The Cake Time Never Forgot

'Tis the season for gorging, and how hard are you trying not to?

Because I've set the bar low, I'm doing pretty well. The thing is, after my January blog of this year (when I boldly proclaimed the onset of my determination to lose weight) I thereafter gained three more pounds.

Shocked, I was. It was a total confirmation to me that menopause is a much more powerful foe than my mindset can conquer, at least for this stage in my life.

I could blame it on the grand-babies this time. (And I think I will.) Sure they require alot of chasing after, but their naps are really only of any length when they are in the arms, and this means Grandpa and I take a nap now, too. When we attempt to wriggle away, they waken too soon and are cranky at that.

So we snooze when we don't need to, and finish the snacks they abandon. Grandpa, however, shows no evidence of any of this, even though he eats more of the snacks than I do. Despite everything, I recently got BACK to my January weight and that weirdly felt like an achievement. And THAT gives you a picture of how low my bar is.

When I was a teenager and weighed (probably like you) 103 pounds, eating too much or too often held few consequences. But I did always pay attention to my mom and older aunts who warned me it wouldn't always be this way.

My first memorable battle with reining in portion-control saw me badly defeated; the remorse afterward was such that I've never since failed so completely again.

The smells in my kitchen today (Thanksgiving) have spurred me into into blogging the tale of that experience, but please don't think I'm a crazy person who can blog and cook a big Thanksgiving dinner all at once--I did much of the work yesterday.

This particular drives-you-crazy aroma is from a cake, and a nondescript-looking one even. Decades ago in the home I grew up in, my sister, Cris, brought this cake home from a holiday work party. It was nearly a whole cake, untried by many probably because of its basic and plain look, yellow and unfrosted. The only thing special about its appearance was its form (bundt-pan molded, still a novelty in the late 60's) and a generous dusting of confectioner's sugar.

So un-special did this cake seem, when the left-overs of that work party were divvied up, my sister accepted it with the attitude that "with so many people in our house, it will eventually get eaten."

Cris laid the cake on the counter with no expectations that anyone would gush over it. In fact no one did, but as I remember it, the house was pretty empty then. My dad was at work, and either my mom and the younger kids were out and about or in their rooms, with another older sister, Cindy, living away from home at the time.

Cris left the cake with a comment that it was excess from the party and that the family was welcome to it, and off she went for a nap. It seemed the kitchen was mine--and too the cake, at the worst possible time of day--me in the throes of my after-school appetite.

But I had just finished something to take the edge off things, and with the humble look of the thing, I regarded it as "filler." A just-as-humble slice would help me call snack-time good, so I thought.

Not to be. The innocent cake's not-so-innocent secret ingredient (sherry wine) injected WOW into my taste buds, and I immediately lopped off another slice. And another. It was crazy tender and flavorful and my control panel went berserk with malfunction. With no one around to raise their eyebrows at me I just kept going--kept going straight into eventual horror at myself and the drastically dwindling circle of bundt.

Too quickly it was over. I didn't eat the whole thing, but I may as well have, for all the good any explaining might have done. In a family of ten, (nine living at home) one didn't just eat almost a whole cake. (Or in ANY family, I am sure.)  I never did anything like that before, and I couldn't even begin to think of how I might regain my standing in our household.

With wheels spinning in my mind as to what I might say, I was unfathomably graced with non-discovery. Cris's nap was not a long one, and when she re-emerged into the kitchen for all she knew other family members had also enjoyed the cake. I didn't say otherwise, except that I did confess "I almost couldn't stop eating the thing, it was so good." She polished off the rest, and before the family starting filing back into the kitchen I discreetly shoved the disposable plate into the garbage. They never missed what they didn't know.

Whew. I was SO grateful not to be caught with my cake-pants down. The feeling of what might have come to pass (for embarrassment) has probably helped me rein in on portion control ever since--but it never stopped me from tracking down the recipe for that cake. I make it every year at the holidays, and I'm happy to say I can take one wedge and call it good for the day. (I'm also happy to be in a place in my life where I feel fine about telling the story!

Orange you glad? (You don't HAVE to eat an orange)

Since when did an orange become a delicacy?

