Burned and Hot Offering
Habits formed early tend to stick.
In my senior home, a waiter comes around with a large basket of fresh-baked rolls each noontime.
I ask him if he has a dark roll, one too long in the oven?
He roots around in the basket with his tongs and produces an overbaked one.
He places it on a saucer and slides it to my place at the table.
I peel back the top layer and heel. Then remove and discard the soft center.
I butter the dark crusts and crunch down for a delicious snack.
When I do this ritual, my mind flashes back to my childhood, where a similar habit occurred.
Each morning my widowed mother would put slices of bread in the oven to toast. Then she would forget them.
When the oven began to smoke, she would remember and pull out the scorched bread.
I would hear, Scrape, scrape, scrape. It was my mother trying to get the burned bread eatable again.
"Mom, please leave the scorched bread unscraped and serve it to me."
With a light spread of margarine on the bread, I bit down. The scorched bread had a nutty taste. I liked the taste. From that time forward, I ate the over-cooked bread every morning.
I still like the taste of burned bread. True, I eat roll crusts with butter now instead of scorched bread with margarine, but the idea is the same.
At my age two, we visited a family in the country. While wandering in the backyard, I spotted a large bush with bright red attachments. Red meant candy to me. I plucked one of the temping red attachments and chomped down.
Great Fire and Brimstone! It was Hot beyond belief!
I ran to the house and searched for my mothers' skirt. Found it and pulled it repeatedly until she stopped talking and looked down at me. I was crying, "Wawa, Wawa, Wawa." I was demanding water. My mouth was burning from the red peppers.
Ever after, I do not use pepper, even the modest black pepper in a shaker.
Childhood preferences hang onto you into adulthood and even old age.
No one makes adverse remarks about my taste preference anymore.
Other people in my senior home say to one another, “just ignore him, he is an old fuddy-duddy with odd habits.”
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