Crumbs

.  Disclaimer: Views presented in this blog are those of Roger German.  They do not represent the views or opinions of the U.S. Peace Corps or the Government of the United States.

                All right.

                I gotta come clean about the cream cheese frosting.

                Tracy makes a mean carrot cake with melt-in-your-mouth cream cheese frosting.  According to her, it’s very easy to make, but it is a real treat here.

                We had some Peace Corps friends coming over, thought a little dessert would be nice, and she had all the ingredients mixed up, and was picking some darker crumbs out of the mix, popping them into her mouth, mixing away when she suddenly said, “Oh no.”  I looked up.  “Ants, I’ve been eating ants.”

                I know…you’re tired of ant stories, but I do ask your indulgence.  We both doubled over laughing.  Ants.  I asked how they tasted and she relayed as to how it tasted pretty much like cream cheese frosting  with crumbs in it.  Different from the crunchy ants she ate in her peanut butter down in San Miguel.  You’d think we eat them all the time.

                But then, there was that bowl of frosting.  Speckled, as it were.

                And no sign of how the ants arrived in their sweet crypt.  No trail of ants.  None in the cream cheese wrapper, none in the powdered sugar, none in the butter, none in the vanilla.  A mystery.

                I started picking them out, rather absent-mindedly.  Just picking them out with the point of a knife, wiping it on a damp paper towel, chatting..10…20…25.  As a technical note, for those of you with a scientific turn of mind, cream cheese frosting is not transparent.  More translucent I would say.  So as I stirred, I would see one or two rise up out of the depths, and I would tip them out.  Stir, pick…35…40.

                Talking with Tracy…60…70..picking out ants..it became something of an obsession I suppose.  80…90…then it became harder to find ants.  The pace slowed.  I was becoming disturbed…stirring, stirring…100…110…minutes would go by, no ants.  I have to confess a lapse in the scientific method here.  I did NOT write down the final number.  I remember 117.  Tracy remembers 126.  For sake of erring on the low side, let’s say 117 ants committed sugar suicide in our frosting.   A terrible loss to the Benque Viejo ant community, with little sympathy expressed by the lumbering bipod who extracted their pitiful bodies from the site of their demise. 

                OK.  Here’s where all I can say in our defense is that we “went Peace Corps.”  I mean, all that stuff is expensive, right?  And despite much stirring, I found no more little carcasses.   We looked at each other.  Tracy and I, that is.  Well…?  The frosting really tasted just fine…good, in fact. 

                And we had little money, and less time before our guests arrived.  And WE hadn’t keeled over, had we?  Even from our prior experience of ants with peanuts (a delicacy, I might add). 

                We frosted the cake.

                Had a lovely dinner.

                I remember the tension built by Edgar Allen Poe in “The Telltale Heart,” page after page where the perpetrator of the murder talked with the police detectives while sitting in a chair on boards directly above the body, as he slowly went mad, finally ripping up the floor and showing them the body.

                We were much cooler.  Calm in fact.  Not even breaking into a sweat, even when I thought I saw a speck, one small, tiny, hardly noticeable dark spot.  I casually mentioned to Tracy that  THAT piece would be exactly right for me.

                She looked at me with knowing eyes, and with nerves of steel calmly served me the offending piece, and I, stalwart defender of our dark secret, I ate it.

                Now I know what you are thinking.  Yes we will be returning to the U.S.  And we do hope to have many of you over to dinner.  But we promise, really…we really do promise...

 

Comments

[dlomen]

http://lnfaw.blogspot.com/2011/06/ten-major-health-benefits-of-marijuana.html

[Wit]

I'll cook.

[Sue Beale]

I know for sure that those ants died happy! Talk about a last meal!

[thodson]

Saw your comment, Sue, and it made me laugh. I wouldn't mind going with some of that frosting MINUS the ants. And I thought of you and Charlie, Mike and Carlene, and Jill and Rob and hoped that Roger divulging our 'dark' secret won't have you making excuses when invited to dinner!! Can't wait to have you over. Miss you terribly :(