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Column published the week of December 22, 2008 www.theleeonline.com © 2008, Lee Ostaszewski

Mincing it Up

By Lee Ostaszewski When one writes an opinion piece, one invariably treads on the weightier, more controversial subjects of our time. Subjects that can elicit emotion as well as be contentious. Subjects such as pie fillings. Specifically, mincemeat pie filling. Here’s what happened. Last week I wrote a column about how we can avoid gaining weight during the ThankChristmaYear season by taking common holiday chores, such as cleaning after a party or putting up the Christmas tree, and calling these exercises. I wasn’t advocating that we do anything more, just that we call what we do exercise in order to lose weight. I based this on the scientific fact that unless you call an activity an exercise it offers no calorie-burning or heart healthy benefits. Before getting to this main point of the column, however, I took a rather circuitous rhetorical route, as I normally do - as I am doing right now in fact - that wandered into the topic of foods which I think are strange, for example salt and vinegar potato chips. Which I still think are kind of weird, but I should probably keep that to myself from now on. From there I literally stumbled into a rambling discourse about mincemeat and how I have always connected mincemeat with mice on account of an old cartoon called “Klondike Kat.” Klondike Kat was a cat that wore a Mounties uniform and chased a mouse, named Savoir-Faire, that spoke with a French accent. At some point in every episode a frustrated Klondike would proclaim, “I’ll make mincemeat out of that mouse.” My little detour down memory lane raised the ire of one man whose family had produced a well-known mincemeat here locally for generations, Grandmother’s Mincemeat. The gentleman, Dight Crain, emailed me directly and also wrote a letter to the editor regarding my column. Here are portions of his email to me: “Even though your column is entitled “Humor,” I find nothing funny about your description of what Mincemeat might be and/or contain. Mincemeat is a mixture of fruits

and spices and originally contained deer meat as the meat portion of the product. Through the years the meat ingredient has changed from deer meat, to beef, then corned beef, then beef suet, then to vegetable shortening... “There never was a time when any mouse ingredient was used in our products...I hope that in the future you will not use your humor to downgrade any food product that is made for human consumption...I trust this letter sets the record straight for you.” I think we have all learned some valuable lessons here today. One: There never has been, and there’s a 90 percent chance there never will be, mouse meat used in mincemeat pie filling, no matter what Klondike Kat said. Although, it did once contain deer meat, so who can guarantee anything? And two: Never trust what an animated cat in a 1960s cartoon tells you. My wife, Beth, did wonder about Mr. Crain’s last statement concerning my never downgrading any food product that is made for human consumption. She replied, “Does he mean even Cheez Whiz?” Obviously he does. In my old, make-fun-of-odd-food days, I would have claimed that Cheez Whiz was the first edible petroleum-based food product that also came in an aerosol can. But now I won’t write something like that. It would be wrong. Just as it was wrong of me to make fun of Raman noodle soup earlier this year (I suggested it contains a heroin-like substance that makes us addicted to it). Here’s a partial list of other food products that I should never poke fun at again: Manwich, anything in the hot dog/sausage category, Velveeta cheese, oysters, tofu turkey, tofu in general, veggie burgers, kids’ cereals, cereals for people who need fiber and a lot of it every morning, fruitcake, those mysterious fruit-like chunks found in fruitcake that I assume are a food product but I can’t be sure, yogurt in a squeeze tube, Tang, Brussels sprouts, Gummi Bears, microwaveable mac and cheese, Spam, and on and on. It will be difficult, but not using humor to downgrade a food product meant for human consumption will be my New Year’s resolution. It just won’t be for this New Years. ■