The last vestiges of a child’s diet

As long as we’re headed down memory lane with Binaca, it only seems appropriate to think about what else has been hanging around since lunch came in a lunchbox. Two dishes have yet to leave my diet, despite the passage of two decades.

The first is a dish that launched my career as a published author: ants on a log. My entry in the kindergarten cookbook required no actual cooking — just the spreading of peanut butter on a celery stalk and the careful placement of raisins to resemble the aforementioned insects.

It’s a food that I still eat once a week, usually when I’m feeling too lazy to cook. It’s where my brain goes when I need a default meal.