MAGPIE TALES: Golden Metal

(Here is this week's contribution to the Magpie Tales. You can see the others over here.)

"Hello, my name is Mabel Crohn, and I'd like to share my story."

Mabel walked from the podium and pulled something from her purple and saffron bag, placing a small offering in the open hands of each person in the front row. "Metallic minnows," grumbled the woman with thinning dirty blonde hair and a brooch in the shape of dragon covering its face with a jagged wing.

"Pepper Ridge Farms Goldfish," Mabel said. "They sound so benign, so 'legal' to a dieter. Yet for years they were my downfall. Now a person without eating disorders might have a handful every day or so. But let me tell you, you're looking at a six pack a day kind of gal. And that was on days when I wasn't binging."

Mabel adjusted her headset as she walked down the center aisle, ready to take her motivational talk to the next level.

"I'd delude myself, saying, 'How could Goldfish be fattening? They're so tiny, no larger than a grape. And all I have for lunch is romaine lettuce with half an ounce of no fat dressing.' Well, folks, I was swimming down the stream to a dam of obesity."

Mabel hung her head, her intense, steady breathing amplified loudly through the P.A. system as she milked the pause as every eye in the room focused in on her.

Then, as if she were holding back tears, Mabel triumphantly held her smiling face heavenward. "And that's when I had my epiphany. I didn't need to end my relationship with Pepper Ridge Farms Goldfish. I had to take control of it and transform it into something productive. It was that night in November three years ago that when my urges took me to a bag of Goldfish that I could not resist opening, instead of pouring them into my mouth I poured them into an urn of molten copper alloy. It was then that I realized that my relationship with Goldfish could transition from one of dependency to empowerment."

Mabel then shared other crafted food items she had created -- a Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough container gilded in sterling silver, a gold leafed Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast Platter and bronzed bookends made from Jack in the Box tacos.

With her testimony complete, the plenary session adjourned as the participants went on their way to the various break out sessions at the conference center. Two of the bigger hits was the session on rug weaving using spaghetti and other pastas and a Powerpoint presentation on a bio diesel car made out of Twinkies and Little Debbie's oatmeal cookies with cream filling.