MEALS THAT MADE ME, PART I

I am sitting in front of a bowl, a spoon, a box, and a bottle, and I’m beginning to break out in just a wee bit of a cold sweat. To understand this predicament, we must journey back a ways, to a Saturday morning on Blix Street in North Hollywood, California, sometime in the summer of 1966. If you were lucky enough to be a child in the sixties, you know how magical Saturday mornings were. In a time before iPads, iPhones, game consoles, DVDs, VCRs, back when streaming was something water did, there was, for those of us fortunate enough to have one: the TV. My father worked in the business, so we actually had two, an RCA color set in the living room, which I wasn’t allowed to touch, and a smaller black-and-white Zenith in the den, which I was allowed to touch. And on Saturday mornings, that set was all mine.

There were only three major networks back then, and on Saturdays they all showed cartoons from early morning clear into the afternoon. I would sit and twist the big knob, jumping from favorite to favorite: Magilla Gorilla, The Flintstones, Secret Squirrel, Mighty Mouse, The Jetsons, even the Beatles had a cartoon in ’66. It was heaven. You had to sit close, of course, to keep the channel selector on the panel within reach, and to hear the audio, which you kept super low because that was part of the contract you honored to keep your parents out of the room. (Lord knows how many rads my contemporaries and I absorbed.) Speaking of absorption, kids like us literally marinated in thousands of hours of corporate messaging, and back then commercials were free to infect our gullible little minds with all nature of claims, promises, and foolishness. As a result, my generation learned to covet thirty seconds at a time.

No Saturday morning commercial held more sway than those for sugar-saturated breakfast cereals like Froot Loops, Lucky Charms, Apple Jacks, Quisp, Quake, Cornados, Mr. Waffles, Sugar Smacks, Cocoa Puffs, and Cap’n Crunch. All such commercials featured cartoon characters, and typically tempted us with prizes and toys hidden in every nutrition-packed box. Of all of these, the Cap’n was my favorite. You see, even then I understood that pleasure is best when punctuated with a dash of pain, and often scraped those abrasive little pillows across the roof of my mouth before allowing them to break apart and dissolve in a flood of saliva and sucrose.

Truth is, this was not my strangest food habit… not by a long shot. By the time I was three I’d developed what I’d call UFA: unorthodox flavor appreciations. For instance, my parents socialized in a highly vibrant manner, and I recall many an evening lying on the floor of my room, trying to peek under the door at the living room, alive with the tinkle of martinis being shaken, and the laughter of adults having a better time than I’ve ever had as an adult. I can still smell the cigarettes—another guilty pleasure of the past. Anyway, in the morning light, I would creep out into the realm of grown-ups and sniff whatever was left in the myriad glasses littering the room (my folks wouldn’t clean up until the Alka-Seltzer kicked in the next day). If it smelled of Band-Aids, specifically those housed in the hinge-topped, metal boxes commonly found in mid-century medicine cabinets, I drank it. Little did I know what I was drawn to was the aroma of orthocresol, aka CH3C6H4, a phenol also found in peat, the acidic remains of decomposed vegetation commonly found in bogs, and burned in the malting process, especially of Islay whiskies like Lagavulin or Laphroaig, which I was clearly enjoying before heading off to kindergarten, where the teachers often noted that I was “slow.” Ah, the price of pleasure.

I also developed an early affinity for Gaines-Burgers dog food, produced by General Foods from 1961 until sometime in the 1990s. Each individually cellophane-wrapped Gaines-Burger was manufactured to resemble a raw hamburger patty, and I adored them, often trading whatever human food I had to the dog in exchange for its meaty goodness. I swear I can still taste those wonderful pucks and would hit one right now if it were in front of me.

The point is, when it came to culinary matters, I was by no means normal.

Back to Saturday morning. I’m watching this Cap’n Crunch commercial, about halfway through Mighty Mouse, and I think, Hey, I want some cereal. The little angel on my right shoulder (or would that be left) says,

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“Wait for Mom to get breakfast for you, you’ll get in trouble.”

“Don’t be a baby. You’re a big boy… You don’t need Mom. Get your own damn cereal,” says the devil on the opposing shoulder.

