a time. If it’s too thin, add crushed ice or more fruit and blend it some more.

You can even make a smoothie without a blender at all! Choose soft fruit, like very ripe bananas and berries, and put it in a large, deep pot or bowl. Pour in plenty of liquid, roll up your sleeves, and mash the heck out of it with a potato masher. I ran across this solution at the Oregon Country Fair, where an outfit called LuLu’s Smoothies was producing hundreds of gallons of smoothies without electricity. Their secret? Young, healthy employees with strong arm muscles!

---

• If you need a little more direction on what to put in the blender, see my list of Smoothie Ideas.
• A lassi is a kind of smoothie from India. I wrote about yogurt and lassis back in January. Try a Creamsicle Lassi or a Pink Lassi.
• In Brazil, you can buy a suco on many street corners. It’s their version of a smoothie, made from one of the over 75 varieties of fruits that grow in Brazil.
• If all this is too healthy for you, skip the fruit and just make a milkshake (includes recipes for vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and cookie).
• For a series of life’s lessons learned through my blender, see My Blender, My Teacher, on Adventures with Meps and Barry.

We recently had a small gathering to watch the Wallace and Gromit short films and eat cheese. Wallace is the animated character known for his love of Wensleydale and gorgonzola. “Cheese, Gromit!” he says to his dog, “We’ll go somewhere, where there’s cheese!” They build a spaceship and fly to the moon for a picnic.

The menu for our gathering was completely cheese-based. We had stilton, camembert, minted cream cheese, and something that smelled like dirty socks. There was a green salad with feta and a pan of baked macaroni and cheese. And for dessert, no-bake strawberry cheesecake tart.

As far as I’m concerned, there are two categories of cheese: The Good Stuff, and rat cheese. Not that I don’t love rat cheese! It’s a name we picked up from our friend Norm, who said that where he grew up in Texas, plain old yellow cheese was actually labeled that way.

Rat cheese can be colby, cheddar, or co-jack. We even call Monterey Jack or Mozzarella rat cheese. It’s the cheese you buy at the grocery store in large packages and use as an ingredient in macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches (also known as cheese dreams), and cheese-and-peas salad.

When I had my own refrigerator and freezer, I’d buy rat cheese in 3-pound blocks. A pound or so would get whacked off, carefully wrapped, and kept in the fridge. The challenge was stretching plastic wrap around the cheese so that no air could get in and allow mold.

The remaining pounds were grated, spread on cookie sheets, and placed in the freezer for a couple of hours. When it was frozen, we’d break it up (easy to do if you spread it out before freezing) and transfer it to large zip-lock bags. When a recipe called for a bit of cheese, we could grab a handful out of the freezer.

But living on a boat, or living without refrigeration, my cheese habits changed. Now I couldn’t keep pounds of cheese from molding, I had to buy little 8-oz packages. The price per pound difference gave me sticker shock.

As long as I was going to spend that much money on cheese and get only a small amount, why buy rat cheese? Why not buy The Good Stuff?

The Good Stuff is the kind of cheese that’s sold in wheels, not rectangles. One advantage to such cheese is that it can be rolled, as they do every year in a contest in Gloucestershire, England. Those who leave the event with broken bones and spinal injuries, however, may not consider that such an advantage. Especially since first prize is only a wheel of cheese that’s been bounced down a steep hill with hundreds of people rolling after it.

Rather than chase my gourmet cheese, I buy it, in small amounts. No longer do I buy 48 ounces of rat cheese, now I buy 4 ounces of gorgonzola. A small wedge of camembert can satiate my cheese needs for the week. I pick up small quantities of tangy feta, sweet gjetost, and creamy brie. My trusty Micro-Plane grater turns asiago into fluffy, artful shavings, and 2 ounces can last over a month.

Turning from the computer and looking into the fridge, I note that the smelly sweat sock cheese is gone, as is the goat cheese we used to stuff chicken breasts. There’s a bit of camembert left, a small bag of grated rat cheese, and a new chunk of parmesan.

What shall we do if we run out?

No problem: We’re just down the street from the Fremont Rocket. We’ll fly to the moon for some more!

In all the years I knew my good friend, Barbara deLackner, we never celebrated Easter together. We were always thousands of miles apart at Easter-time. But I knew what she was eating for breakfast.

Barbie had developed an Easter morning tradition, a special dish that her family loved and anticipated. It was called Goldenrod Eggs, and guess what? It used up a bunch of colorful hard-boiled eggs!

With a flock of chickens in the yard, you’d think that’s where the eggs would come from. But Barbie never hard-boiled her own eggs, because they were too fresh. They couldn’t be peeled; they’d have to sit in the fridge for six weeks before boiling them. Doesn’t that make you wonder how old your grocery store eggs are? And where they’ve been sitting?

So, despite a surfeit of fresh eggs, Barbie had to buy a few dozen at Easter-time, in order to make Goldenrod Eggs.

One day, when it wasn’t Easter, Barbie decided to get some store-bought eggs and make Goldenrod Eggs. Lucky me! I was the recipient of that beautiful, tasty breakfast.

Nowadays, I like to make them for Barry once in a while, even when it’s not Easter. Because everybody deserves something beautiful on their plate, first thing in the morning.

I had a funny enounter in the produce aisle of the grocery store. I was standing in front of the lettuce, trying to decide whether to get red or green leaf. The man standing next to me turned and asked politely, “Excuse me, but what do you call these?”

