A beef with greasy burgers and chocolate

A beef with greasy burgers and chocolate

JAKARTA (JP): I recently took two nephews to one of those
hamburger joints in town. Not because I'm the kind of doting
uncle who will do anything for the offspring of a collection of
sisters and brothers, but because I'd been asked to sort of baby-
sit for an hour or two.

They don't really need to be baby-sat, what with one of them
being 15 and the other about two years younger. I think that what
the sister who gave birth to them wanted more than anything else
was to make sure that she had a house to come home to.

You see, the elder son was presented with a chemistry set
about a year ago (from a doting aunt). Fascination with it seemed
not to have waned, with the result that on one occasion mom and
dad had to shell out quite a lot of hard-earned rupiah to replace
windows; on another, dear son had to have the blackened walls of
his room repainted and thoroughly aired (it stank for a day or
two).

The younger lad is a bit on the quieter side, but he, too, has
an inquisitive streak which once led him to put three
chicken eggs among his clothes, hook up a bulb in the wardrobe
for warmth and wait for the proud moment when three chicks would
appear and chirp "mother!" at him. Guess who also had to have his
room totally sprayed and aired after about five days when he
accidentally busted two of the eggs. Of course, the incidents
earned them a good dressing down, but mom and dad did not inflict
any real punishment. After all, the explosions and hatchings
sprang from an enquiring mind, not from any real nasty plot or
scheme.

Actually, on my part taking the two out of the house was
something of an act of self-preservation. I didn't want to be a
victim of a possible explosion, so one way of preventing that was
to put a distance between the chemistry set and them. Besides,
they asked for hamburgers.

Apart from the odd occurrence now and then when they throw the
house in turmoil with one or the other experiment, they're really
rather nice, and share with millions of their peers around the
world an inordinate fondness for junk food. So here we were at
the hamburger joint with me watching them, fascinated, wade
through two mountains (one each) of french fries and jumbo
monsters (two each), you know, the ones that have three slices of
bread. The lot was washed down with three chocolate malts (the
younger wanted a second). I confined myself to a coke and
occasionally dipped into the abundant supply of french fries.

I admit that I had some misgivings about them chomping down
the stuff. Not so much because of such life-threatening elements
like cholesterol and fats, but what to me looked like a very low
level of taste. Me, I'm not a fan of beef and chocolate, which
doesn't mean that I don't eat them. Let's just say
that if one of these days a decree goes out banning the
consumption of beef and chocolate, I won't burst into tears or
throw myself out of a 10th floor window.

How did I get that way? A longish story, so let's just say
that at one time in my early years, mom, the force majeure, fed
us beef and other parts of cows for about one week solid. Can you
blame me for a diminished taste for beef? As for chocolate,
every time we had a tummy ache (which happened fairly frequently
during childhood), mom fed us something called "brooklax"
containing chocolate to unstop certain channels in the body.
Since then, my chocolate associations have been unpleasant.

Mind you, I won't refuse a well-made beef bourguignon or
chocolate mousse, but hamburger and chocolate malt? No, thanks.
Next time I take out the nephews it'll be to a place that serves
really good cuisine, if only to make them aware that there's more
to food than hamburgers and chocolate.

-- Jak Jaunt