27.02.10. Fun with mail.
What I had before me was a highly suspicious package. Had it been received at the White House, it may have raised the terror alert. What bothered me was not the cheery merchandise on top, nor the bunches of crimped red paper stuffed round, but rather the vacuum-sealed pouch below that I’d torn open. Its contents: three deep-fried balls and one very green pancake. It was in fact not so much a flapjack as a lilypad. And I desperately wanted to eat it.
For weeks, months even, I had been expecting this package. When at home, I go weekly to Addi’s Diner in Springfield for their famous turkey-platter pancake, and Addi promised me I would not have to go without while abroad in Italy. Two weeks ago she let slip that she’d finally made good on her word.
I’ve always found wearisome that wait between the ordering of a pancake and its arrival. While you sit sticking and unsticking yourself in the vinyl booth, the restaurant’s other diners lather their ’cakes with butter and dig into their yolks and stab sausages and pour syrup over the lot. Rich smells and gaudy sights and clinking forks conspire to make you bite your thumb or your friend or to scoot your chair up to someone else’s table—but this I believe we have discussed previously.
When this wait includes a transatlantic voyage, it is enough to break a man. My days in limbo I spent stocking up on condiments in my residence hall’s breakfast room, amassing an army of butter and jam one pack at a time, just as Johnny Cash once built his '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '56, '57, '58, '59 automobile. When my pancake arrived I’d be ready.
Thursday last I left Collegio Ghislieri to teach an English lesson. I departed a few minutes earlier than usual because the sun had come out. I would take the long way to my students’ house. When I reached the collegio’s entrance our porter hailed me: “Bradley—ha un pacco.” Entering the porter’s office, I noted the package’s breadbox dimensions, and when I lifted it I was sure: therein lay my pancake. I ran back to my room and cut into the box.
The first thing I saw was a t-shirt, deep black with bright red script, but my mind was not on 100% cotton, but 100% pancake. I slung the shirt over my shoulder and dug deeper. Below was an I ATE AT ADDI’S travel mug, the new aluminum kind that won’t give you cancer, and then the grand prize: three deep-fried Oreos nestled against a pancake that, folded in half and half again, stood five inches tall.
I cut into the pouch and a rich aroma filled the room, as if the cream-colored walls had been painted with butter. The Mediterranean knows no such breakfast delights. I bit into a deep-fried Oreo, soggy but savory, and admired the grease glistening on each fingertip.
I then noted something odd about the pancake. It was not its usual khaki self. I’d expected the desert of Arabia, and instead I got moon cheese. A biology slide. Pockmarks of gray, green, and blue fuzz that spread across the surface. After all of this waiting, could it be that I would be denied the climax?
I didn’t feel comfortable making this call on my own, so I went to the internet. Apart from offering music videos of Lady Gaga, the internet is good, too, for researching things like eating mold. I typed my question into Google and found a host of sites where others had asked the same thing: Is it okay to eat mold?
I began with an Askville forum, where PamPerdue assured a worried querier, “You’ll likely be fine.” But could she be trusted on matters so grave? She did have 11,494 points gained in food forums, earning her a level six merit badge. She had been awarded “Best Answer” for her responses to such questions as "What can go wrong in the soy sauce making process?", "What are the requirement [sic] for whiskey to be called Bourbon?", and "Raisin Milk - Please Explain." An impressive haul, but I continued to peek around.
I found an article on the same topic on CNN.com, whose offerings run, apparently, from insurrections to panary infections. "Once you're able to see mold on bread,” food consultant Jeff Nelken writes, “it means there's quite a lot of mold.” That seemed reasonable. But if I eat around the moldy spots? Not so fast, says Nelken in Vernian metaphor: “Even though you scrape off the head of the jellyfish, the tentacles are still in the food product.” He then concludes, “Why jeopardize your health on a slice of bread?” Why, Jeff Nelken? Because for the past five months I have had crackers and jam for breakfast, cereal and milk for breakfast, a half-inch coffee for breakfast; because I have seen silver dollars on the Oregon coast larger than the pancakes at the “American breakfast” on Sunday mornings at El Diablo; because this is not a slice of bread but the might and liberty of the Stars and Stripes mixed with flour and eggs and rolled flat.
Before making my final decision, I hopped over to Answers.com in hopes of confirming my optimism. Its entry on the subject took Nelken’s side, however. “It depends on the bread mold,” the articles says. “Some are harmless, some are indigestible and can make you throw up, some are poisonous and can make you very ill or kill you.”
Those, then, were the stakes. In eating the Addi’s special I might receive an infusion of American spirit and be able to push on through months more of pitiful Italian breakfasts. Or it might kill me.
Can you blame me for making a pot of coffee and digging in?
*Watch Chris eat his pancake!