Divide and Conquer?
I’m disappointed to see that the addition of succulent chunks of golden fruit mingling with complimentary tastes and textures atop a sizzling hot pizza could bring our nation to another crippling controversy. I guess we need to declare a new social taboo, another subject to be banned in polite company.
The opposing reactions to the Pineapple-on-Pizza issue have ignited a fourth divisive topic for Americans to either engage or avoid at family gatherings. One’s choice to add pineapple or not is no longer a matter of personal palate, but a call to battle, an avalanche of fall-on-your sword opinions that spawn insults, virulent teasing, needling, put-downs, shaming, and ghosting!
Zounds! You’d think we were debating one of the Big Three: Religion, Sex, or Politics
I was a fussy eater from the beginning. I would have been happy with Grape-nuts, grilled cheese sandwiches, and cherry pie for the rest of my life. Occasional normal fruit: apple, banana, orange. Hold the vegetables.
My mom was concerned and asked the pediatrician about it. Grape-nuts and grilled cheese sounded fine to him. The taste for vegetables would come later. And it did, a very short list: carrots and potatoes. But nothing green. Yech.
As a mature adult, it dawned on me that as a child, I never tasted any garden greens, raw or cooked. No blame, no shame. No garden. Dairy in the fridge, and a pantry full of cans. (I was grateful we had plenty food, considering the starving kids in China.)
As a mature adult, it dawned on me that as a child, I never tasted any garden greens, raw or cooked.
I was never inspired by farm-to-table creativity. I was embarrassed as a newlywed, and did the best I could from the “I Hate to Cook Cookbook.” This got the meals to the table and down the hatch, but I was always more comfortable with cleanup than cheffing.
I never liked pineapple as a kid, (never knew what a real one looked like) even though Mom made upside-down cake with syrupy cans of them. I felt a vague betrayal, a dirty trick going on, hidden in the folds of soul-less white flour and white sugar. A bitter duel between sweet and sour. It didn’t add up to ‘cake for dessert’ to me.
Eventually, as a mature adult, I flew to Kaua’i to explore the Garden Island and was surrounded by every kind of fruit in the world. I was initiated into Deliciousness there, and by the time I was introduced to Mr. Pineapple, I did not hesitate to partake. Fresh and ripe, a perfect natural blend of sweet and sour tartness! The juice swirled around my cheeks, splashing over taste buds more than once, like a Water Park of a pinball machine. Cowabonga!
Fresh and ripe, a perfect natural blend of sweet and sour tartness! The juice swirled around my cheeks, splashing over taste buds more than once, like a Water Park of a pinball machine. Cowabonga!
This experience was ecstatic, and later prompted a pattern of ordering pineapple as a pizza topping. But the Pineapple/Pizza issue today serves as just one of many socially fabricated differences: an inflated, exaggerated, and unnecessary problem among fellow beings. It’s silly.
As the Third Chinese Patriarch said long ago:
“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. Make the slightest distinction however, and Heaven and Earth are set infinitely apart.”
I’m still not a good cook. But in those rare circumstances when it’s up to me to offer visitors a meal, I smile and say, “What kind of cereal would you like?”
Can’t imagine how I would have managed without the I Hate to Cook Cookbook!😄