A Holiday Conundrum

Ms. Manners needed to assist gift recipients of dyed, artificial, preserved and shelf stable food items!

Editor's note: In December, member Donna Holman called me, suggesting we write a newsletter column on howto deal with food gifts that are at odds with the sensibilities of "natural-foodies," i.e., most Wedge shoppers. Now,I am not a natural foods Ms. Manners, but I have received exactly the same sort of gifts Ms. Holman describes and have faced the same question. After a chat, I suggested that Donna was the person to write the article she was asking for, and she obliged. We welcome letters from you about your experiences with food gifts from well-meaning friends and relatives. -Elizabeth

This past Christmas my nephew, a charming fellow in his 20s, was hoping to show his Christmas spirit. He gave our daughter a Betty Crocker children's cookie kit. We tried to give him our Minnesota nice smiles as we looked at the red dye #2 food coloring and the various numbered dyes on the cookie sprinkles bottle.We didn't even glance at the frosting can and flour mixture. Alexandra politely said, "Thank you" while my husband murmured something about how cooking was good for teaching about fractions.

Our options were to either return it to Target (but we didn't know what Alexandra could say if Dan asked about how the cookies turned out),or make the cookies and my husband would take them to work and surreptitiously drop them in the lunchroom while disavowing all knowledge of ownership. Or finally, we could, on advice from Elizabeth Archerd, donate the flour and frosting to a food shelf.The sprinkles and dye could be used for art projects. The cookie cutters would of course be used to make a much healthier batch of cookies that could be taken to John's workplace with a clear conscience.

The other gift was a darling toy birch bark canoe filled with pasteurized processed cheese, crackers, and beef sausage. Strangely enough, only the crackers had not a shred of bad ingredients - until you reached the "partially hydrogenated oil." Oh why, oh why do manufacturers have to do this to us? Can't they give us good food with healthy ingredients?

My husband was the first to cave in, and when Dan left, lunged for the beef sausage. "A little sodium nitrate once in a while isn't going to hurt." I frowned and warned him that he'd better make sure he took his vitamin C to counteract the dastardly nitrate. Later my daughter was carving chunks out of the cheese. "It's not much better than Velveeta!" I warned her. "But it doesn't look like Velveeta!" she protested.

Well, at least they had the good sense to avoid the crackers. When I last saw the partially hydrogenated wafers, they were being munched on heartily by my daughter's pet mouse. And the darling canoe that Dan thought I could use for fall decorations was now a voyageur's canoe for dolls.

My story was meant more as a humorous comment on the problem of not so healthy food gifts. So take it with a grain of salt. Remember I said a grain not a tablespoon!

And if you ever studied the German language, you may remember that the word "gift" means poison. One would like to be truly thankful for a generous gift of food rather than feeling that it is more like poison to our health.

By the way, we ended up keeping everything in the cookie mix to use for homemade art projects. Our consciences felt better doing that. In the meantime, any helpful hints about how to dodge questions about how the cookies turned out would be most welcome!

"You know, Dan, baking is really helpful in teaching fractions and in demonstrating how important it is to follow directions."