When I came from school, or the park, or the pool hall, or Dunkin' Donuts after an all night cup of coffee and pack of cigarettes, I was famished. But our house was not one full of food. Not like my best friend in California whose mother stocked their kitchen with homemade cookies in a ceramic jar in the shape of a Siberian Husky, and who kept fresh layer cake under the skirts of a porcelain skinned doll with dark Victorian curls.
Our house was sparsely appointed with things that didn't make for very good snacks: miso paste, top ramen (yes, you can eat the noodles dry), a perpetually half-unthawed can of frozen orange juice. There was also always a giant jug of Grade A maple syrup from New Hampshire, where my grandfather taught at a college during the school year before driving out to Oregon each summer loaded up with tree sap for the grandchildren.
Sometimes I would find the order form from the milkman and steal it away to fill out and leave for the next week's delivery without showing my mom. I marked the boxes for bags of popsicles, extra cartons of chocolate milk and ice cream. My mom didn't like it when I did that; it was expensive and I ordered food that made me fat
Other times, I would scrounge around the little kitchen with dark plywood cabinets and worn faux gold knobs looking for something delicious. I did this much in the way I searched under the beds and through the drawers of people for whom I babysat hoping to find porn.
Although we didn't have snacks, we almost always had butter and cheese. With these two staples I could make a complete meal of savory and sweet. First I grated the Tillamook cheddar into shreds, trying to keep my knuckles from turning bloody on the rusted metal teeth of the grater. Then I would heat up our prized non-stick skillet and spread the cheese around until it covered the entire bottom, like an orange moon. With the electric burner bright underneath the pan, I watched until the cheese melted, bubbled and then turned to a molten pancake of oily crisp dairy.
For dessert I would mash up cold butter in a bowl with fork until it became soft, then mix in brown sugar pulled from the back of the cupboard above and to the left of the stainless steel sink. Plus a little vanilla. It never tasted as good as raw cookie dough, but in a pinch, which was most days, it would do.
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