The Secret of the Junkpile

So St. Paul has proved to me the wisdom of the ancients: An unexamined life leads to a messy desk and no food; an examined life, to delicious plear and good work-habit role models. The only question left: Exactly what culinary and moral message is my sock drawer trying to send me?

TABLEHOPPING

GLAMOUR, INTRIGUE, MINI-MALLOWS: When I'm not leading a whirlwind life of glamour and intrigue, I'm wrestling with giant packages from corporate food conglomerates. Why, just the other day I got a box of individually wrapped Christmas cookies--and two rolls of food wrap--from the good folks at a major food-wrap producer, who think that I write about food wrap. I don't, and now I don't buy it either, because I get it free in the mail. I'm a pinprick of a financial black hole to a great multinational's marketing arm. Glamour.

Other mail treats? Corporate marinades with ingredient lists as long as your average Napoleon biography. Boxes of cookies with a New Package Design! A jar of fish seasoning that has been taking up space in my spice shelf ever since some PR hack mailed it to me. I can't throw it out because that would be Wasteful and invite karmic retribution. I can't use it because I like fish too much. Curdling corporate fish spice. Intrigue.

Why do these useless things come to someone who's never ever written about fish spice? Obviously to prove how outnumbered I am. For every one of me there are 200 PR flacks sending out mailings about this major fast-food producer's french fry redesign, and faxes about how I--or rather you, dear reader--can buy a book and "Get a Lifestyle." (Missing a lifestyle? Contact me immediately for a list of curative purchases.)

But then, every once in a while, the PR people triumph and I'm captivated by their slick packages. Like the one that came from the presumably swelling white halls of "Jet-Puffed^TM University." Did you know that in a world that purchases more than 300 million bags of Jet-Puffed^TM marshmallows every year, we are among the four superpowers? According to the pedagogues of Jet-Puff^TM U, the Top 10 marshmallow towns are 1) Los Angeles, 2) New York, 3) Chicago, 4) Minneapolis, 5) Detroit, 6) Philadelphia, 7) Salt Lake City/Boise (tie), 8) San Francisco, 9) Denver, and 10) Seattle. I don't know what Jet-Puffed^TM thought we should glean from this information, but here's what I took from it:We are kicking major metropolitan ass. Too bad, so sad, Dallas! We're kicking your beantown butts, Boston! San Diego? New Orleans? Washington, D.C.? Losers, losers, losers.

So the time is upon us, comrades, the time to pull ahead of the Big Three and assert our marshmallow superiority. We have that greatness in us. So what if New York has 13 times more people in its greater metropolitan area? We can eat 13 times more than their worst nightmare. Eat smarter. Start incorporating marshmallows into all your foods. Whenever you order a Caesar salad, ask if it comes with marshmallows. (According to Jet Puff^TM, fully 25 percent of marshmallows added to foods end up in salads--and what says "salad" in 1998 more than Caesar?) When waiters ask if you want fresh-ground pepper on your pasta say: No thanks, but have you any marshmallows? Demand marshmallows at each and every opportunity, and eventually we'll have them in finger bowls on the tables. But don't stop there! This Thanksgiving put marshmallows in the sweet potatoes--but also in the green beans and atop every bird! Use them to insulate your windows. They make great packing peanuts! Grout your bathroom with easily made finger taffy! We can rule the marshmallow world. And I've invented, to toast our coming marshmallow superiority, a drink which I'd like to call the Minneapolitan.

Frost a martini glass, margarita-salt style, with a cinnamon-sugar mixture. Take one shot of vodka and another of chocolate liqueur or Kahlua, mix in a cocktail shaker with ice, and decant into the cinnamon-sugar-frosted glass. Garnish with three fire-roasted mini-marshmallows on a toothpick. Kick back and plan our righteous victory dance.