Pop Tarts and other Sacrileges

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God help me, I wanted Pop Tarts for breakfast. My mother would scramble eggs, fry up bacon or country ham, and bake biscuits fluffy as St. Peter’s pillow, and GOD HELP ME, I would pout and grumble and bring a dark cloud to the table until finally she gave in. She brought Pop Tarts home but could not resist exclaiming each time I tore open a package, “There is more nutrition in the cardboard box!”

 

In the narcissistic haze of my childhood, I thought Mom’s world revolved around feeding me. Having received a master’s degree in nutrition from Columbia University in New York, she put an enormous amount of effort into making sure we had the freshest, best food on our table. Foodies today would scoff at her southern cooking techniques, like adding sugar to a squash casserole. Bless their hearts; they can't help their ignorance. My early Pop Tart insanity aside, what I wouldn’t give now for a serving of that casserole, one of her biscuits with homemade strawberry jam, or a slice of her muscadine pie.

 

I had a hard time imagining that Mom ever had a life before and beyond meeting my every need, though she did have a mysterious box in her linen closet that she would show me from time to time as I brought home science project assignments from school. The box contained the bones of two rats. In one set, the bones were strong and white, while the other set contained brown and fragile bones. My vague recollection is that the bones were remnants of an experiment she had done at Columbia comparing the nutrition of drinking milk versus drinking only water. Those bones may have been the reason I majored in zoology in college.

 

I think it was more my father than my mother who set the outside parameters of our exposure to exotic foods. He liked what he liked, and what he liked was found on the farm where he grew up—eggs, biscuits, country ham, steaks, pork chops, turnip greens, black-eyed peas, tomatoes, lima beans and other similar entrees and sides. Though Mom must have known bagels and cream cheese from her time in New York, I was 25 years old and on a Swiss Air flight to Belgium before I had my first bagel. What a strange and chewy bread-like experience that was! I was in college before I went to A Southern Season in Chapel Hill and discovered there was coffee other than Maxwell House and that real croissants were several steps above Pillsbury crescent rolls.

 

The first meal my girlfriend, now spouse, cooked for me when we were dating was an Indian curry dish with a side of cucumbers in yogurt. I loved the curry, which was new for me, but I’m sorry—cucumbers are for salads, and yogurt is eaten only with fruit stirred up from the bottom of the container. I exposed my pedestrian tastes that night, but she has learned to overlook that and similar shortcomings. I sometimes have to push myself to try something new, but with good nutritional grounding growing up and gentle nudges from my worldly spouse, I’m making progress. God help me, though, when I’m in the breakfast aisle at the grocery store, I can’t help but send a nostalgic glance over to the Pop Tart display.

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