He was looking at the radishes, but he couldn’t figure out which sign went with them to indicate the price. I pointed to the one that said “Radishes, 49 cents” and said, with a smile, “radishes.”

“Thank you!” he said, relieved. I turned back to him as he was putting his radishes in a bag, and I asked, politely, “What do you call them?” He looked and sounded Hispanic, so I assumed he would give me the Spanish translation.

“Rábanos,” he replied. Except that with his accent, the “b” sounded much like a “v,” and it sounded like he said, “RAVENOUS!”

I started giggling, and I couldn’t stop. He looked rather puzzled, so I explained it to him. “In English, ‘ravenous’ means very, very hungry!” I patted my tummy for emphasis and repeated, “RAVENOUS!”

Now he was laughing, too. “RAVENOUS!” he said. With a shared grin, we each continued our shopping.

A few minutes later, after picking out my fruit and milk, I started down the aisle with the cat food. At the other end of the aisle, I spied my ravenous friend, and he spied me. We both shouted, “Ravenous!” and started laughing hysterically.

A couple aisles further along, I found Barry near the peanut butter. Before I could tell him what happened, along came my new friend. “Ravenous!” we shouted, in unison, laughing. Barry was completely mystified by my strange behavior, until I explained the encounter over the radishes.

The encounter took me back even further, to my first office job. There was a woman who worked in our office who used to say, when it was time for a snack break, “I’m ravished!” It was a contraction of ravenous and famished, but it got funny looks from people who didn’t know her.

I’ve always loved radishes, raw, with dip. Or sliced, thin, and marinated in light salad dressing. But now I find they’re good roasted or stir-fried, too. And I’ve stopped throwing the greens away, since they can be washed thoroughly (they are amazingly full of sand) and tossed into a stew or stir-fry as well.

I know radishes are good for my health, and not just because they’re low calorie and full of fiber. They’re good for me, because they make me laugh out loud: “RÁBANOS!”

When we moved out of our house last year, I packed up all kinds of long-lasting ingredients in a couple of boxes and stored them. They just got unpacked a couple of weeks ago.

Opening those boxes was like having another Christmas.

Some of the stuff in there came from our travels, like the wild rice. We drove across Minnesota, passing many signs advertising cheap wild rice. We kept meaning to stop, but never did. Just over the border, in Nebraska, we stopped for some groceries and found it for $2 a pound, so we bought five pounds. Then there was that can of garlic macadamia nuts — Barry’s parents brought them from Hawaii, and he’s been hoarding them ever since. Some goodies in the box were holiday gifts, like blueberry barbecue sauce and Russian chicken soup mix. There’s even a pound of smoked salmon along with the an obscene 2-foot long summer sausage.

I turned up lots of healthy foods, like cracked wheat, dried beans, and TVP. Then I found it: The Karo syrup. I’d used it to make soft-batch cookies last year, but the recipe only uses 3 tablespoons, so the bottle was nearly full.

“I wonder if I could use this stuff to sweeten my tea?” I mused to Barry, just thinking about using it up.
He was alarmed at the thought. “No! Don’t use that stuff!”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you remember that book we read? That stuff is evil!”

A few years ago, Barry and I read Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (Critser, 2002), about how Americans have become so obese. The author talked extensively about high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, and the sinister politics behind its introduction. In 1966, HFCS was unknown to the American diet. Today, the average American eats over 60 pounds of HFCS every year. It’s a key ingredient in soda pop, candy, and jam, but large amounts are also found in baked goods, barbecue sauce, and spaghetti sauce. A glance at the cans in the cupboard finds HFCS in cranberry sauce, while the enchilada sauce and canned soup have “corn syrup solids.”

The stuff is insidious, and it’s really bad for you. The problem is the sweetener has a mix of glucose and fructose, and our bodies have a problem metabolizing the fructose. Scientific studies have associated it with elevated triglycerides, leading to heart problems, and also found that it alters your magnesium balance, causing bone loss. Unlike glucose, which stimulates hormones that make you feel full, it bypasses those mechanisms and just gets stored, like fat.

There is one website that talks about the healthful benefits of HFCS. Who sponsors it? The Corn Refiners Association. They’ve got financial incentives to sell as much HFCS as possible. No wonder they tout it as a wonder food.

If you don’t think the politics behind HFCS are sinister, here’s an interesting story. A few years ago, a study found that Mexicans had a 158% increase in obesity, due mainly to the “Americanization” of their diets and the amount of soda pop and junk food they were consuming. This was despite a 20% tax in Mexico on beverages sweetened with HFCS.

Last month, the World Trade Organization, the WTO, determined that Mexico’s tax was discriminatory, and must be lifted. Who’s cheering? The U.S. Grains Council and the Corn Refiners Association. They say that U.S. farmers have lost $4 billion dollars because of Mexico’s tax.

So now the Mexicans get to buy all the soda pop they want, without the tax. And how much will it cost Mexico to deal with the health issues of obesity? Probably about $4 billion dollars, if not more.

In another example of the politics of sweeteners, a few years back, the World Health Organization, the WHO, published a report recommending that we all keep our sugar intake to less than 10% of daily calories. The U.S. sugar lobby went ballistic, trying to discredit the report and wanting to cut off the U.S. membership in the WHO. Like the tobacco lobby, “Big Sugar” wants to suppress news of risks associated with their product.

Given my choice, I’ll take the WHO’s recommendations and thumb my nose at the WTO. And just to be on the safe side, I should toss that bottle of Karo syrup in the trash.