The organic Twinkie

Duane Keiser's painting of a Twinkie, June, 2005,
from A Painting A Day

The organic Twinkie is one of the debates in the natural foods movement - that is, should natural foods mean trying to teach people to eat differently, and possibly in ways that will bring them better health, or should natural foods just recreate the ways that people have been accustomed to eating? So we end up with the organic Twinkie, and the organic TV dinner. And every natural foods store, even my beloved Willy St Co-op, has a huge aisle of natural chips and snack foods (well, Willy St's is actually pretty modest, in comparison to Whole Foods....)

I was thinking about this today because last night I made my Passover lemon sponge cake roll, and the texture was pretty remarkably similar to a Twinkie. I made the cake because I am going to take it over to my supper club house this morning, and get it photographed for the April issue of Wisconsin Woman magazine. And, because I was cooking thinking primarily of being photographed rather than eating, I definitely had the attitude that I might as well make this thing of foam rubber filled with shaving cream, the composition of a Twinkie, at least that's what we always declared in elementary school.

And the ironies only begin there - another debate in natural foods is what is more important: organic, or local and sustainable? Meaning that yes, we can eat organic strawberries for Valentine's day in Wisconsin, but they have been trucked or flown in at great expense of fossil fuel. Once I made the assumption that the cake roll is for looks rather than taste, I was perfectly willing to go buy out of season raspberries & blackberries to decorate it with, at the tradtional, but locally owned supermarket that I had decided it was more virtuous to shop at than Whole Foods, even though it is a bit farther down the road from my house than Whole Foods - the distance gave me time to engage in the debate, while sitting in my car in traffic. And then I got the raspberries free, because the manager who got called over to open another checkout lane, who is the one who actually fired my older son when he worked there (let him go, really) for not being willing to cut his hair, charged me $6.99 instead of $3.99, and the service desk gave me the berries free, to make up. And I still had to go to Whole Foods for mint leaves, since the supermarket was out.

And, it is a snowy and blustery day here, the type of day when I would happily leave my car in the garage, and snicker at all the yayhoos behind the wheel, sliding around on the road, while I am walking, but instead - because of having to go to the photoshoot - I am one of the yayhoos behind the wheel.

And, this is not even my favorite recipe, nor one I feel a particular pride about - the writer at the mag just picked it off my web site in the sort of random editorial favoritism I remember well from when I worked at Pleasant Co, a.k.a. American Girl, like she figured this recipe was the cutest one.

Well, maybe I can get the photographer to give me some of the pictures, if they come out good ... <grin>