Serving Cheetos from a Tiffany Bowl

In my new budding career as a wannabe famous writer, I have been asked to read chapters of my book, Mismatched Shoes and Upside Down Pizza, at certain events.  I am thrilled to do this, mainly because I think it will be easy to guilt everyone in the room into buying a copy.  It is a lot harder to look me in the eye and say, “no” than it is to ignore my self-aggrandizing, begging and pleading and pitiful Facebook posts.  Which, of course, begs the question, what chapter to read?  Honestly, I have not ever counted the chapters in the book, and they are not numbered (note to self: count them one day soon so I will have an answer when people ask), but I would guess there are about fifty of them, all just a few pages long.  Each one is my baby, and I cannot make any Sophie’s Choices about which is my favorite.  So I asked my friends.

As things tend to do in my life, that question took on a life of its own, which ended up in a small get-together at my house, featuring Cheetos and Wine and me reading the suggested chapters to see how they went over out loud.  If you don’t know why Cheetos and Wine play into this, you haven’t read my book and, well, pooh on you for that. I will pause for a moment while you order it from Amazon.  My children and I did a blitz-cleaning of the house prior to the Cheetos and Wine mini-impromptu party, stuffing as much detritus as we could into closets that were unlikely to be opened, picking up the dust bunnies large enough to qualify as dependents on my taxes and shooing them into the yard, and stacking the rest into piles we hoped would be considered neat and purposeful.  I actually looked up online which wine would pair best with Cheetos, and ended up buying a Pinot Noir, a screw-top Riesling, two bottles of Grape-Juice-In-A-Wine-Bottle, and a large bag each of puffed and crunchy Cheetos.  I also bought some crackers and grown-up looking cheese so I could pretend to have also served some real food to my guests.

Back in the day when I was engaged, and had the ability to register for things that I would never in a zillion years buy for myself, I registered for several crystal bowls.  My mother always had a few of these bowls in the house, and under the theory of “why have them if you aren’t going to use them?” would fill them with whatever needed to be put in a bowl.  So naturally I reached for the Tiffany™ bowl with the hearts on it for the crunchy Cheetos, and the Lenox™ tulip bowl for the puffy.  I put the cheese on a silver plated tray.  Aside from the fact that these bowls each cost more than some of the furniture in my house, they are very practical bowls.  The clear lead crystal displays the contents nicely.  They are easy to clean.  There are high walls that make sure your Cheetos will stay in the bowl.  Plus, they each weigh about 35 pounds (no, seriously) and are virtually impossible to knock over, no matter how many tweenage children are flinging couch pillows around the room at each other.  They are stunningly beautiful, very practical pieces.

There is something profound about this juxtaposition that I haven’t quite worked out, or maybe it is just a hands-on example of what my life has become.  I like to think it is a matter of pride (not a matter of low class shame) that I think nothing of serving lowly Cheetos in a bowl whose value is greater than the GDP of some developing countries.  Who says delicious, delicious Cheetos are not as deserving of a pretty bowl as some nasty mush made from the liver of a force fed duck?  I’m at home with all of it, and I like that about me, even if you do think it is tacky.  A college friend of mine said that it was a mark of true style to be able to combine high and lowbrow items with panache.  I don’t know if she meant it (she is by profession a world-renowned psychologist, and therefore accustomed to making people feel better about their foibles), or was just trying to find an excuse to use ‘panache’ in a sentence, but I’m gonna take it and run with it.

I do this sort of thing all the time.  My go-to dish for a potluck is always a box of 50 assorted Munchkins from Dunkin Donuts®.  People laugh at me when I bring them in sometimes, comparing their high rent casserole with the wilted spinach leaves lovingly baked to my fried-and-sugared-by-a-stranger dough, but guess which one of us never takes home leftovers?  Just this very day I went to a potluck luncheon at my Synagogue, where most of the participants were retired Jewish Mothers.  Jewish Mothers are notorious for their desire to shove food down the throat of every problem and use it to celebrate every victory.  My people can cook, and there was a smorgasbord of casseroles and stews and salads and other kinds of yumminess.  I brought my Munchkins, which, for extra added tacky, were handed to me through the drive-thru window in a box decorated with Christmas Trees (this is late February as I type this.)

As far as I know, no one noticed.  But every single person ate Munchkins.

To paraphrase that arbiter of good taste and the je ne se quais that makes the good life so very good, Larry the Cable Guy, I don’t care who you are.  That’s good stuff right there.

 Lori B. Duff is the author of the Amazon ‘Hot New Release’ Mismatched Shoes and Upside Down Pizza, a collection of autobiographical humor essays.  You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/loribduffauthor