Wonderland Challenge 2020

Eat Me

         PROMPT: Create a new dish/meal from your imagination, appealing or not to readers.

         

         

         

         Well, my contribution to the gastronomic world may not be readily adopted, or accepted, or eaten. I present to you, the reader, the pickle peanut butter pizza. Yes, it's potentially a mouthful in more ways than one, so, I could shorten its name to pickle p.b. pizza. I'm envisioning the pickles to be of the dill variety.

         To prepare this delightful concoction, I enlist the all too eager assistance of a four-year old. The washing of hands involves a great deal of liquid soap, not a dollop, not a dribble, but a puddle-sized amount of squishy, bubble-emitting soap. In the process, the kitchen floor is scrubbed to a lovely shine, too. I explain to my assistant that clean-enough-to-eat-off-of does not mean we shall be dining on the floor.

         She wrestles a chair up to the counter and climbs up. Both the wooden chair and the hardwood flooring squeal in protest. With some cajoling and promises that it's only for the time we create, she permits me to swath her in an apron. Of course, the mini sous chef's first reaction is to twirl, but I catch her before she tumbles.

         How could I not have anticipated that a toddler experiences through touch and taste? Everything has to be smushed, squeezed, patted and rubbed. Sampling is part of the adventure. Flour, baking powder, salt and more draw faces of disgust and warnings not to spit. The taste of peanut butter appeals and it is licked off fingers and elbows. Flour and peanut butter are smeared on her cheeks and in her hair. Cooking can be messy.

         Pounding the dough and rolling it out is such fun. It is soft and sticky. It oozes between little fingers. It retains the outline of a handprint.

         Pressing the pizza base into a pan requires two hands. Two hands patting in unison. One hand senses an urgent need to scratch a facial itch and push away stray wisps of hair.

         More peanut butter is taste-tested and tried as a pickle dip. A few shudders shake her slight body, but she grins. Maybe we're on to something here. I ignore her pleas to slice the remaining pickles with cries of, "I do it." She snatches up a fistful of green slices and tosses them onto the pizza. Most of them clump together.

         We both carry the pan to the open oven. As the door closes, the pizza whisperer waves good-bye and takes up her post to wait. Despite the heat, she presses her nose to the glass window and asks over and over, "Is it done? Can it come out now?"( 437 words )