TRENDY SCHMALTZ

Now that things are moving forward with my TV show, I’ve become something of a celebrity in Greenville. Lest I get a swelled head, I remind myself that the most famous person in Greenville was a baseball player bribed by a Jewish gangster to throw the World Series.

Amazingly, local periodicals are running features about me. One magazine even sent out a camera crew to shoot photos of how I cook. Naturally, they asked for the typical Jewish menu: chicken soup, matzo balls, gefilte fish.

I denude the chicken to ensure that the soup would be healthful. I was left with plenty of skin, so I decided to fulfill a secret passion: to render a pot of schmaltz. It is the single most deadly foodstuff that Mephistopheles created. If Linda sees me in its presence, she sends me to the doghouse. All she knows is that my matzo balls and chopped liver have a je ne se qua that she has not been able to replicate.

Here come the photographers. I line up the carrots, celery, and chicken for the photo shoot. Meanwhile, one of them spies the pot of schmaltz.

“That’s rendered chicken fat,” I tell her apologetically, “and it is toxic.” “So, it’s like lard?” she asks. “I bet you could make a really flaky pie crust with it.” “Not exactly,” I tell her. “We usually use it with mashed potatoes.” “And what are those? she says, pointing to the gribenes. “Uh, we like to call them ‘Jewish popcorn’. Try one.” She pronounces it “delicious,” as the cholesterol rushes through her pristine arteries.

With that, she starts snapping pictures of the schmaltz, gribenes, and me. “Wait! What about my chicken soup?” “No, no, we know what the readers like. This is so much more interesting.” “I’m a chef!” I shout, “not a yokel!”

So, schmaltz has become my culinary legacy in a fancy magazine, my picture surrounded by ads for haute couture and Rolex watches. Now the entire world knows that I’m a fraud. No more hiding from the truth. But, none of that really matters in the larger scheme. Nothing will be as traumatic as what Linda has to say.