Did you ever have a craving for 15 years? It’s an awful thing.

It’s kind of odd because in allot of ways, I don’t have allot of people from my past in my life. Like when people complain about their families, I really can’t relate anymore.
My parents are both gone; my mother to cancer, my father to some strange life that has not included me for the last 20 years. My grandparents are all dead, cousins few and distant, and only my brother really, as predictable as the wind; comes for Thanksgiving every year. I do think it’s for my stuffing.
I don’t have the people anymore, nor their issues, or idiosyncrasies, or drama of a family holiday. I don’t have to worry about my mother driving me nuts or giving me that look. In many ways, it is very liberating to live a life like this; I feel very free, I worry about disappointing few. But, of course; sure as I mourn just the passing of my family as company, I also feel more unanchored. There is no place to go home to anymore.
So what I have is there stuff. I have their furniture and odd bits; the contents from my mothers and grandmothers pocketbooks; every mass card from every family member or neighbor that died in Massapequa Park from 1956 on; my grandparents dresser set, with all my childhood memories, is my own; the roll of pink hair tape, old dishes and pans, my mother’s hand written recipe book. I have a story attached to just about every possession that I own.
Yet, I am the keeper of their stuff and the maker of the food. Sometimes, I get it right and my meatballs taste so close to my grandmothers that I just sit in the kitchen while cooking, eating out of the pan, and am too full by time it’s ready to eat. The making of thanksgiving items is always so surreal, as I use the same book, the same pans, the same utensils and the view of the food is the same year after year.. as I chop the mushrooms for my mother’s hailed stuffing, I can squint my eyes, and can create a sensation as if I am in my mother’s house, cooking on her stove. So real can be that thread through time and space, that it feels as if I could just spin around fast enough, it will be my mother’s golden straw and rust colored 1970’s daisy wallpaper that greets my eyes.
There are other foods that so strongly bring me back home and I cherish them since my mother’s home is gone now, my grandfathers is no longer full of dusty smells and buried treasures. I have the greatest hankering for good old Italian meatball soup. I don’t know if it was a version of Italian Wedding Soup or not, but I think I have to make it from memory. Still others, are still available and just bring me back home. Stouffers French Bread Pizza just brings back high school and how we use to eat them after schools. Heat them up in the toaster oven, but could never wait for them to cool off enough; the first bite always burnt the roof of my mouth something fierce, but that too, is part of the memory now. Some foods, like the Italian ices of my childhood have to be purchased from the local Long Island stores that we got them from for .. now 5 generations! Others, like the dry cookies that I was given at Gimbals shall never return. Something, I have just incorporated into my daily life and will be part of my own children’s tastes of home. If only that was the case with Sara Lee Chocolate Swirl Poundcake.
I want Sara Lee Chocolate Swirl Poundcake so bad I can actually cry over it.
My mother use to buy it regularly and I just ate it up. I would try not to demolish the whole cake in one sitting, but it was hard, real hard! Kept directly on the kitchen counter, next to the toaster over, my favorite thing to do was to slice off a piece and warm it up. The chocolate would melt down, the cake so warm and buttery. You could pull it apart on the cocoa induced fractures; popping warm morsels of cakey goodness. I can’t tell you when the last time I bought Sara Lee Chocolate Swirl Poundcake. I know it was a constant growing up on the Island, but I don’t think I have found it up here in the Hudson Valley since I moved.. or if I did it was long ago in times of Grand Union. The fact is that there is no store that carries it close to me now. How do I know?

I called Sara Lee

I also wrote them. And emailed. And have complained loudly for YEARS every time I peer into the frozen cake area at the supermarket with hope. I was told that only Super Wal-Mart and Super Target would have it, but I know that they don’t. Nor does Hannaford, or Shoprite or Stop and Shop. And if I am to follow what the Sara Lee Rep says, there is no Sara Lee Chocolate Swirl Poundcake within a 100 mile radius of me.
There is plain Sara Lee Poundcake, but that is just not going to do it.
In fact, I am a little concerned because I can’t even find it on the website, though I found the strawberry version ( which I have never had and do not want to). Here’s what the Strawberry Swirl Poundcake looks like.
The Sara Lee Chocolate Swirl Poundcake looks exactly the same, ‘cept it’s chocolate.
And better.
And driving me crazy.
I can’t order it form Sara Lee. They tell me to talk to my local stores. I’m serious, I have not had this damn cake since my mother died..and that’s almost 15 years. I want my cake. And I want to eat it too. The whole thing! I want to taste that feeling of comfort and home again. I want Sara Lee Chocolate Swirl Poundcake.

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ETA: I must add, that I have an cake angel. You might know her.. she comments her.. my friend DebP.. who has volunteered to be my cake smuggler. We are now part of an interstate cake smuggling ring. She’s a cake pusher. I’m just being silly with this becasue I am so thrilled. Really, huge THANK YOUS to Deb and my cake needs. Kudos also to the other Deb who also was right on in offering to be a ckle smuggler too. Sorry Deb, but Deb asked me first, so Deb is going to do it.

And can we tie CAKE into adoption? Of course I can! See, first off we have here all triad memebers workign togetehr. See, one Deb is an adoptive mom, the other Deb is an adoptee, and I am, doh, a birthmother!

And the other thing that is just amusing..
Hey Deb.. did you ever think that when you first met me you’d be sending me CAKE??
I know the answer is noo, becasue she thought I was evil and scarey!hahahahah

and now it is the time on sprokets that we should laugh!

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SARA LEE CAKE UPDATE

How surprised was I today when my cell phone rang and the caller identified herself as a something director at Sara Lee? Surprised enough that I walked away from my meeting and took the call! Was I in tears and so filled with immense gratitude that they were touched enough by this very blog post? Yes, because she was personally taking over my cause for cake and has promised to overnight me a CASE of my beloved Choclate Swirl PoundCake?
Shall we repeat that?

A CASE of POUND CAKE from SARA LEE!!

Yup.. a case of my chocolate swirl pound cake shall soon be mine! And yes, I will share. After I eat one whole cake by myself.

You know what? Nobody better even try to not like SaraLee; In fact, as support of Sara Lee and their most excellent customer serive and social media outreach ( did I say that they CALLED ME!!).. I suggest that you become a fan of SaraLee on Facebook because they rock.

SAD SAD NEWS:

From Sarah Lee on Facebook:
Sara Lee Desserts 

2010 Chocolate Swirl Poundcake Update