Mincemeat Connoisseur

Bill and I drove home last week for a short Christmas visit with our family and friends.  On Sunday night, we had a big dinner for our sons and their families and I made sure there was plenty of dessert. (What's Christmas without sweets?)  I'd made two kinds of fudge and toffee and a carrot cake, iced gingerbread and sugar cookies and a plate of mincemeat tarts.  I let the little boys choose what they wanted to eat.

Seven-year-old Sage loaded up his plate with a couple of tarts and a wedge of cake.  I looked at the heaping plate dubiously.  "Are you sure you'll eat all of that?  Those are mincemeat, you know."

Sage picked up a tart and grinned, licking his lips.  "I KNOW it is!  I LOVE mincemeat!"

"Really?"  I still didn't believe him.  It was from a batch of mincemeat I'd found in the freezer I'd made two years ago.  And rich as it is, mincemeat has the flavor a kid might not like, let alone its powerful spiciness.  But then, Sage is a kid who has highly developed taste buds.  He likes spicy food and had just polished off a Christmas tamale, rubbing his stomach in appreciation but calling for a glass of water as he admitted, "It's a little spice-y!"

"So go ahead, Sage.  Enjoy your tarts," I said, as I watched four-year-old Ronnie chow down onto a lividly green frosted Christmas tree sugar cooky. 

They disappeared into his mouth, one after the other and Sage grinned again, letting Grandma know that there was nothing he couldn't eat.  Good for him!

A bit later, I came back over to the table to find him dawdling over the piece of carrot cake that remained on his plate.  "You take more than you can eat?" I asked.

"Oh no!  I'm going to eat this," he assured me.  His fingers worked at something in the cake and he picked it off and laid it to the side. 

I studied his now mangled piece of carrot cake.  A stack of raisins lay to the side of the buttercream and cake on his plate.  "What are you doing?"

"Oh, it's these raisins, Grandma!  I can't eat them!  I hate raisins.  I never eat them.  So I'm taking them out."  He resumed his task stoicly.

I shook my head.  Should I tell the now finicky eater that the mincemeat comprises three kinds of raisins, dark, sultans and currants?  And that he'd just chomped them down and declared them delicious?  Nope!  Let him find out later.