This week, delicious deliveries right when they’re needed most. We also welcome Guest Gulletier Kelsey Padgett to the table.
Chill Graham Cracker Zone
by Kelsey Padgett1
If you’ve never been under anesthesia for a surgery, you are missing out on one of the greatest culinary experiences that our human existence has to offer.
This last year has been one of my hardest. I’ve had two cancer scares, both of which led to surgical procedures. Waiting for my first surgery, I felt sick. Sick with fear, sick with sadness, but also physically sick. I get a migraine and vomit if I don’t have enough protein-filled snacks throughout the day. It’s been that way since I was little. For my surgery I had to fast. Always the rule follower, I abided by the fasting instructions to the letter, only having had a few tiny sips of water.
I am a very anxious person and I knew that during this surgery, I would die. In the days leading up to the surgery I had subtly tried to make peace with my upcoming death by making sure I ate my favorite meal (steak), spent extra time petting my sweet dog (Hugo), and kissed my wife extra hard (Samara).
The day of the operation, I said goodbye to my life as the doctors pumped me full of anesthesia. What felt like seconds later, I found myself not in the operating room, but stashed away in a large recovery area. I lay in my stretcher, cordoned off from the other post-surgical patients by one of those hospital privacy shower curtains.
I was coming to, wearing a gown and grippy socks, connected to an IV, able to move but unable to get up. All around me were beeps, bloops, and alarms of various medical machines and the groans of other groggy patients. Suddenly, this scruffy but kind-eyed man in scrubs appeared in front of me.
With a calm smile and the intonation of someone who knows how to roll a joint he said, “You’re awake, great. Your procedure went well, and you’re in the recovery area.”
This be-scrubbed angel didn’t have the cold and serious urgency I'd heard in all the other medical professionals. He was so very…chill. Like we were on a breezy beach and he was telling me about the different species of gull that inhabit this part of New York while we sipped on lemonade. Just immaculate vibes.
“Are you hungry? Here you go, and here’s some water.” I turned my gaze to see the tiniest cup of water in existence and two very small, but somehow very noisy cellophane-wrapped graham crackers.
When I think of graham crackers I imagine that perforated sheet you pull out of the Nabisco box and break in two for your s’mores sandwich. Well, divide those pieces in half and shrink them down a little bit more. These mini graham crackers were in see-through plastic with a printed brand name that I’d never seen before. Certainly, they were something like “HOSPITAL GRADE - NOT FOR RESALE - BRAND” graham crackers.
Having just awoken from surgery, another person might have said “Where’s my wife? When can I leave?” But me…I felt that I had been handed down an important assignment, a mission, a duty from my beloved calm medical professional, Dr. Chillvibes. I must devour these graham crackers.
I took on that extremely loud packaging, wrestled it open, and freed those tiny generic crackers. My first bite was not my finest, still getting the brain connected to the body after anesthesia I guess. I only got the tiniest bit of cracker in my mouth. Most of it ended up on me, a pile of crumbs covering the blanket that was hitched up to my clavicle.
The embarrassment of being crumby in front of Dr. Chillvibes was pushed aside as the crumbs that made it to my tongue finally hit my taste buds. It was like time stopped. No food had ever tasted better. In fact no sensory experience in my life had ever been that strong. The sweet crackery bits of sugar and vanilla on my tongue were here to say, “YOU ARE ALIVE!” I was alive. I did not die during surgery. It was ecstasy.
I took another bite. This time I was oblivious to all the new crumbs falling. I coated my whole mouth with a cracker, it was so sensuous that it felt a little bit wrong to be tasting it and feeling like this with Dr. Chillvibes in the shower curtain with me. But I couldn’t stop. The taste, the grit of the graham, the feeling of it crunching and dissolving in my mouth. How had I never noticed how delightful graham crackers were? How nourishing and soothing they were?
And then suddenly, a new desire - thirst! My mouth had been fully dehydrated by my munching, so I splashed that tiny water cup to my mouth. The feeling of refreshment in my post-surgery gob was beyond satisfying. Like a cactus after the rare desert rain, I felt like blooming. Like one of those novelty sponge dinosaurs that start as a pill and then expand when dunked in water, I was growing into something better.
Ever vigilant about my mission, I gobbled down the rest of the crackers and made even more of a mess on my hospital bed sheet. I turned to Dr. Chillvibes, both proud of my conquering this tiny meal and somewhat embarrassed of my state, and said, “Uhh, I got crumbs all over.” He looked at me, and with a very cool-looking flick of his wrist, he did one quick shake of the bed sheet, and said, “There you go!” And like magic, the crumbs were all gone.
