WHENCE THE CHIPS?

Mendel would say that I inherited double-dominant chocolate-craving genes from my parents. My father would need his jacket cleaned weekly because of a Hershey bar left in his pocket. My mother the diabetic would adjust her insulin in anticipation of a chocolate sundae.

My rebbetzin prudently keeps our chocolate to a minimum. She knows she should by all the candy wrappers she finds in my car. The only stuff that’s usually in the cabinet is a couple bags of chocolate chips that she uses for baking.

Naturally, when the craving overwhelms me, I grab a handful of the chips and down them before she can catch me. My secret does not last long. “Maaaaaarc!” she shrieks across the house. “I hope you enjoyed your chips! How am I going to bake the cookies?”

“All right, all right, I’ll go buy more,” I offer in self-defense.

“I don’t think so. Where are you going to find pareve chocolate chips in Greenville?”

She’s right. The once-pareve Nestlé’s, Hershey’s, Baker’s, are no longer pareve. No, they are now milchig. Another clear-cut case of anti-Semitism. No pareve chocolate chips in tiny Greenville.

So she commands, “The next time you’re in [huge] Atlanta to see the kids, you’ll buy up all the pareve chocolate chips you can find! How soon are you going to see the kids?”

I know the answer she expects. I postpone my appointments and whiz 200 KM to clear the grocery shelves of chips on the pretext of visiting the grandchildren. Oh yes, we have one more granddaughter in Brooklyn. There one may procure chocolate chips at every corner drugstore. I pay $578 for my ticket, carry an extra suitcase, and buy every bag of chips in Borough Park.

Upon my return, we resume our peaceful marriage. Then she announces that her parents are coming and that she’s going to bake a chocolate chip cake. I cower in fear. “Maaaaaarc!” she rants. “Again with the chips?”

By now, you know the exercise: I clear the papers from my desk, fill up my gas tank, and call my kids to prepare the bedroom, because Zayde is coming to visit. The grandbabies are delighted. I break out in acne.