Ruth Reichl “The Queen of Mold”

　　 As one of the guests invited to the party says ironically in The Queen of Mold, “I’ve never tasted anything quite like that before,” I have never read anything like this before. This is not an irony but an honest impression of the story. It is full of humor. 　　 Where does the humor arise? It comes from the mother’s unique way of cooking. She does not care about mold at all. She just scrapes the fuzzy blue stuff off the food before serving it. She mixes all the leftovers in the refrigerator, from cheese ends to squishy tomatoes, to make “Everything Stew.” 　　 The most humorous part arises when she holds a party inviting more than 150 people. She buys awful lot of food at a wholesale food company including fifty pounds of frozen chicken legs, industrial-size cans of tomato soup, and two cases of canned peaches. Moreover, she buys “everything” at the Automat for almost nothing. The writer worries about how to cook them, which bowls should they be served in, and whether the food will poison the quests, but her mother doesn’t care about it at all. The humor lies in the gap, as wide as the Grand Canyon, between the writer’s worry and her mother’s nonchalance. At the end of the story, even when twenty-six guests became sick from food poisoning, she doesn’t know why they became sick because her family all feel fine though they ate everything. 　　 Exaggerated expressions also add to the humor. The title, “Queen of Mold” is an exaggeration. “The Queen” is just the suitable word to call the mother. She knows everything about mold. She makes her husband “taste” it, wipe it out, or even hide it in her food. She can manipulate it in any way she wishes. She is more than the master of mold. She is the queen of mold. Some other exaggerations I enjoyed are: “My mission was to keep Mom from killing anybody who came to dinner,” “Mom…came back honking her horn loudly, her car filled to the brim,” “Steak tartare was the bane of my existence,” and “…cook those millions of chicken legs….” 　　 As I was reading the story, I visualized that Ruth Reichl was smiling as she was writing the story. Maybe she can be called “The Queen of Humor.” ********************************* Ruth Reichl - (born in 1948 in New York City) is an American food writer, co-producer of PBS's Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, culinary editor for the Modern Library, host of PBS's Gourmet's Adventures with Ruth, and the last editor-in-chief of the now shuttered Gourmet magazine.