Do you remember the last Barbara Crooker poem I shared, where her ailing mother refused to eat her food, but demanded marshmallow Peeps?
This craving for sweets seems to be common among the elderly. A good friend of ours with an incurable lung disease would always pick at her dinner, but had no trouble at all polishing off a big piece of coconut pie. I could always make her smile just by saying,”crème brûleé.”
When I saw my mother in Hawai’i last month, I noted her diminished appetite and drastic weight loss. She did enjoy my Christmas cookies, though, along with chocolate truffles, bread pudding, cranberry muffins, apple and lemon meringue pie, Chantilly cake. No coaxing needed when it came to dessert.
I’m convinced Judi Barrett wrote the first Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs book just for me. A story about edible precipitation, with mashed potato snow, hamburger storms and SOUP rain (forcryingoutloud) has my name written all over it, does it not? My toes still tingle when I read about the giant pancake that covered the school, and how the residents of ChewandSwallow set sail on rafts made from giant pieces of stale bread (holy peanut butter).
And then, some 19 years later, Ms. Barrett gifted me with Pickles to Pittsburgh. I swooned over the giant airlifted hot dogs and tuna fish sandwiches and a charitable world where “there is always enough food for everyone.”
Jama's Alphabet Soup 