From the Archives: Carob is for the Dogs

Carob is for the Dogs

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I loathe carob with the white hot passion of a thousand blazing suns. Ignore the fact I haven't let carob pass my lips in four decades. My aversion is purely emotional. Maybe carob tastes good. Maybe it doesn't. And I'm not about to find out. I refuse to even flirt with the idea of recipe testing with this ingredient because it represents a childhood of chocolate deprivation.

Cue the mood music: When I was very young I had severe eczema. I would scratch myself until I bled. In an effort to stop me from tearing my skin open in my sleep, my mother would wrap my weeping limbs with torn bed sheets. They didn't have cortisone back then, so when I wasn't swaddled like a burn victim, I was slathered in a cream that reeked of coal tar, forced into lukewarm oatmeal baths and denied certain foods. In a cruel twist of fate, my number one dietary no-no was chocolate.

To save my skin and her own sanity, my mother briefly flirted with carob. She made carob chip cookies, bought carob bars from the health food store and produced one spectacular failure with a carob cake. It might have looked like chocolate but even at five years of age, I couldn't be fooled. I don't know who cried harder over carob, Mom or me.

Having outgrown the eczema, I now eat chocolate with abandon and don't give bed sheets a second thought. However, I've heaped all my anger and blame onto carob. Hence my opening statement: I loathed carob with the white hot passion of a thousand blazing suns.

That said, I'm not totally unreasonable. Carob exists for a reason -- to fool lovable dogs into thinking they are getting human food. Chocolate can kill a pet, and since the omnivorous canine doesn't have my selective palate, carob is the perfect chocolate substitute (for them. I'm still convinced carob should come labeled "Not fit for human consumption.") And dogs seem to like it. Need proof? Fellow writer and dog blogger Roxanne Hawn makes her own carob-coated dog treats.

And Roxanne loves dogs as much as I hate carob. Dog fans (Donna and Lori, are you reading this?) should drop by her blog, Champion of My Heart, to read about the adventures of a rescued border collie named Lilly. Unlike me, this dog is shy, agile and will do anything for a carob-coated treat.

Carob photo by Ferran Nogues, printed under a Creative Commons License.