I never realized that one could get sore cheek muscles just from making sour faces but one can. I know this because I’ve recently been turning my face inside out almost daily (and I might add with ghastly results – the only person who could get away with that face, grace intact, was Greta Garbo).  We’ve been experimenting with different food textures for darling daughter in an effort to teach her to chew her food. Someone suggested we try kiwi fruit because the seeds are edible and they contrast with the slimy smoothness of the flesh.   It has the added bonus that the fruit is slippery enough that she won’t choke on it if she doesn’t chew, which has become a new obsession of mine (read why in earlier post the confounded house).  I was concerned that the relative sweetness of the fruit would turn her off, even though she’s been eating most fruit these days. I diligently chopped up the pieces and when she nodded ‘no’ when I offered her a piece, I made a big production out of eating it.  It turned out to be so sour but she took it anyway and then turned her face inside out.  Of course I mimicked her and marveled how she could make those puffy cheeks concave. It’s gotta have something to do with how little children are constructed out of elastic bands, balsa wood, titanium and a little fortitude thrown in to keep it all together.

The first time I ate kiwi was in my twenties (shame!).  I wasn’t well-versed in exotic fruit outside of bananas, coconut or pineapple.  I came to the big city in my mid-teens so with the exception of apples, fruit came in a can where I came from.  Kiwi fruit isn’t just grown in New Zealand but all over, even in Canada.  How ironic that before I moved to Toronto I lived on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, which is the only place in Canada where the climate is suitable for kiwis.  Here I was growing up beside kiwi fruit and I had to move to Toronto to eat one. If they were sold in cans I’m sure they would have graced our table.

When I was young even bananas were an absolute treat, so much so that I recall sleeping over at a friend’s house near Ottawa where they had a bowl of bananas on the kitchen table. When she and I raided the kitchen in the middle of the night she went for chocolate cake and I went for the bananas. Mango was another strange and beautiful thing that I was introduced to by a Jamaican friend (also during my twenties).  She brought one to work for me and sliced it up.  Then she gave me the pit to chew on and I fought the urge to go and eat it in the bathroom which happened to be the only room where I could be alone and close enough to water to wash my arms and elbows after I was finished.  It was glorious, and I still can’t eat a mango without taking the pit and scraping the fruit off with my teeth, in private, alone.