Single-Minded: An Independent Journal of Fact and Opinion

When I was a child, Easter was always my favorite holiday for one reason: food. My mother would make bread in all shapes and sizes, from intricately braided loaves to round buns with a hard-boiled egg in the center. She would begin with a clear counter space and then begin forming a mound of flour, yeast, salt, butter, eggs, and milk. When the mound seemed to have reached some degree of proportion clear only to her inner eye, she would vigorously knead and shape the dough until, voilá, a beautifully rounded loaf emerged from beneath her fingers.

The crown jewel of these culinary treasures was the lamb cake. My mother had special cake molds in the shape of a lamb in repose. She would make a white cake batter and pour it into the bottom half of the mold. The upper half of the mold would then be put into place and the whole thing would go into the oven for baking. Once the baking process was completed, the molds would be carefully removed so as not to split the cake. Once the cake was cooled, it would be slathered with a thick layer of white frosting. Atop this frosting would be applied a layer of coconut. Finally, she would add two small raisins for eyes and a thin piece of apricot to form a smile of such serene inscrutability as found only in the Mona Lisa.

Memory is so peculiar and selective. Whole decades of my life are a blur. I can't remember what I did last weekend, but that little smile on the lamb cake remains vivid and clear in my mind's eye. Wherever it is that we keep such things tucked away, nestled among the neurons, that place remains secure from the ravages of time.

While we are on the subject of food, let's talk about dieting. My daughter recently went through a flirtation with these new protein-rich and carbohydrate poor diets. Whole shelves have mysteriously populated themselves with books trumpeting the evils of carbohydrates. It all has something to do with insulin, which is triggered by sugar from carbohydrates, and which in a defensive reaction bred from millions of years of living on the edge of starvation, triggers the body to store fat, just in case another ice age comes along.

The problem with this diet is simple. Anything worth eating is made from carbohydrates. I can't think of a single food that I really enjoy that isn't dense-packed with carbohydrates. Pasta. Bread. Bagels. Pies. Cereal. Donuts. Yogurt. The list is endless. After a week or so of carbohydrate deprivation, we both said to hell with it. Food is too important to be left in the hands of a bunch of nutritional gurus, who, after all, were only last year singing the praises of pasta. Yes indeed, I will have my lamb cake and eat it, too.

April 1999