Jane’s Phone: Click Here for an Invitation to Some Exclusive Celebrity Gossip — Intertwined With a Story About Mold

Did anyone else grow up thinking mold was good for you? I did and it is still hard for me to comprehend that even a little bit of mold on something that you’re eating could be harmful? Really?? Isn’t penicillin made from mold?

This little entry is inspired by some cheese in my fridge this morning. I love cheese in the morning.

I also love the taste of burned, because my wonderful mom, having four of us by the time she was in her mid 20s — and poor/under resourced/lacking enough— didn’t have a lot of wherewithal for things like timing her cooking or of course ever even considering throwing anything out. (And of course, my dad was never going to be expected to cook, no matter how hippie and progressive and feminist we were.)

Maybe that’s why it was only a few years ago that I realized that an oven timer did not automatically turn the oven off. I learned that one when I left banana bread in there baking, set the oven timer,and intentionally went to sleep for the night. It was really cool and fossilized when I took it out the next morning, and I still managed to eat some of it for breakfast by pouring a ton of milk on it.

So back to the delicious flavor of burned. I thought that the way to make toast was to put it in the oven on the middle rack in the back (obviously there was no budget for toasters or other unnecessary kitchen gadgets). Then you just scrape the black off the top, sometimes if you’re a pro with a serrated knife so that you still leave good stripes of burn on there, and eat it, yum! It genuinely tastes the best that way. And because you put the oven on broil, only the top is burned, and the bottom is kind of extra moist. Again, yum!

I actually used to literally eat dirt — out of the sandbox — but I think I’ve gone far enough with this culinary inspiration for a Tuesday and I’ll save that for another time. Plus, I didn’t like the taste of dirt. But mold and burned? So delicious. How could it be bad for you? Is anyone with me on this at all?

PS I didn’t want to show a picture of mold, so this is a recent random picture of me lying on a hammock as I never do. I was there just long enough the morning after my best friend’s surprise 60th birthday party to take this picture. I was a little worse for wear.

PPS If you want a bonus name drop, ask me who the friend is and I will DM it to you with some party details. Or something coy like that.

PPPS Can I eat this delicious old cheese? It’s not blue cheese, so the mold was not there originally. But it will taste better with the mold that’s on it now, I swear.