Saint Marty wishes his faithful readers (all two of them) a blessed and joyous new year!
Gloop
Christmas
by: Martin Achatz
I never liked Charlie Bucket when I
was a kid. He was too skinny. Too desperate. The illustrations of him in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were
in black-and-white and reminded me of the Great Depression stories my dad used
to share at the dinner table. My
siblings and I would be turning up our noses at some dish my mother had
prepared (usually involving liver or cabbage), and my father would launch into
some tale of poverty, saying, “When I was a kid…” And I would picture him as Charlie Bucket on
a street corner, begging for a nickel to purchase a magical chocolate bar
wrapped in gold foil. As my father
spoke, guilt settled on me like a hard snow.
It almost made me want to consume the sauerkraut or haggis on my dinner
plate. Almost.
Thankfully, I never had to
experience the kind of deprivation my father or Charlie Bucket had to
endure. My idea of deprivation was
having to eat Rice Krispies instead of Lucky Charms for breakfast. When I read Roald Dahl’s book, I identified
much more closely with another Golden Ticket winner: Augustus Gloop. Gloop was the ultimate candy hedonist, eating
anything and everything that contained or was coated in chocolate. The illustrations of Augustus were a little
off-putting. He resembled Jabba the Hut
Jr. No neck. Folds of skin rippling off him like tsunamis
after an earthquake. However, I knew
that, if I were let loose in the chocolate room of Willy Wonka’s factory, I
would be on my hands and knees at the river, right next to Augustus, lapping up
the liquid chocolate like a thirsty bison.
Writer Steve Almond coined a term
for people like Augustus Gloop and me.
We are candyfreaks. As kids,
candyfreaks categorize and hoard candy.
For example, at Halloween time, I had several tiers for my confectionary
booty. In the top tier were all
chocolate products—Milky Way and Twix and Hershey and M&Ms. In the next tier fell chocolate products that
tried to sneak in healthy ingredients—things like Chunky bars with their
raisins and Snickers with their peanuts.
Anything chocolate that left an aftertaste not derived from the cocoa
bean ended up in this category. Tier
three consisted of gummy and taffy products. JuJu Fruits and Swedish Fish and Gummi bears
and Laffy Taffy. This ilk of candy stuck
to my teeth and wreaked havoc with dental work.
The bottom tier was filled with the most loathsome treats—Smarties or
jawbreakers or Lemonheads. Hard candies
requiring patience and persistence and a great deal of mouth work. I have always been a chewer, not a sucker.
Steve Almond identifies Halloween
as the High Holy Day of the candyfreak year.
I disagree with him. While I’m
not against the spoils of All Hallow’s Eve, there’s a certain aspect of quality
control that has always bothered my Gloop nature. People are not picky about trick-or-treat
candy. Over the years, the chocolate
bars have gotten smaller and the Sweet Tarts more prolific. By the second week of November, Halloween
candy stashes start emitting a sugary vapor that almost makes me want to throw
out the remaining Tootsie Rolls and Jolly Ranchers. Almost.
With all due respect to Mr. Almond,
I would like to make a case for Christmas as the pinnacle of the
candyfreak/Gloop holidays. While an
argument could be made for Easter (with its chocolate bunnies and Cadbury Cream
Eggs), I can’t go along with this line of thought for one simple reason: Peeps.
Any holiday that has as its centerpiece a sugar-coated marshmallow that
tastes like crude oil should be automatically disqualified from
consideration. Valentine’s Day is
ineligible because it is the equivalent of a middle school dance. The “popular” kids are out on the gym floor,
swaying to a Journey song and exchanging cardboard hearts stuffed with
chocolate creams, while the wallflowers are left in the bleachers, drooling and
hungry and unsatisfied. Thus, by
default, Christmas wins.
At the beginning of Frosty the Snowman, Jimmy Durante
explains the difference between a regular first snow and a Christmas first
snow. There’s something special, even
magical, about Christmas snow, Durante explains. The same can be said about Christmas
sweets. They hold a certain power that
Halloween or Easter sweets do not. When
a plate of homemade Christmas cookies is placed in front of me, I find myself
impelled to try confections I wouldn’t give a second look any other time of
year. I have even been known to nibble
on snowballs, which are cookies rolled in powdered sugar and coconut. Steve Almond correctly describes the
experience of eating coconut as akin to chewing on cuticles. Coconut should be banished from all chocolate
and baked goods. Mr. Almond and I agree
on this point. During the yuletide
season, however, even my aversion to this ingredient takes a holiday. Everything tastes good at Christmas.
