In Good Taste

I have a confession to make:  I love, absolutely LOVE, Cool Whip.  I keep it in my fridge all the time now to mix with my yogurt, and since I know I'm not going to be sharing it with anyone, I usually scoop out a spoonful into my yogurt cup...and then another (heaping) spoonful just to eat.  I know it's trashy---trashy behavior, and to many, trashy food.  Purists insist that only whipped cream is fit to eat. But I just can't help it; that light, creamy goodness is reminiscent of childhood and a world of recipes that I grew up with that featured it.   I've come to realize by dint of Cool Whip and other assorted delicacies that I just do not have the most sophisticated palate.  I'm OK with that, but it takes me down several pegs in the eyes of some of my more urbane friends.

It's more than just growing up on good Southern country food (fried, buttered, and oiled up in every imaginable way), although I have built my body on chicken-fried steak, Crisco, potatoes, and cheeseburgers.  No, this comes down to a few simple culinary rules:  (1) anything good will almost always be better with Velveeta in it, and (2) fat and sugar make even completely non-food items tasty.  I'd use a Twinkie as an example for that last one, but I loathe and despise them.  However, I feel pretty confident that there are no natural food products in them, yet their fans are legion.

Velveeta:  if you aren't a believer in this "processed cheese food," I don't know if I can ever truly understand the workings of your mind.  I think I've mentioned before that I didn't even know there was such a thing as macaroni and cheese in a box until I went to college, where Kraft mac and cheese is the foundation of the food pyramid along with Ramen noodles.  No, I only knew macaroni and cheese to be made with pasta, Velveeta, milk, butter, and a little salt and pepper.  It was my favorite vegetable for any meal.  Maybe it's not strictly vegetable, but it's closer to that than it is to meat.  I can't count the number of casseroles I knew how to make when I was younger that featured Velveeta as a main ingredient, accounting for my great love of casseroles even now, though I don't make them anymore.  Nachos?  Use Velveeta.  Crockpot full of cheese and Ro-Tel?  Velveeta.  Hashbrown casserole?  Velveeta to the max.  Anything Mom made with it, I would volunteer to cut it up so I could sneak a few cubes, since we weren't allowed to eat it just by itself.  Bad for ya?  Oh, yeah---I estimate I have approximately 23 pounds of Velveeta in my arteries alone.  Still, that melting, bubbling golden nugget of oily deliciousness will draw me in every time.

Fat and sugar:  witness my family's favorite cake, the chosen birthday cake of almost all of us, the red velvet cake.  We do NOT denigrate this food of the gods with cream cheese icing, though we love that, too.  No, the frosting for this cake is the original recipe, a cooked-pudding frosting of Crisco and milk that has to cool before you mix in the sugar and create a pure crystal-fluff blanket of lard and sugar to complement the not-so-sweet cake.  Nothing compares to it!  My best friend's mother used to get her to eat brussel sprouts by pouring sugar on them.  How much did the green accomplish with the sugar along for the ride?  I will myself only really stoop to eating vegetables---okra, squash, tomatoes---if they're coated in cornmeal or flour and fried in a good oil.

I know that at the very least, my tastes in food are childish, and at best, well, they're better than when I was a child.  I know I'm a country bumpkin and not stylish in my choices.  I know I have no business at a meal that uses more than two forks in the place setting.  I know I'm never going to be a culinary pioneer.

Just bring me a corndog and shut up about it already.  BTW, don't eat out of the Cool Whip bowl in my fridge.