As I've probably said before, one of Mojo's new rules of existence states that it's utterly pointless and fruitless to EVER try to do something nice for someone who has lived through the Depression. Meaning the Great One, not the hypothetically scary one now looming before us all. Why, you ask, since you very well know that, despite her grumbling exterior, Mojo really has a heart of gold and is always as nice as pie to everyone, regardless of whether or not they deserve it? Mojo's answer is simple: You Just Can't Win.

For starters, back during the time of said Great Depression you could feed a family of four for a YEAR for about a dollar, at least according to my insistently shrill sources. Which means, if for some CRAZY reason you spend MORE than a dollar on dinner today, you are a USDA Choice Prime Sucker. And you will be told that repeatedly throughout dinner, interspersed with their muttered impression that you ENJOY throwing your money down a sewer, since you obviously have NO CONCEPT of what true hardship is. This lecture is being given to your beloved goddess Mojo, who in her less abundant days of college yore once ate an entire can of grated Parmesan cheese with a spoon because it was the only thing left in the house after she ran out of bread and ketchup, and then finally ran out of the flour needed for her flour-and-water homemade chapatis and ketchup.

No, I'm not kidding. For those amateurs who might want to try this at home, Mojo sez you'll need drinking water with your grated cheese. Lots 'n' LOTS of drinking water. And, if--like me--you actually ENJOY grated Parmesan cheese, rest assured you will nonetheless NOT like the experience of eating it with a spoon in bulk out of a can. Trust me on that. But I digress.

But anyway, Thanksgiving dinner with the inlaws, in which Mojo, out of the loving kindness in her heart toward all of God's creatures, takes everybody out to dinner. A nice dinner, although for them--since they get to pick the restaurant--we're not talking anything Wildly Extravagant, although you would never know to hear their never-ending protestations of how floor sweepings from the canned tuna fish factory ship is too fancy-la-ti-dah for them. Which means, of course, that they initially balked when they learned that the restaurant they had chosen--about one or two steps up from a Big Boy or a Friendly's--had the temerity to sell a full-blown turkey dinner for about $13.00 a plate. And then, of course, while everyone else ordered the turkey, Mojo the Wild Woman Who Throws Her Money Away goes and spends another TWO DOLLARS to order the SALMON instead!!!! Since Mojo was thinking, ya know, I'm going to be eating turkey at my own parent's house on Saturday, so why not have sammie instead? Mojo likes sammie. And it was pretty good, and not too big of a serving, but I had a whole plate of salad bar beforehand and pretty much STUFFED myself silly despite my restraint.

Before we left for the restaurant my mother-in-law takes me privately into the kitchen and artfully explains that, despite my specifically telling her NOT to, she has been slaving away all week preparing three different kinds of dessert so that "we don't have to pay for dessert at the restaurant because you just KNOW those chiselers are going to charge us an extra dollar a head for dessert". To which Mojo weakly protested that usually restaurants at Thanksgiving just have the one menu with like three or four things to pick from for one set price and dessert was included already ... and the refrigerator opens to reveal three different and extravagant desserts she has slaved over all week, desserts whose primary ingredient appears to be the twenty-pound box of expired raisins they bought at the dollar store last year.

Ahem. Mojo is not a huge fan of raisins to begin with, be they fresh or expired. I can eat them right from the box if I HAVE to, so long as they're on the dry side and not too mushy. Once you cook them, however, they tend to resemble certain things Mojo has scraped off the flyswatter and Mojo really doesn't like them all too much. Mojo is not a fan of things that are reconstituted and soggy and mushy.

Besides which, at the time before the meal, Mojo, to be honest, had her mighty heart set on PIE. Not a horribly mushy fruit pie, although I like plain apple okay, but a GOOD pie, like pumpkin or key lime or a nice dark bitter chocolate cream. Something totally and completely bad for you. Because really, since when is PIE such an Important Part of One's Nutritional Intake that you really need to WORRY about what's IN it? Unless you're lethally allergic to something, of course. It's not like I plan to LIVE on PIE, and hence it must be somehow HEALTHY. I'm just having a slice or so, as a treat. It's PIE, not High-Volume SUSTENANCE. If I required pie for survival then yes, I suppose I would like my Survival Pie to be adequately nutritious, but thus far Mojo does not require Survival Pie, so she is of the vague idea that it can be as bad for her as it wants.

So Mojo, instead of being thankful for my mother-in-law's hard work instead wishes to scream "But I want PIE!!!" at her. But she doesn't, and instead very meekly suggests that usually on Thanksgiving the dessert is part of the meal, and if we don't eat THEIR dessert, why, that's just what those chiselers are HOPING for, isn't it, and we'd be falling for their sucker game if we DIDN'T order dessert. Or words to that effect. As it turns out, this whole soap opera was moot, as we shall see.

