gastronomical mischief

When I was a youngster, I worked at a grocery store. I would come home and make the same snack I did every night at 9:30 pm... three baloney sandwiches on white bread with a slice of lettuce and a hot jalapeno out of a jar. It was a habitual feast. Also about that time that I discovered the microwave and american cheese. I knew my mother would frown upon this act, so I always cooked this up in the afternoons when no one was home... one slice of american cheese food on a saucer, placed in the microwave until the cheese food bubbles up and begins to turn a dark orange. Like magic, it's a giant Cheezit! Sometimes I would scrape it off the saucer before it completely cooled down and hardened and eat it with both fists like a giant mouse. This habit of food/play may be genetic, as I discovered when eliciting a confession from my dad about his favorite weirdo snack... a fistful of soda crackers (soda?!) and a thick slice of cheddar on each cracker topped by copius shavings from a raw garlic clove. No one sleeps well at his house on those evenings. I also have on my kitchen counter a jar of "caramel taffee" that my dad made with raw sorghum molasses, butter, sweetened condensed milk and an old pan, and way too much free time. My brother has always been a "blender freak" adding bits of this and that out of the freezer and mixing it up (this was way before smoothies were cool, or even had a name). I also caught him mixing all of my dad's aftershave into a bowl and rebottling it to come up with new "essences". This odd bit of familial alchemy even stretches to my mother, who used to eat old cornbread in a glass of milk for dinner, or would go for a week straight eating raisin & shaved-carrot salad with poppy-seed dressing. The only notable breach of trust I can remember commiting as a youngster was a year in the late 1970's, when I was in charge of putting the "glazed donuts" in the oven (no microwave at that time). These "glazed donuts" would have a nice sugary goo on them when I pulled them from the freezer. I did what every good 12-year-old boy would do: licked all the glaze off before putting them in the oven to bake.