Why shouldn’t I get my own? I am a big boy. So, at the next commercial break, I toddle out to the kitchen, climb up on the stool, and get down the box of the Cap’n. I fetch my favorite bowl and spoon and head to the refrigerator for milk.

There isn’t any… damn. Ah… but the milkman.

I open the back kitchen door where two squared-off quart bottles await. I retrieve said containers, noting that they are identical, except that one sports a blue lid, the other green. The green looks prettier, so I go with that, using a spoon to pry off the foil top.

My eyes were squarely on Mighty Mouse, or, more specifically, his girlfriend, Pearl Pureheart, the only mouse who ever made me tingle inside. Without looking, I dig the spoon into the waiting goodness and then into my mouth.

To this day, I can only equate the sensation of what I tasted to being short-sheeted. Remember the first time, probably at camp, when you tried to get into a short-sheeted bed? If you’d never experienced it, it was as though God had reached down and rewritten the codes of reality. You keep pushing your feet in, but… Well, that first bite was like that. Everything my brain had been trained to expect was obliterated as my senses were inundated with the vile, gloppy, sour, hideous, disjointed, discordant cacophony of flavors occupying my mouth. I retched. I gagged. I spit. I gagged some more and shoved the bowl away, betrayed by all I thought I knew, recognizing now that the world was a dangerous and treacherous place.

My innocence was gone.

Would I ever be able to trust again?

Doubtful.

But now the important part: why this big bowl of bad qualifies as a meal that changed me, and to some degree made me who I am. As I calmed myself, and the shock passed, my revulsion was slowly supplanted by a morbid curiosity, which then grew into a strange compulsion. Yes, obviously the milk was horribly bad, possibly tainted, perhaps dangerous. And yet…

I went back to the bowl of ruined breakfast and tasted it again. Slowly this time. The scratchy pillows of cereal enrobed in a viscous sourness that prompted a rush of saliva, which in turn helped to break down the cereal, which then took up arms against the sourness and, though it did not vanquish it, there was, after several slo-mo mastications: balance, perhaps even détente. Though I knew I didn’t like it any more than I had the first time, I could begrudgingly respect it, maybe even appreciate its alienness, an acquired taste, like scotch.

Later that morning, my parents laughed and laughed, then schooled me on something called “buttermilk.” When I questioned the justification for its existence, my mother poured a glass and drank it.

I would have to keep a close eye on her in the future.

Time passed as it always does, and I eventually learned that this white devil juice was the secret to my grandmother’s ethereal biscuits. Eventually, I came to wield buttermilk’s power, not only in baked goods, but in soups, sauces, mashed potatoes, batters, and even a beverage or two. But I’ve never really trusted it, have never consumed it on its own, and certainly have never again put it atop a perfectly innocent breakfast cereal.

And so here I sit, in 2024, a bowl, a spoon, a box, and a bottle before me, and I’m beginning to break out in just a wee bit of a cold sweat. But the Cap’n awaits, and I know I must… I mean, I really should, shouldn’t I? As a culinary adventurer, must not I go “once more unto the breach”?

[Three minutes later.]

First, I am shocked by how un-strange this is. The first bite reminds me that it’s been a very long time since I’ve consumed Cap’n Crunch, and my taste-memory suggests the recipe has changed considerably over the decades. The buttermilk, though high in quality, is sour yet somehow simple, lacking the funk of my original bête blanche. But I have tasted a lot of challenging culinary combinations in the years since that fateful Saturday morning, and this just isn’t really that bad in comparison. I have three more spoonfuls. Hmm. This has possibilities.

Next, I dice half a Pink Lady apple and add it to the bowl along with about a quarter cup of grated Tillamook cheddar cheese. I then add half a cup of Cap’n Crunch and, finally, about four ounces of the buttermilk. I stir thoroughly, then leave to rest for three minutes… You know… to let the flavors meld, as they say.

I eat the entire bowl. Next time I may add a slight dusting of tamarind salt.

And so, I finally find closure to one of my more harrowing culinary experiences; not only can I now turn my back trustingly on a carton of buttermilk, I have just cause to start buying Cap’n Crunch again.

Wait… Maybe a pinch of garam masala instead of the tamarind.

I’ll work on it and get back to you.