Anyway, it was my misfortune that the day before Thanksgiving, I spent most of it at a place that had a kitchen where you could pretty much go in and snack on stuff that people leave out for moochers like Mojo to snack on. And wouldn't you know it, someone had brought in these boxes and boxes of "healthy" chewy granola bars. Which are, essentially, Rice Crispy squares with little chocolate chips embedded in them and not at ALL healthy, but that's beside the point.

One time back when I had the access--I was working at a college--I went ahead and asked a bona fide biochemistry PhD weenie what the heck and tarnation the difference was between the various sugars and other substances that ended in "ose" once it hit the bio part of the human biochemistry. Since I've always wondered, in my artless Mojo fashion, why cane sugar or beet sugar--which are both derived pretty straightforwardly from plants--was so awfully awfully Bad while other sweeteners were nutritionally the bees' knees--at least for honey, this can be literally true, since honey sometimes has used bee parts and whatnot accidentally mixed in it in addition to the bee puke that is the honey itself. My take is, they're all made from plant sap, so why is cane or beet sugar as we know it is "bad" while fruit juice or honey is good? Whereupon I was treated to a several-hour lecture on how the various sugars are processed in the body and about a half hour into it I reminded myself that this is what you get when you engage a knowledgeable weenie in his or her area of expertise. You don't get a "yes" or "no" answer; no, you have to sit through several hours of the history and theory behind something. Needless to say it is much more complex than "white sugar bad, brown sugar good" or whatever trend du jour the self-proclaimed "experts" who are somehow Adverse To Actual Science But Nonetheless Experts would like you to believe. But that is another post for another time.

Mojo ate one or two of these chewy granola bars with no illusions whatsoever about them somehow being "healthy" for her, but about halfway through the third one--they were sort of little things--I couldn't get the mouthfeel sensation of SAWDUST out of my mouth. So I finally bothered to read the label. And wouldn't you know it, in an effort to appear "healthy" they load the things up with fiber (aka "sawdust", aka "flour mill floor sweepings") and each of these tiny, tiny servings gave Mojo a full 35% of her daily dietary fiber needs. All of this Mojo discovers on her third snack.

Now, Mojo tries to lead a fiber-filled vegetable-brimming life anyway, so she's usually not having problems in that area, thank you very much, but force-feeding herself over 100% of her daily allowance on top of her usual fiberful fare is just ASKING for trouble. And in this case "trouble" meant my digestive system rather blowing up like a fun-filled balloon while the flora and fauna therein did their best to process the sudden load. Which meant that, while Mojo rather sort of wanted pie BEFORE dinner, about halfway through dinner she silently resolved to Never Eat Again, Ever. And finished her fish like a good girl and politely demurred when the waitress suggested dessert. By the time we got back to the inlaws I was in slightly greater intestinal distress, nothing earth shaking but I wasn't in the mood to wish for ANYTHING to eat, which for some reason is always my inlaws' cue to start naming progressively less tempting foodstuffs in a relentless barrage of intended hospitality, with me blanching at each request until I collapse in a sobbing huddle in the corner moaning stuff like "No .... no .... please stop mentioning food or I'm going to be sick!" Which for some odd reason they interpret in their brains as "oooh, that sure sounds tempting, but I'm going to keep rudely refusing your offered food until you mention something even more disgusting!" Much like a Certain Cruel Sibling might have done when we were younger, only not on purpose, but just in an ill-timed effort to be truly hospitable.

Upon Mojo's final sobbing collapse they simply then have to offer their big trump card--which in this case was "Well, then, would you want some EGG NOG, dear? Ummmm--yes, we have EGG NOG! It's delicious! Father, go pour her a big gloppy glass of warm EGG NOG!" The mention of egg nog--hated, oh, hated of all semi-liquid foodstuffs--pretty much means they're gonna have to take me out of there on a stretcher if they keep this up.

And where is my Favorite Husband, their son, through all of this? Sitting around eating plates of their extravagant desserts and laughing at my distress. Okay, maybe not out loud. To his credit when their backs were turned he whispered to me something along the lines of "I asked them to put lots of expired RAISINS in that big, tall glass of warm egg nog they're bringing you!" which I tells ya, for a less saintlike wife than Mojo such a tease is clearly grounds for instant divorce. But no, Mojo is too busy trying to keep her insides inside, so it all passes and we remain blissfully together, mostly since Mojo was too weak with nausea to strangle him.

So for all of you keeping track of Mojo's sundry likes and dislikes, here's a whole pageful to slog through. And yes, it WILL be on the test.

Mojo