From Cherries to Oysters: A Good Girl's Guide to Sex Foods, Part 1

I was a boringly good girl in high school. Well, "boring" may be too strong of a word, since some of the crazy things my friends and I did were...well...crazy... but all of them were done without the involvement of drinking, smoking, drugs of any kind or sex. (though, one could make the argument that the lack of alcohol and drugs does kind of add to the bizarreness of some of our antics)

We were by no means puritanical - we just enjoyed being kids. A lot. However, even good girls experiment.

I recently attended a seminar on aphrodisiac foods. Since the main thrust (ha!) of the class was a study of how using certain foods and preparing them in certain ways can utilize their energies for a purpose, it got me thinking of how I've always worked with food - eating it, serving it, entertaining with it...

Every year, we invite friends over for Christmas dessert. I make an insane number of sweets (three pies, a Yule log cake, shaped cookies, spiced nuts...) and this year, I added chocolate covered cherries to the roster. As we're all sitting around, laughing, talking, sampling different sugar packed goodies, slowly, people began looking at me.

ME: "What?"
THEM: "What are you doing?"
ME: "Oh, this?" (I remove the small thing from my mouth) "it's just a cherry stem."
THEM: "But what are you doing with it?"
ME: (with the classic "whaddya mean?" look on my face) "Tying them." (I mean, really - there's a pile of tiny little cherry knots right there)
THEM: "You know how to do that? Where did you learn it?"

Apparently, when I eat cherries, without thinking about it, I just pop the stem in my mouth and tie it up. What became equally apparent then was that, clearly not everyone does this. We spent the next 15 minutes or so having a cherry stem tying crash course...and though that didn't go very far, it did bring me back to the day my best friends and I decided to learn how to tie those stems.

(Wayne and Garth waving their arms, going "doodly-dut, doodly-dut" as we travel back to the early 90s)

It's my 18th birthday. Ms. J, Dana and I (bestestest ever friends that we were) were watching some show (presumably - the details of this part are hazy) about some guy who was going for the world record on how quickly he could tie cherry stems with his tongue and...hold on...

(Now that I think about it, I can't believe we were watching something this stupid on my birthday. It had to be some other time, or we were talking about said stupid show...)

...and we decided that WE were going to learn how to tie cherry stems. With our tongues. Because it was sexy. So we were told.

Remember the part where we were virgins...and quite okay with that? Well, still true. We weren't looking to seduce anyone, which is good, since we weren't terribly clear about what was so exciting about this ability (okay, I had a pretty good idea, though Ms. J claims she and Dana did not) . I'm pretty sure that, good earth signs that we were/are, we simply decided that THIS would be a VERY GOOD SKILL to have when we DID start having sex. So we were just doing prep work. Also consistent with good, diligent earth sign personality is dedication to a purpose.

We went to the grocery, bought 2 lbs of cherries, sat down at my kitchen table and started Erotic Food Skills 101.

DISCOVERY #1: I don't much like cherries.
DISCOVERY #2: OUCH...what the hell was that?
DISCOVERY #3: fresh cherry stems produce splinters
DISCOVERY #4: apparently, we should have bought maraschino cherries

2 lbs. consumed fruit, 3 chaffed tongues and a couple hours later - skill acquired.

Part 2: It's Romantic to Cook for Someone, Right?