And everybody has a signature
Christmas creation. My Grandma Hainley
had a chocolate chip cookie recipe she took to her grave. My sister, Sally, makes pizzelles, an Italian
waffle cookie that is so delicate and light I can eat two dozen of them in one
sitting and still have room for a ham sandwich and a mug of hot cocoa. One of the reasons I married my wife was her
Christmas buckeye. I’m not generally a
huge fan of peanut butter, but my wife’s buckeyes are the Gloop equivalent of
crystal meth. I have been known to sneak
out of bed in the middle of the night to get my buckeye fix. I even get a little panicky when my daughter
puts a buckeye with Santa’s plate of cookies on Christmas Eve. I’ve lied to her, saying, “Santa has a severe
nut allergy, sweetheart. We don’t want
the big guy going into anaphylactic shock in the middle of our living room.”
My specialty is brickle. It’s a candy of my own creation. Part milk chocolate almond bark, part
Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts, part Heath toffee, part crispy rice, it has been
known to cause riots at family gatherings.
I have been asked for my recipe on more than one occasion. However, the recipe seeker stares at me like
I’m a member of the Manson family when I describe my brickle-making
process. “The almond bark and paraffin
should pour like brown silk,” I say, “and, when you mix it with the other
ingredients, it should sound like wet cement.”
I can’t provide exact measurements.
I work by instinct, the way Grandma Moses worked in oils or my best
friend in college worked in marijuana.
It’s all about brush strokes or soil humidity. No one has been able to duplicate my brickle,
despite my attempts to pass on my secrets to several apprentice Oompa Loompas.
Of course, Gloop Christmas is not
limited to homemade creations. There are
several products that start appearing soon after Halloween that, for me, mark
the official beginning of the holidays.
Eggnog, thick and yellow and sweet.
White fudge Oreos, which compete with my wife’s buckeyes for supremacy
in my heart. And my latest
discovery: Extra Creamy Hershey
Chocolate Bells. Generally, regular
Hershey’s chocolate ranks as the Thunderbird or Boone’s Farm of my candyfreak
addictions. It’s good for a cheap, quick
thrill. Hershey Christmas Bells,
however, come from a whole different chocolate wine cellar. Smooth and a little nutty, they have the
staying power of a Godiva truffle or Ghiradelli dark square. And they taste even better chilled or
frozen. Put them on top of peanut butter
blossoms, and I’d sneak away to a cheap motel with them for a weekend.
There is one Christmas candy
product that I have been dreaming about my entire adult life. At Easter time, the shelves at Wal-Mart and
Target are lined with hollow chocolate rabbits.
From the cheap Palmer variety to the more upscale Russell Stover kind,
these bunnies all provide a singular thrill.
Whether I start with the ears or tail or feet, I know what will happen
with my first bite. The chocolate lepus
will crumble between my lips, and I will taste the air trapped inside. As a child, I always thought that air tasted
like Lent, full of sin and guilt and the promise of redemption.
The Christmas equivalent of this
Easter staple would be a chocolate manger scene. It doesn’t exist, although it seems like a
no-brainer to me. Chocolate shepherds
and sheep. Cows and camels. Angels and magi. I imagine picking up a chocolate donkey and
biting into it, the air inside tasting of desert and rock and thirst. Or sinking my teeth into Joseph’s head and
finding fear and courage and strength.
Or wrapping my lips around Mary’s hands and feeling the chocolate give
way to surrender and faith. And the
Golden Ticket of Christmas: a chocolate
baby Jesus, small and fragile.
I would place that tiny manger on
my tongue, letting it slowly melt, flooding my mouth with hope, expectation,
joy, and love for a world without Great Depressions and hunger and want. An Augustus Gloop world. A world filled with buckeyes and Hershey Bells
and Christmas brickle.
The Frog Princess
by: Martin Achatz
In the
photograph,
She stares
at his pickle skin,
Cold and
slick as marsh mud,
Smells
mosquito and fly
On his
breath, the days of summer
When only
insect and amphibian
Dance
under the sun’s thick heat.
She thinks
of kissing him,
Pressing
her lips to his,
Whispering
what she wants
Most to
his invisible ears:
The boy,
with hair so blonde it glows,
To swing
with her on the playground;
Her mother
to help her figure out
How many
nickels make a dollar;
Her father
to comb and braid
Her hair
after a winter bath;
Her infant
brother to reach out,
Touch the
freckles on her cheek;
The frog
to dive deep into the well,
Bring back
a Christmas ornament,
Gold,
round, perfect.
I want to
tell her it’s not that simple.
Caterpillars
don’t just blaze
Into
stained-glass wings,
Pinecones
into evergreens.
Flippers
don’t sprout fingers, hands,
Arms to
hold her, keep her safe.
There’s
nature. Evolution.
Spawn. Egg.
Tadpole. Froglet. Frog.
No prince.
But she
knows that snow falls in June,
Rainbows
slice thunderheads,
Hens
shimmer into peacock,
Angels
appear to girls.
Love can
grow in swamp clay.
She
watches, waits for the frog
To swell,
open, stretch, blossom
Into
something that will break her heart.
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