esrosedotblog

FRUITLESS

I have had a yen for fruitcake.

My first in many years.

I used to eat the whole thing. That was when I was running 50 miles a week.

Now, it would settle right at my waist line and not disappear for, well, an awful lot of daily workouts. To say nothing of the other foods I would have to give up to offset the calorie bomb of fruit cake.

But I have thought about it. Actually, this is the kind of thinking that settles in when you are in the middle or especially near the end of a long period of weight loss. Day dreams about sweet things. Food yens.

So, I looked today. There has always been fruitcake at the supermarket. When I was a kid it was made by A&P itself and later in the ACME bakeries I saw them make it.

But now, it is a pale shadow of its formal self. But still good.

So I looked for it today. I didn't find any.

I asked the checkout clerk and she phoned the boss who told her that the fruitcake came from Hostess Cakes, the Twinkie company that has gone out of business just to fuck over their union employees.

So no dice. No fruitcakes. No work for the bakery employees or the many truck drivers who made daily deliveries. Gone.

They think that someone will buy the brand and start baking the YoYos and RingDings and all. But I bet no one will come up with fruitcake.

It isn't very popular anymore.

John's mother always made us one. Every year. Even after I quit alcohol. There was a quart of rum in her cake.

She could never quite get the idea that the booze was in there and I couldn't have any.

The myth that it cooks out is pretty thin. Especially when she wrapped it in cloths soaked in the stuff. Not in the dough. On the cake.

I could make my own fruit cake but, if you watch this, you will see that it is a major exercise. And I only want one piece. A small one.

I did manage to get a fruit stollen. So there is something to look forward for tomorrow morning.

When I was a kid, again, way back then, my Dad would bring home the A&P brand fruit stollens that were left over every year. They started stale so they didn't get too stale over time.

Over the years there is only one fruit stollen that has ever come up to those. A loaf that came from a jewish bakery in Long Beach. Long closed down. The bakery. Not the stollen.

There is no other holiday food that I relish.

No equivalent to pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. I used to make mince pie but we used to cut a small piece and then just look at it as it sat on the plate. Soooooo rich.

I gave that up a while ago.

So stollen it is.

We aren't having any big meal either.

Bagels and lox. Cream cheese.

How is that for oppo programming. A jewish brunch item for a christmas dinner.

You gotta admit we are not in any way main stream around here.

Labels: holidays