LETTERS: IT'S THE BATTLE BETWEEN NOODLES AND DUMPLINGS

To the editor:

My mother made wonderful chicken-and-dumpling meals, so when I moved to Cape Girardeau nearly 40 years ago and learned that restaurants and churches emphasized chicken and dumplings, I thought U.S. 61 had led me to Paradise. It was not to be. After my first chicken-and-dumpling church meal, I knew that the church itself had deceived me and fed me thick pasty noodles which it called dumplings. I shouted out the mendacity to all within splash distance: "These are not dumplings but noodles!" But when no one was interested in my cause, I swallowed and realized I had moved into a culture of barbarians.

And my mother had shown me how dumplings are made with steam. Take a big kettle of chicken broth. Get it steaming hot under a tight, domed lid. Take a spoonful of dough mix and gingerly pull the lid aside and slip in a spoonful. Replace the lid quickly. Steam will produce a dumpling. Without the lid, the hot broth would have produced a noodle. Mankind is divided between the two.

You may wonder why I am so steamed up about this, but I love good food and revere the memory of my mother. I understand, however, that as boyhood passes into manhood and manhood into whatever is next, old values change. No doubt about it. But so long as I am able to obtain the real steamed fluffy dumpling, why should I settle for a soggy noodle?

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau