SALON

Wednesday, Sep 24, 1997 5:20 PM UTC

Creme Booblee

Serve up a recipe for disaster

By

Topics: Motherhood,

Hey, what good is it to exist in a world of competing mama rags if you
can’t hold up your competitors to ridicule once in a while?

In “Mommymilk” (Mothering, Fall 1997), an article so saccharine and absurd
that it reads like a parody of the magazine in which it appears,
author/psychotherapist Anjelina Citron is rendered apoplectic while
defrosting her freezer by the sight of her own paleolithic baggies of
breast milk, forgotten and abandoned in the arctic depths of her
kitchen. This is a quote, we kid you not: “The sight of the baggies threw
me. My entire rhythm interrupted, I closed the door, leaned against it, and
could not go on with my job.” After that she waxes nostalgic for a couple
of paragraphs, yadda yadda kids grown up, yadda yadda cute things they
said, as you’d expect.

Now if learning that a psychotherapist falls apart over the sight of her
old breast milk doesn’t make you begin to wonder about the kinds of folk
attracted to psychotherapy, reading what comes next will certainly make you
feel glad you’re not married to Anjelina’s husband. “Ever sensitive,” he
asks his stricken wife if she “would like to do a ceremony” with the
baggies. Poor Anjelina is so bereft that she can’t imagine a ritual “that
would speak to the ache, the emptiness” she feels. So instead they decide
to make sourdough starter.

Yup! Breast milk waffles for the whole family, and if they’re vigilant with
the starter, pancakes for generations to come! And you can make some too,
because there’s a recipe.

So here at Mothers Who Think, we got to thinking. Why stop at pancakes? And
why wait till your nurslings have moved on to Lunchables (TM) and
gum-by-the-yard and your frozen milk takes on that stale chalky freezer
taste, like the last two bites of ice cream in the sticky container no one
will throw away? Why not cook with breast milk now?

Oh, there are lots of things you can make. Think comfort food. Think bread
pudding (a creative use for that day-old bread) with a nutmeggy breast-milk custard. Or
a new twist on an Italian classic — Tittimisu! If you’re a gourmet with a
blowtorch, you could try your own unique version of crhme booblie. Or chew
up a vanilla bean to infuse your milk
in preparation for some delicious hand-cranked ice cream. Our Editors
Choice, though, is a breast milk coeur ` la crhme, and this time you can
really say you made it straight from your heart.

“Yum!” your smiling family and friends will croon as they spoon up the
creamy curds, “It’s so watery, and so strange tasting, too!”

As fun and convenient as it is to use breast milk as a cooking ingredient, it’s also vulnerable to picking up off flavors, becoming an unintentional alcoholic beverage and passing on certain drugs and health issues courtesy its source. So don’t forget to lay off the broccoli and garlic and heroin before you pump, and wash your hands and call for the results of your HIV test before
you start cooking. Remember how bad you felt after the whole clan came down with
salmonella after your Easter brunch? Well, just think how awful you’d feel
if — oh, let’s not even go in to it.

Hey, what good is it to exist in a world of competing mama rags if you
can’t hold up your competitors to ridicule once in a while?

In “Mommymilk” (Mothering, Fall 1997), an article so saccharine and absurd
that it reads like a parody of the magazine in which it appears,
author/psychotherapist Anjelina Citron is rendered apoplectic while
defrosting her freezer by the sight of her own paleolithic baggies of
breast milk, forgotten and abandoned in the arctic depths of her
kitchen. This is a quote, we kid you not: “The sight of the baggies threw
me. My entire rhythm interrupted, I closed the door, leaned against it, and
could not go on with my job.” After that she waxes nostalgic for a couple
of paragraphs, yadda yadda kids grown up, yadda yadda cute things they
said, as you’d expect.

Now if learning that a psychotherapist falls apart over the sight of her
old breast milk doesn’t make you begin to wonder about the kinds of folk
attracted to psychotherapy, reading what comes next will certainly make you
feel glad you’re not married to Anjelina’s husband. “Ever sensitive,” he
asks his stricken wife if she “would like to do a ceremony” with the
baggies. Poor Anjelina is so bereft that she can’t imagine a ritual “that
would speak to the ache, the emptiness” she feels. So instead they decide
to make sourdough starter.

Yup! Breast milk waffles for the whole family, and if they’re vigilant with
the starter, pancakes for generations to come! And you can make some too,
because there’s a recipe.

So here at Mothers Who Think, we got to thinking. Why stop at pancakes? And
why wait till your nurslings have moved on to Lunchables (TM) and
gum-by-the-yard and your frozen milk takes on that stale chalky freezer
taste, like the last two bites of ice cream in the sticky container no one
will throw away? Why not cook with breast milk now?

Oh, there are lots of things you can make. Think comfort food. Think bread
pudding (a creative use for that day-old bread) with a nutmeggy breast-milk custard. Or
a new twist on an Italian classic — Tittimisu! If you’re a gourmet with a
blowtorch, you could try your own unique version of crème booblée. Or chew
up a vanilla bean to infuse your milk
in preparation for some delicious hand-cranked ice cream. Our Editors
Choice, though, is a breast milk coeur à la crème, and this time you can
really say you made it straight from your heart.

“Yum!” your smiling family and friends will croon as they spoon up the
creamy curds, “It’s so watery, and so strange tasting, too!”

As fun and convenient as it is to use breast milk as a cooking ingredient, it’s also vulnerable to picking up off flavors, becoming an unintentional alcoholic beverage and passing on certain drugs and health issues courtesy its source. So don’t forget to lay off the broccoli and garlic and heroin before you pump, and wash your hands and call for the results of your HIV test before
you start cooking. Remember how bad you felt after the whole clan came down with
salmonella after your Easter brunch? Well, just think how awful you’d feel
if — oh, let’s not even go in to it.

Kate Moses is the author of "Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath" (St. Martin's.) She was the co-founder, with Camille Peri, of Salon's "Mothers Who Think" site, and she and Peri also co-edited the award-winning book "Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenting." She lives in San Francisco. More Kate Moses.

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