Flim Flan

by Sweetie

Each year on her birthday, my friend Abby – white bred Abby who recently discovered her family’s Lutheran background masked their Jewish identity– asks her office to give her a flan instead of a birthday cake.

(Always one to break with tradition, Abby also asks them to sing Tom Petty’s “Free Falling,” instead of the “Happy Birthday” song…)

I adore cake, abhor flan and was befuddled by Abby’s birthday request.

“Why would you do that?” I demanded to know.

Flan first touched my lips at age 10, when friends invited me to a Las Posadas game at Christmastime, during which children knock on neighborhood doors looking for room at the “inn” for the symbolic Mary and Joseph. The game ended when a home let us in. We headed to the basement for the customary party and ate flan.

“Do you like it?” one of my friend’s moms asked, after I had two bites of flan and put it down. My cheeks were puffed out with lemonade that my juvenile logic theorized would coat my mouth and dissolve the flan-tasting molecules.

I swallowed hard.

“It’s good,” I lied, trying to be a “good girl," like the one Tom Petty sings about.

“Muy mal,” is what I wanted to say.

The second, third and fifty-sixth times I had flan were a few years later in my own white bred home. My younger sister needed to bring Mexican food for a presentation in social studies class.

And for some reason, someone in my family decided that the food would be flan.

My busy mother discovered that Jell-O made instant flan, and she bought roughly 196 boxes at 49 cents a piece – in the 90s everything was cheap – and began whipping the crap up. I say “crap” not to be derogatory toward Hispanics but because flan in a box with gelatin is, from a technical standpoint, crap. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control have confirmed it.

On presentation day, my mom opened her refrigerator and removed all 196 dishes of flan-crap. They were such a hit at school that she returned with 195 of them. Since they took too much room in the fridge and Mom refused throw them out because “we don’t waste money and we don’t waste food in this house when there are starving children in Africa,” she shoved them in the freezer in the basement.

Several months later, my mom rediscovered the flan like archeologist on a dig. It had yellowed like old newspaper from its original cream color. Despite our ewws, we had to eat it each night until it was done. We called it “phlegm” because of its color and noises we made as we swallowed it.

Traumatized, almost two decades passed before I tried flan again.

Abby is something of a flan connoisseur. “There are numerous ways to make flan,” she said. “Some flan is spongy. Some is rich and creamy and has the same ingredients as crème brulee.”

“Hmmm,” I said. “I like rich and creamy. And I love crème brulee!”

“Then we’ll try some!” Abby said.

"Si," I agreed.

Then the pangs of paranoia arose: Am I a racist to suddenly be open to flan when it’s likened to French cuisine? Was I a racist child for hating flan? Are sensitive taste buds an excuse for a kid? What if I hate flan as an adult? Am I still racist – even if I love tamales and corn tortillas? Am I still racist – even if I side with immigrants in political issues?

The flan I tried that night was on the order of crème brulee. Of course, I loved it. Now, as I continue to wrestle with those questions, I’m going to try different flans. Even the spongy ones, which sound kind of gross. I was especially thrilled to learn that there is chocolate flan, which I plan to rename "chocoflan."

If you feel inclined, share your experiences with flan. Do you know where there's good flan along the Wasatch Front? And, most importantly, where can one get a chocoflan?