Column Reprint: Treats

Note: This column was originally written in the summer, hence the recipe using summer fruits. Roll with it, okay?

Treat (noun): 1 a: an entertainment given without expense to those invited b: the act of providing another with free food, drink, or entertainment 2: an especially unexpected source of joy, delight, or amusement.

“You have to have a treat now and then!” I hear this more often than teachers hear excuses, and always in defense of something sugary.

But the definition of the word “treat” (courtesy of Miriam-Webster) says nothing about junk food. There’s no mention of sweets at all, but rather of “food, drink, or entertainment,” given without expense, or “joy, delight, or amusement” that is “unexpected,” quite possibly having nothing to do with food, much less sugar. Yet somehow “treat” has come to mean sugary rubbish that is neither free nor unexpected –– indeed it’s ubiquitous, and likely to be costly in its effect on our health.

Similarly, years ago I babysat a toddler whose word for sweets was “special.” If she wanted something sugary, she’’d ask for “a special.” Ironically, she was allowed something “special” half a dozen times a day. How “special” is that?

The words “treat”” and “special” both connote something out of the ordinary; something eaten infrequently, and all the more appreciated because of it. For centuries, this was so. Sugar and other sweeteners were expensive and/or hard to come by. Sugar was used primarily as a preservative in jams and jellies. Cakes, candies and pastries were luxuries. Most people saved them for, yes, special occasions –– weddings, birthdays, holidays, and the like.

Let’s face it: The donuts in the break room, the candy bar at the mini-mart, the nightly ice cream after supper, are not “treats,” nor are they “special.” They’re staples of the American diet, so omnipresent as to be expected and yet, paradoxically, so uninteresting as to barely be noticed unless absent.

I am not anti-treat, nor do I scorn the idea of something special. But the concepts need re-thinking.

For centuries, seasons made foods special. Fruits, fresh eggs, even green vegetables were only available for a short time. Each food seemed new and exciting as its season rolled around. Ooooh, salad! Wow, fresh strawberries! Mmmmm, the new apples are in. Even meat had a seasonality, with game being much fatter and richer in the autumn “grease season,” and fresh meat only being available at slaughtering time.

Very few foods are seasonal anymore, but the ones that are still seem like treats. Here in southern Indiana, morel mushroom season is a Very Big Deal, precisely because it lasts only a few weeks. The first bursting-ripe cherries of the year not only delight the tongue, but taste like all the summers of childhood. Pumpkin pie is savored all the more because it bears holiday memories.

Foods also used to be special because they were not mass-produced, and therefore were variable. Homemade bread, microbrewed beer, small-farm aged cheeses from grass-fed cows, organic vegetables straight from the garden –– all of these things that are now sold at premium prices were taken for granted by our ancestors. Their foods had the charm of individuality.

Too, cheap and easy transportation has made commonplace many foods our great-great-grandparents thought of as wondrous and exotic. In Little Town on the Prairie Laura Ingalls wrote of going to a birthday party, where they had dinner and a birthday cake, played games, and experienced a demonstration of that marvel of the age, the telegraph. But what did she tell her mother when she got home? “We each had an orange!”

We can still find the unexpected, the truly special. Shop your local farmer’s market for fruits and vegetables bursting with fresh flavor. Seek out aged gouda, imported brie or local chevre as a change from the usual bright orange, plastic-wrapped, never-varying “cheese.” Splurge on the Ranier cherries, the baby asparagus, the macadamia nuts. Treat yourself to a pound of exquisite coffee from some place you’ve barely heard of. Skip the cheap candy bar, and savor a few squares of fine dark chocolate, melted slowly on your tongue. Real food is more satisfying than processed stuff, both because it’s more nutritious, and because the flavors are more complex and intense. You’ll eat less, and enjoy it more.

This special treat is worthy of company –– or even more important people, like your family.

Strawberry, Pineapple, and Nectarine Compote with Rum!

1 1/2 pints fresh strawberries, hulled and quartered
2 cups fresh pineapple chunks, cut in 1/2" cubes
3 nectarines, cut in 1" cubes
3 tablespoons dark rum
2 teaspoons Splenda
1 cup light sour cream

Assemble your fruit in a big bowl, preferably glass to show off the pretty colors.

Mix together the rum and the Splenda, pour over the fruit, and toss. Let the fruit marinate, stirring now and then, for at least 30 minutes.

Serve with a couple of tablespoons of sour cream on each serving.

8 Servings: 83 Calories; 1g Fat; 2g Protein; 16g Carbohydrate; 3g Fiber; 14g usable carbs.

(Reprinted by permission from The Every Calorie Counts Cookbook by Dana Carpender, 2006, Fair Winds Press.)