Imbalanced Breakfast

 Alas, no Sucrophile this week, munchsters. Oh, the column's written and the illo is more or less ready. But your humble scribe has been hors de cereal the last few days, having had an unfortunate encounter with the influenza virus.

Sucrophile will return at a date and time to be determined.

Dixie's Land 5.4

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[Concluding chapter 5]

Stewart stood in the hall long after the commissioners and the general had retired to their rooms. The flickering light of his candle cast weirdly mobile shadows on the walls, shadows that seemed to symbolize the forces gathering against the commission.

That the Federals were behind these attacks seemed beyond doubt. Much as he disliked and distrusted the English, Stewart could think of no reason why they might want to drive the Confederates away. Over the past few days he’d come to realize that the English and Canadians had much to gain from a treaty of recognition with the Confederacy. The industries of Louisiana and Missouri, for example, would find ready markets in the Confederacy for weapons and uniforms.

Dixie's Land 5.3

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[Continuing chapter 5]

“Captain Stewart. How lovely of you to come see me!” Pauline Martin stepped back from the door she’d just opened, and with a sinuous gesture of her finger invited him inside.

Stewart felt a shiver move through him. The knowledge that General Magruder did not want him here only made the excitement he felt seem more vital.

Miss Martin wore a purple dress of some shiny material. Her shoulders were bare. When he touched her, the skin felt like silk, but with some powerful force pulsing through it. The heat seemed to course into, and then through, him.

She had just tilted back her head for him to kiss her when shouting from outside her dressing-room door caused Stewart to slip on a pool of blood that had suddenly appeared there. He fell to the ground, to see Sergeant Fitzgerald’s head staring at him. “Wake up, boy,” the sergeant said.

Now We Are Sixty-Four: III

The Drooples

A miserable Boomer

Had drooples

And wobbles

That got up inside of his head.

The ads on the TV

Said “Just listen to me!

I’ll help you get back in her bed.”

He worried his member

Might wilt ‘til September

Or even November

(the following year)

It wasn’t his vision

To see a physician

(Besides, the copay was insane).

A shrink was expensive,

The thought made him pensive

The fault couldn’t be in his brain.

But lack of tumescence

Was such an excrescence

This failure of essence

Just filled him with fear.

But what could a Boomer

With drooples

And wobbles

Do to provide him a cure?

The mail-order potions

The capsules and lotions

Were all of them equally sure

And yet at the junction

Of pill and dysfunction

The patented unction

Provided no quo for the credit-card quid.

And so he decided

His woes coincided

With things being done to all guys

By women of #meToo

And liberals who blew

All Y chromosomes to the skies

He needed a figure

Of bluster and vigor

To make him feel bigger―

And that’s why he voted the way that he did.

Dixie's Land 5.2

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[Continuing chapter five]

Back in his room, Stewart eyed the laudanum flask as he undressed. He and Miss Martin had walked for several hours and his leg hadn’t hurt at all. If it wasn’t for the engraving on the flask, and all that it represented, he would have been happy to throw the thing away.

Aside from the uncomfortable moment in front of the houses inhabited by free blacks, he had very much enjoyed himself tonight. The pleasure had more than justified the risk he’d taken. And in the dark, smoky tavern where she’d fed him something called a cock-tail, she had more than made it clear that, however she might feel about what married white men did with colored women, Miss Martin was not averse to the idea of certain unmarried men and women meeting again.

So why had he shied away from her? As soon as he’d fully understood what she was saying to him, Stewart had felt edgy, a bit as if he’d drunk too much coffee. He’d left her as soon as it had been seemly to do so. Now he wondered just how much he might be willing to risk for this woman. That, he decided, was only the most recent of the perplexing questions he’d come to face since arriving in New Orleans.

* * * *

Dixie's Land Chapter Five

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FIVE

Stewart knew that he shouldn’t be doing this. Somehow, that just made his meeting with Miss Martin all the more attractive.

Her arm entwined with his, they walked along a flower-scented street in the direction of the old quarter. From time to time her hip brushed against him as the rhythms of their gaits brought them into synchronization. He was grateful that he was at least past the worst of the physical shock engendered by their first hip-to-hip contact. He’d been embarrassingly aware of what her presence was doing to him. At least now he could walk without difficulty.

Cookie Crisp

Overall Rating: 64

The initial promise of its appearance is not borne out by either flavour or texture. A classic case of a product marketed by its look alone.

Appearance

Hillary Clinton’s cookies* have nothing on these. This is a brilliant idea, brilliantly executed. The simple shape and look of chocolate-chip cookies is accurately reproduced in miniature, resulting in bite-sized morsels the Keebler Elves might envy. The detail is admirable, right down to the tiny chocolate-coloured dots representing the chips.

Texture and Taste, Dry

The chocolate-coloured dots turn out to be exactly that: chocolate coloured. There isn’t a molecule of cocoa in this cereal, and the artificial nature of the flavouring shows up dramatically when you set your teeth into it. And while the cereal provides the decent resistance to the bit and the crumbly mouthfeel its name implies, the flavour is a tremendous disappointment. There’s a metallic tang to it, and no chocolatey goodness at all. From the box this stuff tastes more of the laboratory than the kitchen. What flavour there is goes stale quickly, too. You won’t want to nibble on more than a handful, or you’ll feel queasy.

Texture and Taste, With Milk

The same problems bedevil this product with milk as when dry. The crunch holds up well in milk, but the flavour is a big disappointment. The hints of metal are softened by the milk, but that just emphasizes how little flavour there really is. This cereal is sweet enough that it satisfies nicely on the sucro-scale, but there has to be more to a bowl of cereal than just sucrose, or we could all eat All-Bran with four spoons of sugar on it. Besides, the artificial colours turn the milk purple.

Conclusion

Since we’ve been comparing cereals with celebrities, let’s call this one the Madonna of the sweet-set. It looks enticing and promises something exciting and slightly risque. (Cookies for breakfast? How unusual!) Like Madonna, though, this stuff is long on promise and short on substance. When you get below the surface, you find that surface is all there is. [October 1992]

*Hey, it was election campaign season in 1992. This apparently mattered back then.

Dixie's Land 4.4

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[Concluding chapter four]

"He was going to Natchez," Stewart told Patton as they rode up Canal to the hotel.  Patton's uniform was, if anything, more a mess than Stewart's.  Stewart felt a small pride at the way in which his younger friend had pitched in, without question or waiting for orders.

"Makes sense," Patton said.  "Natchez is a Mississippi port, and probably the closest to Jefferson, wherever that is."

"You're missing the point," Stewart said.  "The Comet wasn't supposed to stop at Natchez.  We don't trade with the Canadians, remember?  If Mr. Barber"—the late Mr. Barber now, sadly—"wanted passage to Natchez, he should have found it on a Southern-owned boat."