Yes, I Am Attracted To Descriptions Of Food

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I didn't eat Chinese food while growing up in Vermont, though there was a Chinese restaurant in neighboring Rutland that had been there at least a generation, so Vermonters did eat it. Just not us. Then I saw The Misfortune Cookie episode of The New Twilight Zone. Not the Jordan Peel Twilight Zone, the one before that. The one very few people saw or know about. Anyway, The Misfortune Cookie which led me to try an egg roll offered as an appetizer in a nonChinese restaurant. And that was my gateway to Chinese food. I have some left over shrimp chow fun in the freezer now.

I can be enticed by food that isn't right in front of me.

So you can understand why I was interested in Betsy Bird's The Top Ten Most Disappointing Edibles And Potables Of Children's Literature in School Library Journal. And surprise! I have tried a couple of the foods she lists, because I'd read about them in a book.

Raspberry Cordial--I tried this while doing the Anne of Green Gables thing, because I was vacationing on Prince Edward Island. It was in the Anne of Green Gables bottle, which I kept for a little while. I actually did like it, but, yes, it was raspberry juice.

Turkish Delight--I know that at some point here at Original Content I have to have mentioned my long and not very stellar career as a Sunday school teacher. Toward the end of it, I was teaching a fifth- or sixth-grade class, which was like junior and senior year at our church. I decided I was going to enrich these kids' spiritual lives by bringing literature to them. I was going to read a bit of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis to them the weeks I taught, because I had read there was supposed to be something very Christian about the book.

Then I decided I would enrich the story I was reading them to enrich their spiritual lives by making them some Turkish Delight. I got done, looked at it, and said, "This can't be right."

I brought it into class, anyway. We all experienced a religious mystery.

I didn't get far with The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe reading, because I didn't understand what the big deal was. A girl in my class, whose mother was the director of Christian Education for our church so she knew things other kids, and maybe adults, didn't, explained to me that the lion is Jesus. Nonetheless, I quit the readings and nobody missed them.