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It
all started with the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in the spring
of 2020, and it's one of the few lingering effects of the experience
that hasn't tempted me to seek intense electroshock therapy.
You might be thinking that I gained a renewed sense of unity with
my wife and three teenage daughters — with whom I managed to
stay cooped up for several weeks without setting my hair aflame
and performing cartwheels naked down the street. (I kept my pants
on.) Or maybe you assume that I found a fresh appreciation for the
simple things in life — like good books, the great outdoors,
and an underground survival bunker stocked exclusively with toilet
paper.
While family unity and hoarding household paper products certainly
came into focus during quarantine, I developed a passion for something
else that has had an equally profound impact on my mental wellness
— namely dessert.
Because I wanted to stay out of my family's way and avoid winding
up in one of my daughters' TikTok videos, I spent a lot of time
alone in the kitchen (and not just secretly devouring Girl Scout
Cookies one plastic sleeve at a time). I decided it was high time
for me to learn to prepare some homemade treats that might lift
everyone's spirits and cholesterol levels.
Since then, I've become proficient with a couple of recipes that
are high in carbs, sodium and other ingredients that make food worth
eating. I even recently bought myself an apron — a black one
so that I can pretend to be The Pioneer Woman AND Batman at the
same time.
My personal favorite is an old-fashioned banana pudding recipe that
my grandmother used to make — to the delight of the family
and the detriment of our waistbands. I've learned that the secret
to great banana pudding is homemade vanilla custard, rather than
the inferior instant pudding mix from the box. It's important to
remember, though, that a high-quality custard requires constantly
stirring the mixture over low heat long enough to make you wish
you had just used the dang instant pudding mix from the box in the
first place.
Unfortunately, there has recently been a local shortage of a key
banana pudding ingredient, Nabisco's iconic Nilla Wafers, which
I'm sure is somehow Vladimir Putin's fault. He clearly doesn't understand
the relationship between artificially-flavored snack cookies and
world peace.
When I can't find the Nilla Wafer mother lode at Walmart, I often
turn to chocolate pie, which is especially popular with my wife
and daughters. In fact, they often accuse me of spoiling them, but
it's really that I just can't bear to think about a meal that doesn't
end with an excuse for me to spray aerosol whipped topping directly
into my mouth.
Of course, making chocolate pie from scratch requires a precise
measurement of Hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder. When I was a
boy child, I remember breaking into my grandmother's pantry and
sampling a generous spoonful, the bitter result of which was like
suddenly discovering that Santa Claus isn't real. (But since he
is real and I learned to make pie, everything's ok now.)
Making homemade desserts has opened up a whole new world of unhealthy
deliciousness to me and my family. And although my pie sometimes
caves in or my pudding doesn't set, I always find the strength to
power though the disappointment by eating the whole thing myself
— for the sake of my mental wellness . . . and world peace.
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