This man, sent from heaven, let me know our time was to end because they were going to release me soon, but before he did, he slipped me a few more of those tiny packages of graham crackers. He must have seen the look in my eyes and knew that this experience had changed something in me.
It was bittersweet leaving this safe haven of existential cinnamon and honey delight. Still out of it, my wife and friend took me to my car and drove me home. They asked what the surgery had been like and all I could say was, “I really loved the chill graham cracker zone.”
Not Your Grandma’s Brookie
by Kitty
My ninety-year-old grandmother recently transitioned from living in her own apartment to an assisted living facility. I try to visit weekly to keep her spirits high. Although I’m named after her, she’s always gone by her middle name, Anne—and I dropped the “grandma” a long time ago, so she’s “Annie” to me. Every once and a while she’ll slip and call me by the name of my late mother (her daughter), Julie. Perhaps it’s age, but I’d like to think it’s because some of the warmth, resilience, and dry wit they both possess trickled down to me through the naming convention.
We met with the facility’s activities coordinator, who asked if Annie liked to do puzzles. My grandma and I shared a knowing glance from across the table. No shade to puzzle people, but she’s more interested in good books, travel, and chit-chattin’ over a glass of Cabernet. We once spent fourteen days on a European cruise together, where she showed me what a great big world there was to see, and I introduced her to mojitos. I tried teaching her how to use a digital camera, but she cut my head off in every photo she took, so there’s little to no evidence.
During last week’s visit, she remarked that the food at her new digs was “pretty bland.” She also told me that all the men there were "ancient.” I promised that during my next visit I’d bring her whatever she wanted to eat. She requested pastries. Given the passion my mom had for coffee ice cream, I’m assuming a sweet tooth is coded deep in my DNA. I often wonder how long until I, too, start foregoing meals for treats.
The day I dropped by I decided to try a new bakery called Gingersnaps. Rustic and quaint, it was stocked with a trove of confections like cupcakes, macarons, brownies, and hand pies. I went to town ordering a little bit of everything: a raspberry oat streusel bar, mini Oreo cheesecake, apple hand pie, traditional chocolate brownie, and the star of the show—an edible cookie dough topped brownie.
My aunt was visiting at the same time as Nick and I, so we gathered at a table in the sitting room and dug into the box. We cut up a few of the goods so that everyone could sample the full spread. It was slightly hard to hear each other over the residents who were watching reruns of Law & Order at max volume, but our mouths were full anyway. We smiled through bits of the streusel and hand pie, but it was the edible cookie dough brownie that left Annie and I nodding in agreement and reaching for more. It was dense and fudgy and held up well when you bit into it, and the edible cookie dough was just that. This wasn't a lame-ass "brookie" that boasted dollops of cookie dough baked atop a brownie base. This was a layer of cookie dough reminiscent of the globs you'd find in ice cream. Was it baked, or was it raw? It was cookie science.
When my mom started to get sick, I’d often deny her the sweet treats she asked for in the name of “health”—wasting my breath preaching the dangers of sugar. Perhaps doubling down and buying out the bakery is an act of atonement. Since the opportunity seems to have passed for jet setting, I can at least seek out the best desserts our state has to offer and give my grandma something to brag about when she joins her friends at meal time in the dining room. The best part about being Annie’s only granddaughter is that (baked goods or not) she’s always excited to see me. We used to chat on the phone each week, but she sometimes confuses her cell phone with the remote control, so I’ve decided it’s best just to pop by.
Name drops: Gingersnaps Bakery
A special thank you to this week’s illustrator, Claire Wyman2. See her work here.
Kelsey Padgett is a talker, writer, editor, sometimes-journalist and sometimes-podcaster living in the very spooky Sleepy Hollow, NY. In 2014, she won a Peabody award for her work on “60 Words” for the public radio program, Radiolab. Since then she’s been deep diving into weird little stories and trying to tell them to as many people as possible.
You can listen to her yap to (the world renowned) Delta Werk about famous rivalries here.
Or if learning about spiders is more your style…
Claire Wyman is an illustrator and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated with a BFA in Illustration and a Concentration in Literary Arts and Studies from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2019. She loves illustrating the everyday moments of the world around her whether in the city or in nature.
Claire loves happy hour oysters, especially the oysters from Tong, which are dressed with lemongrass, chili jam, mint leaf, shallot, fried shallot.
That feeling of a post-op snack is so real and wow do I love connecting over food with my grandma - loved these so much.