Pistachio pudding

 

     Were someone to ask me about the surprising aspects of being a diabetic — and no one has, so I'll have to just jump right in — I'd say, "There's more pudding than I expected." One can't always eat what one wants, and yet life has to retain its savor, somehow, so I've been making a lot of sugar-free Jello brand pudding.

     The stuff isn't particularly low in calories, since I use 2 percent milk, but those are fat calories, which are our friends, as opposed to sugar calories — boo, hiss —  so I can use it for treats without having to shoot up insulin, which I try to avoid doing as it crashes your blood sugar down if I'm not careful and, really, how careful can a person be?
     Having sated myself on the chocolate and chocolate fudge varieties, I grew daring, and experimented with vanilla and banana cream — very banana-y — and butterscotch, and, above, pistachio, which is one of those flavors, like almond, that doesn't actually taste like the nut itself, but some kind of confectioner's fantasy of what the nut must taste like in heaven. Though in an unexpected nod to the natural world, which doesn't have a whole lot of influence on a product like sugar free Jell-O brand pudding, there are actual bits of pistachio thrown in, for verisimilitude.

     At least I hope they're bits of pistachio. They're bits of something.
     There is a lemon sugarfree flavor, but I haven't found it in the wild yet — not at Jewel, not at Sunset. I might have to break down and order it online, being a particular fan of lemon.

     Not to short-change pistachio. The nut itself is backed by no less authority than the Bible, Genesis 43:11, when Jacob tells his sons: "Put some of the best products of the land in your bags and take them down to the man as a gift — a little balm and a little honey, some spices and myrrh, some pistachio nuts and almonds."
     You're probably wondering about the maraschino cherry. I put them in for festivity's sake, even though it's a more complicated process than you'd think. You can't just plop them in the setting pudding. They're wet, and the juice pools. So I try them on paper towels while I'm whisking up today's batch. The things we do for aesthetics.

     The only thing left is to play my favorite game, "Name that Etymology." I guessed that "pistachio" had to be Italian, which it is, but sails off into the past. It's one of those words that cuts through time almost untouched. In Greek, it's pistakion, in old Persian pistah.

     A pistachio tree can live to be 300 years old, and seeds have been found by archeologists in Bronze Age sites, 8000 years old.