I’m a simple person.
Well, no. That’s not exactly true, but what I’m about to divulge may have you shaking your head and muttering, “That Pearl. I didn’t realize she was so simple.”
I just wanted to beat ya to the punch.
Do you remember your first encounter with cilantro? I do. There it was, adrift in a bowl of pico de gallo. “Hullo,” I said to myself, having briefly picked up a “British” accent by way of the book I had been reading, “what’s this?”
And there it was, the taste that, like cumin and buffalo sauce before it, added a previously unknown depth of flavor to my taste-budly world. Much like the first Metallica album or the stark realization that I cannot wear a “skinny” jean without my lower extremities looking like denim-encased turkey legs, the first taste of cilantro blew the lid off my little coarsely-haired head.
My mother wrinkles her nose in distaste. “Tastes like soap,” she says.
Look at her over there, all refined and ladylike, maker of the world’s best gravies and flakiest crusts. She is absolutely wrong, and there’s no way to tell her without risking my rightful share of them…
And so, it is with my being absolutely right on the subject of the deliciousness of cilantro, cumin, and buffalo sauce that I come to you with another mind-blowing foray into uncharted foods.
Salt. On an apple.
Is it wrong? Is it wrong to crave salt, to pair it with the tart, crispness of an apple, to chortle indulgently while the juice runs down your chin?
Well, yes. That last bit? Yes. That’s wrong. Let’s not be undignified.
But now that I’ve linked salt with apple and found it to be delish, now what? Is the combination of salt and apple the gateway to other odd and seemingly contradictory couplings?
I mean, my sister forced – forced! – me to slather chocolate frosting on saltine crackers once, and that didn’t affect me much, right? I mean, it’s true that the combination of frosting and crackers forced me to re-think my stance on my parents’ cream-cheese-jalapeno-Ritz-cracker offering the last holiday season, and then there was the peanut-butter-potato-chip-sandwich that was passed around at that one party…
Don’t look at me like that.
I can quit any time I want to.
