The Fat Diaries: What Summer Tastes Like
Well I just got back from a week at the Outer Banks. I brought back some lovely memories, a wicked sunburn and a tiki mug shaped like a dinosaur. I call him "drinkasaurus-rex." I also brought back a pound of fudge and saltwater taffy.
I bought the taffy because that’s what you DO at the beach. You buy a giant box of saltwater taffy and you bring it to work (my weekly Tangent Artists meeting). You plop the box down and smile while everyone cries, “Ooh! Saltwater taffy!” and eats a piece. They’ll each eat, maybe, ten pieces and then they’re done with it. The box will sit on some abandoned shelf for four months until it gets cleared out to make room for everyone’s Halloween candy that they’ve confiscated from their kids.
I’ll talk about workplace snacking later, but right now I want to talk about summer food. To tell the truth, I’m only so-so when it comes to my love for saltwater taffy. I seldom think about it unless I’m at the beach. There’s never been a cold March day when I’ve sat up in my chair and declared, “I could really go for some taffy right now, especially fake purple grape flavored taffy!” Yet, when I’m at the beach it becomes an all-consuming need. I get anxious if the vacation is almost at an end and I have yet to purchase that 2lb box of sugary nuggets that are as tasty as their wax wrappings.
Now that we’ve been home for a week, I’m staring at this box and wondering WHY? Why did I feel compelled to buy all this junkfood, which I generally avoid? Okay the fudge I got because I ate the free sample (which was delicious), we had a coupon, and it will stay good for 800 million years. But why the taffy?
I pop a piece in my mouth (just one for research, I swear! I’ll take the rest to work!) and let the salty, sweet taste wash over my tongue. I savor the soft, adhesive texture as it clings mercilessly to my molars and refuses to budge keeping the flavor in my mouth just a little longer. I suddenly realize why I felt the urge to buy this cloying yet oddly satisfying confection. In the 30 seconds it took me to eat it, I became a kid again.
I suddenly had vivid memories of various beaches in Virginia, Oregon, England and Delaware. I hear the cry of seagulls and the roar of the surf. I see a range of skies, some grey and cloudy with a light drizzle, some blue and baking, sometimes a glowing red sunset. I’m a kid in water wings, or I’m sixteen and wearing my first bikini after I snuck away from my mother to buy it. I’m an awkward, chubby preteen trying to hide under my voluminous coverup or I’m trying to stay cool while sporting a six-month baby-bump.
I recall the time I bought my first peasant blouse. I remember playing with my brothers in the sand, trying to make the world’s biggest sandcastle. I remember pretending I was Anne Shirley on the shores of Prince Edward Island. I remember looking over the ocean and composing lousy poems about dolphins and mermaids, or wondering how I could include the ocean in my novels.
And of course, I remember the taffy. I remember the free samples. I remember fighting over who got the chocolate ones and who didn’t want the banana ones. I remember the day my brother and I discovered that talking with taffy in your mouth made you sound like you were drunk. Of course, we pretended to be drunk for the rest of the vacation. We still joke about that to this day, and when I see him at the meeting this week, and he eats his first piece, I’ll remind him of it.
When I buy saltwater taffy, I’m not buying the wonders of aerated sugar-water. I’m buying my childhood. I’m buying that rush of nostalgia that I get every time I unwrap and bite into a piece. It’s all well and good, but it’s an opportunity to pack on more pounds than I need. I started thinking about all the so-called summer foods and wondered if, maybe I wasn’t alone. After all smell (which is closely tied to taste) is the strongest sense tied to memory, right?
You remember the foods of summer? Watermelon, funnel cakes, ice cream cones, freezer pie, caramel apples, cotton candy, footlong corndogs, boardwalk fries, piña coladas, macaroni salad, and those bathtub-sized cups of lemonade that you get at the carnival – the ones made with one part water and one part sugar and occasionally a lemon. The list goes on, of course; it all depends on your childhood. But how many of us adults eat all this stuff, not because we’re hungry for food, but because we’re hungry for those long lost summer memories? I probably ate all of the above in a single day when I was twelve, but I frankly can’t do that anymore.
I can’t handle the sugar, for one thing. I eat three pieces of cotton candy and the world starts to spin until I can find a place to lie down. I also respect my body a little more than to stuff 3,000 calories of grease and sugar into it. And while my adult stomach doesn't’ have the storage capacity of a twelve-year-old, it also isn’t made of cast iron like a twelve-year-old. When my kids want me to go on the spinny teacups after all that I’d much prefer my stomach to be empty.
Now that I’m aware of this I plan to take it a little easier on the flashback-food. If I find that I absolutely must have the sensory nostalgia of a funnel cake or a nutty drumstick, I’m going to have to exercise a little willpower and offer to share it. There’s no reason I can’t partake a little, after all it’s fun to relax a little in the summer. But I can get those memories back with a taste or a few bites, just as easily as I can by scarfing down the whole shebang. Except for watermelon. You can pretty much go nuts with that.
My coworkers will still have to suffer the wrath of my saltwater taffy, though. I don’t want all that candy in my house.
