When I hear people sigh about their picky-eating grandkids, I always laugh.
“What’s so funny?” they ask.
“Limburger cheese,” I say.
Blank looks.
Let me explain: When I was a kid, my dad loved limburger cheese. He’d buy big blocks of it from a cheese-factory store down in Hasty. It smelled so bad, like a locker room filled with damp dirty socks, that mom made dad put it in a glass jar and store it in the shed. When we’d see dad walking toward the shed to fetch his putrid treat, we kids would yell, “Limburger! Run for your life!” And we’d make a mad dash upstairs while dad enjoyed his stinky delicacy at the kitchen table.
Then we’d hear mom yell, “Kids, coast is clear!,” meaning we could descend from our upstairs fortress.
We kids always vowed with crinkled noses, “I wouldn’t touch that crap with a 10-foot fork.”
Ha ha! Famous last words.
About 20 years ago, I was at an outdoor mid-summer lakeside party at Lake L’Homme Dieu near Alexandria. There was a big variety-cheese platter on the table. A woman standing there remarked how good the limburger was. I had an urge to run. I made an icky face. She laughed and said, “Ah, c’mon. Don’t be so squeamish. Try it.”
Feeling foolishly brave, I plugged my nose and put the little piece she gave me into my mouth. I was stunned. It was delicious, really delicious – once I got it past my nose. And, plugging my nose again, I proceeded to eat five or six more pieces, on Ritz crackers. Now I love limburger. If only it weren’t so expensive.
“Limburger” has become almost a code word in my vocabulary. It means most kids will grow up to love the foods they so hated once upon a time, those icky foods their dumb parents enjoyed.
Throughout the years, I grew to love dad’s favorites, including garlic-dill pickles, cottage cheese, mushrooms, sauerkraut, spinach, broccoli and, yes, limburger. Sardines, however, which dad savored with saltine crackers, will never grace a menu of mine. I wouldn’t touch those slimy, smelly, creepy little fishies with a 20-foot fork. Kind of a shame, really. They’re supposed to be so good for you. But, nope, thank you, I’ll pass.
Just the other day, Jamie, a friend from way back, was talking about her 6-year-old grandson, Kayden, who stubbornly refuses to eat any green vegetables. He throws a little tight-mouthed fit even at the sight of a Brussels sprout or a lettuce leaf. I told her don’t worry, he’ll grow up to love all the greens and probably even nose-curling foods like sauerkraut and even, maybe, limburger cheese.
“Well, yeah, that’s fine,” she said. “But what about now?”
Then she chuckled as she told me how she recently enjoyed a victory, tricking Kayden into eating spinach. What she did is puree a bunch of spinach leaves, then added them to the batter for banana muffins, putting in extra banana mush with the hope it would hide the spinach flavor.
Sweetly, lovingly, she offered Kayden one of the bright-green muffins. He peered at the foreign object warily, giving it what Jamie calls his “Sherlock” look.
“They’re called Leprechaun Muffins,” she said. “Oooh, so yummy!”
(Popeye Spinach Muffins was more like it.)
Casting a look of serious uncertainty at the green alien on his plate, Kayden poked and picked at it, then sniffed. Taking a crumb, he put it in his mouth.
“It’s good, gramma. Bananas!”
I predict in the future, when Kayden grows up, he’s going to love non-banana spinach.
In the meantime, I keep wondering what sneaky recipes sly mama Jamie will cook up next? Broccoli-Chocolate Cake? Kale-Mint Sundae? Or how about a really tasty treat, like Limburger-Coconut Pudding? Or even, for the foolhardy brave, Sardine-Lemon Soufflé?
