There was a lively discussion at our table at Rotary this week. I don’t recall how we got on this topic, but one of the assistant district attorneys was explaining the moment at which she realized she was an adult.
This woman has two children and a husband, but it wasn’t until she was eating a Costco muffin, relishing that perfect, fluffy top, and then, holding the rest of the muffin in its little paper wrapper and making the intentional decision to throw that part away, “I do not have to clean my plate” style, that she had truly arrived at adulthood.
For me, it was Doritos. We didn’t really have junk food, or snack food, for that matter, when I was a kid. My mom was an amazing cook, and she fed us well. Homemade pancakes and homemade maple syrup for breakfast – there was no Aunt Jemima at our table. We would have roast and mashed potatoes and homemade bread and green beans and always a lovely homemade dessert.
But there were no snacks.
One of the staples in the Dahl House was taco salad. A magnificent production that required a 50-gallon drum for assemblage. I jest. But honestly, there was, and is, a special taco salad bowl, purchased specifically to hold a quantity of this delicacy sufficient for six kids (one of which went on to play in the NFL) and all their friends.
The importance of the taco salad bowl cannot be underestimated. There ended up being two – both came from Billie Jo’s store, one a beautiful deep blue ceramic work of art and one a brown enamelware fit for large church dinners in the most serious style of bible banging. When my mom downsized and retired there was a bit of maneuvering for those bowls between two of my sisters. Every sibling has a special taco salad bowl in their own home and always the grandchildren are gifted their very own taco salad bowl.
At any rate, I’ve digressed significantly… the point of the story is Doritos.
Teddy Ott’s mom taught my mom about taco salad one day in the yard as we swung by their house at the shop on the highway on the way home to our house on the Bench. In the familiar mom conversation between women raising passels of small children, Gail leaning against the open door of the Ford Pinto and my mom leaning out of the Mercury, they had the Great American Housewife conversation, “What are you making for dinner?”
I watched this exchange with fascination, taking detailed notes in my little six-year-old brain on how this banquet was produced. It is an art, the making of taco salad. One that requires the original buttermilk Hidden Valley Ranch dressing (and THAT is a story all its own) and the pinnacle itself – at the last moment, the addition of a bag of Doritos. Those scandalous pieces of junk food folded into a perfection of flavors. And the only time those things entered our home. We loved them so much. But they were not something that lived for long in the Dahl House and were always incorporated into our committee-made concoction. Imagine five girls in the kitchen at once assembling dinner and sneaking Doritos stealthily out of the bag. Mom finally started buying two at a time.
It was this that shaped me. I could not wait to grow up and move out so I could buy Doritos whenever I wanted.
And one day, that’s exactly what I did. When I got my own apartment for the first time, my shopping list was made up exclusively of Cracklin Oat Bran cereal, frozen raspberries, and Doritos.
So, while my own children realize their adulthood by the receiving of their personal taco salad bowls, we’ll be right here…
…Keeping you Posted
Rach
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