Marcel Proust may have had the madeleine, but I have something far less delicate, possibly even coarse in nature. I remember mealtimes as a child, pork chops would be served. Unadorned, grilled with salt and a smidgen of pepper, on the stove. My family would sit down together to enjoy our meal, chat about the days events, and I would pick at my food, a spoonful of rice, a forkful of salad. I would push my pork chop aimlessly around the plate. And wait. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the chop, it was just that I knew, at the close of the meal, there was something far better awaiting me.

At meal’s end my sister would push all of her pork fat, meticulously sliced from the chop, onto my plate. My mother would lay her bits of fat, chewed and sucked, down on my plate. And finally, my father would roll his eyes, but obliging, place his tiny morsels of gristle on the plate of his youngest (and most oddly eager) child. Then the true meal would begin for me…

Gnawing, gnashing, rolling bits of gristle around between my teeth, gleefully I would clasp my hands together, eager to tuck in to the mounds of sinew before me. Plates would be cleared around me, but the clatter of the dishes was simply a soundtrack to my delectable ingestion. I would take delight in the slow break down of matter with my incisers, the laborious amounts of effort it would take to get the tiniest bit of satisfaction– chewing, chewing, chewing the fat.

Fast forward 20 years, and I am now appalled by my morbid fascination with this globulous substance. I am the person who won’t eat prime rib because that nodule of fat, planted firmly in the center of the roast turns me off. Chicken skin, its slick surface, dotted with the puckers from each individual feather, makes my stomach turn. And pork fat, from the chop, no matter how crisp, forget about it.

Proust may have wanted to recapture those childhood memories of Combray, but I am more than happy to keep mine repressed– eternally.