Just Good And Brown
On The Late Show, Matt Damon recently took the Steven Colbert Personality Questionnaire. One question asked, “What is your favorite smell?”
He answered, “Bacon and coffee, first thing in the morning.” Now, that is a favorite smell after my own heart.
I got to thinking, “What is there about men and food?” Do you remember the saying, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?” I have never been 100% convinced of that, but I’m not saying it is all wrong either.
When I recall my family, in some fashion or another, food will be involved. Perhaps not always, but often.
My Grandmother McBride, Mema Mac, often made cinnamon toast, heavy on the butter and sugar, for us to snack on as we listened to the radio. News of the War to Red Skelton. Fred Allen to Fibber McGee and Molly. Bob Hope and Jack Benny.
Mema Mac made toast under the open flame of the broiler of a gas cook stove. It was difficult to judge the exact cooking time toast required and at the same time to listen to the living room radio. The toast would often emerge from the broiler with a burnt, black edge. Mema would take a knife and begin to scrape away the crispy edges. Finished, she would raise the toast for visual inspection, then declare, “It is just good and brown.” Then, she would mound butter, sugar and cinnamon and return the toast to the broiler. Good and brown or not, sitting in my grandparent’s floor and munching on cinnamon toast, my lap covered with a cloth and listening to my grandparents’ laughter was like a breeze blowing a sense of well-being into the room.
But man has also had a rather adventurous relationship with food. I was listening to NPR a couple of days ago and heard someone mention eating cicadas. I understand cicadas are to be abundant this summer. I know there are folks who eat locust and grasshoppers and such critters. I don’t and won’t.
You remember Jonathan Swift from English literature class? Gulliver’s Travels. He rather famously said, “He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.” I concur about being the first to eat something.
I can see my dad with paper sacks full of poke salad harvested from the banks of a Haskell County strip pit. I enjoy poke salad, but I wonder who first figured out that you must parboil it. Sounds like risky business.
I often cite the wisdom of Thomas Edison’s quote, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” I’m not convinced it is a good research model for testing food.
Most days, now, I think life is like Mema Mac’s toast, just good and brown – after you scrape away the burnt stuff.
You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans. – Ronald Reagan.
