It’s All About Texture

Russ is not a dessert guy. Given his druthers he would choose a nachos bar over an ice cream sundae bar, full of ten ice cream choices, with hot fudge, caramel, butterscotch, strawberries whipped cream, nuts and cherries any day. But even so every once in a while he would like a simple piece of apple pie after dinner, maybe even cherry. The chances of finding a pie in our house these days is slim to none so when that craving hits his best chance for scratching that itch is when we are at a restaurant.

Since Carter was out babysitting tonight the two of us decided to grab a quick bite out. After a very small dinner Russ thought, “Pie,” and asked to see the dessert menu. This is always a dangerous time for me since I know if he get a dessert that is not nachos he ultimately is going to take one bite and remember that he really does not like dessert, even an apple pie. So two bites in he will offer me a bite, which I will take. I love dessert that is why there is usually not any in the house. One bite of dessert almost always leads to another. God help me then.

Tonight I was lucky. No pie on the menu, no nachos either. Actually four of the six items were all variations on desserts that could be eaten without your teeth, mousse, brulee, cream caramel and rice pudding. Not that we ordered any of them, or even saw them so I am not passing judgment that they might not all be wonderful, but reading about them made Russ’ tongue think the opposite of nachos in texture and certainly not pie.

I think he likes pie because a good crust is like the chips in nachos, flaky and crunchy and the fruit is the cheese and sour cream of nachos. It is completely a texture thing. He wants the crunch. That is why he does not like ice cream. Creamy only things just go down too easy. No work for his teeth. So a flan, pudding, mousse and even a brulee that has a tiny crunch then mostly softness underneath don’t satisfy his desire for texture in his mouth. It is not just a salt versus sweet thing because a good dessert will be both sweet and a little bit of salt.

Now I am on the search for the perfect dessert to make my husband happy and is not too bad for me. Just a little naughty, with crunch, a bit of sweet and some salt and nothing that coats the tongue and just slips down the throat. Something that is less than a hundred calories would be best. As soon as I figure this out I’ll test it out on Russ and if it passes his test I’ll put it out there. I don’t think it actually exists in anything other than one bite of apple pie, but if I figure it out I’ll let you know. For me all this talk of dessert has been deadly. Thank goodness I still have a container of Thomcord grapes in the fridge.