Raisins

 Raisin

There are people who really won’t eat a raisin. I’ve never seen them object to a grape, or a glass of wine, or a sun-dried tomato, but the raisin inspires a gag of revulsion from some people, two of them my raisin-hating relatives.

There are other shriveled foods, like, as I said, the tasty sun-dried tomato or the sugar-coated pretender the Craisin® or beef jerky or apricot fruit leather. Raisins, usually being almost black, do have the both shriveled appearance and the blackness to surmount. The blackness of raisins means that they might appear to be an errant rock or burnt bit, and makes them easy to identify and pick out. They are minimally processed and so lack the uniformity of beloved foods, like the shapely whip and twist of RedVines® (all the same length), or the sculptability of mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese, or the colored domes of the trendy fancy macarons or even old school Fig Newtons or Oreos or any doughnuts really. Perfect, uniform food appeals to the particular palate and the infantile. “No,” screams the toddler, “I want it the SAME.”

So raisins. Wrinkly. Shriveled. Black. Big ones, small ones, occasionally long ones. Sometimes in one of those tiny boxes of Sun-Maid™ raisins you get one that’s shrunken to the point of seeming a first cousin of gravel. Not so nice. Lots of little kids hate them, though a few little kids recognize that raisins are mostly sugar in a little black chewy shrunken nubbin. The rest pick them out of oatmeal cookies, pick them off of otherwise gooey and completely delicious cinnamon rolls, and leave them on the table, on the napkin, in their hair, on their clothes, on the side of the plate, on the floor for the dog. The dog will eat the raisins, though grapes and raisins and onions and chocolate are all pretty toxic for dogs. Dogs don’t care. Dogs are happy to eat toxic things. If a toddler drops it, or a ten year old drops it, or an adult sneaks it under the table, a dog will eat it.

They put raisins in the traditional Moroccan tagine at Barbes, a midtown New York City restaurant. This place is a few blocks from the temporary apartment we moved to when we first got to New York, and so we ate there a few times and had a lovely meal even when they lost their Grade A and had to be Grade Pending and then even spent a few weeks as Grade B. These things happen. We kept going there, the Maître D’ kept opening the door to us, we kept ordering couscous and scalding hot sweet mint tea that they pour from as high up as they can reach and oh so delicious traditional tagine. But when my sister in law--a real live adult who saves people’s fucking lives—came to town and we met up with her there, she wouldn’t eat anything that might have raisins in it. I don’t even know how she knew to ask.

I think raisins are offered to young children and that is where the revulsion begins. My solution when my children were young and I still did things like bake cookies on a regular basis was to use golden raisins that are softer and lovelier and easily disguised within the texture of an oatmeal cookie.  But people will still ask, “Do these have RAISINS in them?”

I think the main problem that raisins have is the apparent consensus of their peers: most little kids hate raisins, and will complain about raisins being in things, and once the crowd has declared itself anti-raisin, that’s it.  They’re wrong, of course. Raisins are yummy. Oh well, more for me.

A Pluto Story: Corn on the Cob, and Other Eating Disasters

Pluto story #4 was supposed to cover all of the most disgusting things Pluto did. I realize in retrospect that there were many other disgusting things he did, and I share some more of them here.

Pluto bolted his food. We tried kibble, which he seemed to suck into his mouth and swallow in four chews. We tried canned food, which we carefully spread to the edges of his dish, and he seemed to suck it into his mouth and swallow in one motion. In the end, we found that adding hot water to his food made him slow down and savor it in six or eight mouthfuls.

He willingly ate any food, and even things that seemed like food, like PlayDo, modeling clay, crayons, and scented soap. Often, we would not discover that he’d eaten something until it came out the other end. Crayons and modeling clay pass through a dog with color and texture intact. Expensive scented soap turns into a massive, grey mucous-covered substance that makes me ill to think about.

Pluto loved beer, and barked when beer was opened until he was given a small amount in his dish. He also loved broccoli, so much so that he clamored for the water the broccoli was cooked in—what we called broccoli water. Broccoli water was usually still hot, and would elicit growling sounds from the dog, head down in a big saucepan. You could amplify the sound, and vary the pitch by poking him in the ribs while he drank it. Our current Vizslas do not understand why we sometimes absent-mindedly offer them the pot of broccoli water.

Once, at the end of a big family meal, my brother asked me whether he could give Pluto the ear of corn left over from his young daughter’s nibbling.  I had a charming mental image of a dog quietly gnawing the ear while he steadied it between the paws. I thought it was a great idea. Sure! Give Pluto the ear of corn. Pluto swallowed it in two or three bites.

It took a few days, but the corn cobs needed to be barfed up, since they would not break down and come out the normal route.