The Official Cookbook of Sixteen-Year-Old Males

I'm wasting my time writing humorous memoir. It's time to get down to brass tacks. To the nitty-gritty world of culinary treats favored by sixteen-year-old males. There's an immense demographic hungering for such a tome, a cookbook for, about, and by sixteen-year-old males. One of them, anyway. And I will be the ghost writer.

I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew. My first thought for a title was: The Official Sixteen-Year-Old Male Cookbook. But that opened up a large economy size can of worms, which most folks frown upon in the kitchen. It sounds like maybe it would tell you how to cook sixteen-year-old males. Which I'm pretty sure is illegal, even here in Missouri. Or with a different inflection, it sounds like the cookbook has a gender. Or that the volume was written half-score and six years ago. Or that it is the official version of a common edition.

The inspiration for my new work-in-progress hit me in the ear this morning as I was driving to work. Genius called for advice. "I'm making a sandwich to take for my lunch. There's just one green spot on the baloney. Can I use it?"

"No!"

"But it's only on one slice. I need something for a sandwich."

"Don't eat the baloney!"

"What's here? Is there any turkey? I would even eat ham."

"There's ham in the bottom of the fridge. It should be okay."

Let the record show that the night I baked the ham, Genius had no qualms about consuming a thick slab, along with potatoes, carrots, and onions cooked alongside. It was only the day after that he informed me, "I really don't like ham. I only ate the ham because I wanted the potatoes, and you would have complained if I didn't eat the ham. "

He brought his bag lunch to my classroom to store in the mini-fridge. Along with some Sun Chips that his grandma bought for him, Garden Salsa, though he told me upon opening them that he really preferred plain. After shoving my stuff aside, he deposited his two ham sandwiches, and baggie of chips. Scooping up some chocolate-caramel cups stored in the fridge by The Pony for after-school snacks, Genius went on his way, commanding, "Don't eat my Sun Chips." The irony was lost on my students.

Before 2nd hour, Genius accosted me in the hall. "Give me a dollar. I want a sausage." The juniors are selling Slim-Jim-like snacks as a prom fundraiser. Genius is already on Prom Committee from previous selling success, so he is a mere customer for his classmates. A customer who enjoys a spicy, greasy meat snack at 9:00 a.m.

Apparently sated by his bag lunch, he toughed out the rest of the day without foraging for free food.

After a full evening meal, he declared that he was going to bake some cookies. A colossal fly in that ointment was the fact that we have no cookie dough. Check. We had a tub of sugar cookie dough in the back of the refrigerator. I did not employ carbon-dating techniques, but the estimated age of that tasty treat is three years. That it had already been opened and had the consistency of a slab of concrete did not deter the future Iron Chef.

Genius was forbidden to use any of my spoons, so he hacked off hunks of that petrified dough with a butter knife. I heard it hit the floor, and could only picture the action a story above my head. Genius stabbing a sugar-dough stone like the unkillable slasher in a horror flick.

He carved out the bottom of each cookie, and filled the hollow with Nutella. Then he molded the barely-malleable dough over the cavity, creating, in effect, a Nutella sugar-cookie hot pocket. The results were less than appetizing. Because this labor of love was so labor-intensive, Genius only created two sweet hot pockets. And one of them oozed some kind of bubbly nuclear waste while cooking. So he did not sample his first creation, but threw the failed attempt to the dogs.

The unflappable Genius then proceeded to Plan B. Which will need to be expounded upon tomorrow, as my ghost cookbook has languished too long in the foreword of background information.

Disclaimer: I know the processed tube meat is spelled B O L O G N A. I am no stranger to Oscar Mayer commercials. But here in Backroads, a person would be laughed out of town for saying, "Bologna." That, and assumed to be some kind of spy sent to Hickville to poke fun at the hillbillies, or perhaps try to trick us into telling the butcher that baloney makes us horny, like Doolittle Lynn tricked Loretty in Coal Miner's Daughter.