Like you, I was brought up with fruit readily available, cheap enough it never seemed "forbidden." If anything, it quickly became boring and not properly appreciated. (Except for in-season and local--that never seems to get old.)

For many decades fruit has been commonly freighted or trucked across America. We are way past the times when an apple and an orange in a Christmas stocking elicited a thrill the way Laura Ingalls Wilder described for her pioneer Christmases.

I admire my friend Mary, who (in her seventies) still considers an apple or an orange a treat, and chooses either regularly for her evening snack. You should hear her go on about a "Clementine" orange--you would think she's enjoying a See's candy.

Sadly I admit I would any day of the week choose a See's dark chocolate and a cup of coffee over an orange for a treat. I just believe in quality per calorie and that's QUALITY in the eye of THIS beholder.

To this beholder, most transported veggies fare better than fruits. I would also rather have a nice green salad over fruit most any time and I do, even if quite honestly a lettuce leaf is more (for me) a vehicle with which to transport a creamy dressing than a tasty thing in itself.(My dad used to say that the truth hurts, and it does.)

If I don't properly appreciate fruits, I know that many people do. They don't just eat fruit for the health of it, they love it. Fruit is both a staple and a pleasure in their households, not something they can easily imagine life without.

When not on sale, our local Wisconsin markets have priced oranges lately at 1.79 a pound. (Are prices similar nationwide?). The "huge" chain (at time of this writing) doesn't even sell oranges individually, it's a bag of pre-picked or nothing.

Recently I wanted one sizable one for a cake, and at the dollar I paid for it I was happy the recipe called for the juice AND the rind, and I even threw in a little pulp to feel I was getting that whole dollar's worth. The cake would last for days and serve several times over, but what about when people just want to eat the orange? For people with modest incomes, a couple of pieces of fruit per day per family member starts to look like a real luxury. Especially when half the weight of the thing (rind, skin, pits, seeds) goes into the garbage.

Avocados lately here have also been approaching 2.00, and just for one, not one pound.  Once every few weeks a sale brings them down to .99 ea and that's when they sell. The rest of the time they sit and pucker, sit until they're worthless and have to be thrown out. Then a new batch changes them out, and the whole waste thing starts over again.

It seems crazy, and what is this about? No economist am I, but I have always heard that "prices will reflect what the market will bear." We're not talking organic food consumption here, which is so specialized and regulated at least there is some level of understanding about pricing. (But really? I don't know one family, outside of couples only, who can afford to eat largely organic---and there's something wrong with that picture, too.)

Another thing I've always heard is that pricing is of course related to supply and demand. Whatever a shortage is attributed to, if whatever's there is flying off the shelf at high pricing, that price is justified.

I definitely believe that supplies of produce are often affected by climate, but if people can't afford fruit in a good season, what happens then in a poor season?  More good fruit goes unsold, wasted.

I don't get this kind of marketing. One would think history makes a good teacher, but it rarely does. Human nature always seems willing to push the boundaries. Get the most one can while giving the least one can get away with. Risk the bottom falling out or the bubble bursting up top--and most of the while here call it the "American" way of enterprise.

I remember as a young child walking with my cousins alongside the orange groves that bordered my Grandma Rosa's property in Placentia, California. Distinct signs were plentiful in these orchards--warnings that anyone (aside from employees) caught picking an orange would be subject to prosecution with penalty of a $500.00 fine. We assumed this meant it didn't have to be off the tree, off the ground would apply too.

Even that scary penalty didn't make the fruit exciting and a challenge to partake of. That I know of, we cousins never risked those warnings. Why would we? Any one of us could go into our respective kitchens and always find good fruit. Some of us even had orange trees in our backyards.

In the marketplace, the penalty for the consumption of good fruit has evolved into a different kind of punishment. If you don't get much of anything out of something you've paid highly for, you feel taken.  The new "temptation" with this kind of "forbidden fruit" is a strange one. You WANT to resist it--pass it by,
don't pay the price. It isn't about the taste of it anymore, it's about making a statement. If bananas, grown out of this country and imported in, can be the generally most affordable fruit in the produce section, why can't other fruits grown here come close in everyday affordability? Is it really the cost of doing business "here" versus the cost of doing business "there"?

A conspiracy seems to be saying "Let them eat cake....." and maybe we should.