I walked up to one of those little food-sample kiosks at the grocery store the other day, where a lady was handing out a wedge of something on tiny paper plates. I didn’t know what she was doling out, but it didn’t matter because I have the discernment of a doberman when it comes to scarfing down free food samples at the grocery store.
“What is it?” I asked out the side of my mouth. The side that wasn’t chewing.
“It’s an English muffin,” she said. “Gluten-free.”
That last part caught me off guard, because at first I thought she might be a German lass offering me some kind of blessing in her native tongue. “Glutenfree” sounded like something you might say at an Oktoberfest biergarten as you clinked your sudsy stein with your neighbor’s while the band played oompah music.
But then I unraveled the words and figured out that I was gnawing a muffin that was untainted by gluten.
Whatever that is.
For the record, I have heard of gluten before — though I have no idea what it is, where it comes from, or why it is now considered the most dangerous substance on the planet. I think you could probably rob a bank, if you walked up to the teller and shoved over a note that said, “Fill this sack with money. I have gluten, and I’m not afraid to use it.”
Whatever its crimes against humanity, gluten has quickly jumped to become Public Enemy #1, which must come as a relief to all those other gastric terrorists, which all slide down a notch on the list. Like saturated fat … or unsaturated fat. Whichever one is the bad one. Carbs must be breathing easier now that gluten is the baddest deli dude in town.
The deglutinated muffin wasn’t bad, I have to admit. Not like some of the good-for-you dreck I’ve shoved in my mouth at grocery store kiosks. Veggie burgers. Soy breads. Ersatz “milk” that never squirted from a cow.
Oh, I still eat those things when they’re handed to me at grocery kiosks, because, as I say, I’m sort of dobermanly when it comes to free food. But sometimes I envy cats, because a cat will turn its nose up at pretty much anything you put in front of it. You’re not going to trick a cat into chowing down on tuna that’s been sucked hollow of its gluten.
Whatever that is.
I just hope our government is diligent at our gluten disposal sites, burying it under a mountain in Colorado and guarding it against terrorists who would love to steal it and dump it into our drinking water. But I’ve said too much already.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just nostalgic for the old days when we lived in ignorance of how terrifying the world really is. We strolled through grocery stores without first slathering antiseptic on cart handles previously mauled by the toxic hands of other shoppers. We sent kids out to ride their bikes without armoring them like NFL linebackers. We boarded airplanes without worrying if the guy sitting next to us might have the 16-ounce size of shampoo in his carry-on.
And the meals of that careless time? Good grief!
Mom insisted that you eat a good meal before you left the house, and that meant bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast for breakfast. With a big glass of creamy whole milk that coated the glass like Sherwin-Williams primer paint.
For lunch, a grilled cheese sandwich, with salty potato chips so oily you could use your napkin to lube a Chevy. And a Ho-Ho or Twinkie to top it off, with a freshness date deep into the next millennium.
For dinner, gravy-slathered steak and potatoes oozing with whole butter. Pie for dessert, with a crust made from lard.
That was “good eating,” because those were the kind of meals that June Cleaver fed Wally and the Beav. According to the gastric geometry of the day, square meals trumped food pyramids, hands down.
And — by coincidence — a good meal also tasted good.
But things have changed. Today, any mom who put food like that on the table would get a call from DCFS. I think it’s a felony in some states to serve enriched Wonder bread to a kid under the age of 18.
If you dare to treat your kid to a peanut, you’re asking for serious jail time if it isn’t dry roasted and unsalted.
Plop a greasy burger on the grill and you’re risking a demonstration on your lawn by skinny-legged vegans, chanting that you’re exposing them to second-hand cholesterol.
And most heinous of all, you’d probably find Chris Hanson stepping out of the pantry with a microphone and a Dateline NBC film crew if you gave your kid a dollop of gluten.
Whatever that is.
• Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
