Stuffed lambchop: the mother of all comfort foods?

What foods take you back to the happiness and comfort of childhood?

Stuffed Lambchops

There are foods I only have to think of — no actual eating is required — to get a warm sense of that more carefree stage of life when Mom or Grandma or some other loving adult would cook me something nourishing and delicious.  Even though I haven't tasted these foods in decades, I still have fond memories of Pennsylvania Dutch hog maw (pig's stomach stuffed with sausage and vegetables — it's much more appealing than it sounds), Czech poppyseed pastries, and endless batches of my mother's waffles, the first one served with mandatory chicken a la king and then the real reward of as many more as I wanted with molasses, karo, maple syrup, honey, peanut butter, jelly, and all kinds of other sweet toppings.  (Not all at the same time!  Though I have been known for creating rather baroque combinations of ingredients.  For many years during my adolescence I craved a rather over-the-top sandwich of my own invention, made with PB, spun honey, marshmallow fluff, and sliced banana on white bread.  Oh dear, I am craving that again right now.)

All this culinary reminiscing is just a slyly deceptive lead-in to the video of my dog Freddy I've posted below, which has nothing at all to do with food.  But I think you'll find it fascinating.

Stuffed Lambchop

Freddy's first toy was a stuffed Lambchop doll (modeled after Shari Lewis's puppet) that we had up in a closet for years and pulled out on Freddy's first night in our home to give him a warm, cuddly presence in his bed so that he wouldn't miss his littermates too much.   The toy seemed to have the desired effect: Freddy suckled on it and kneaded it with his tiny paws, as though he was still feeding at his mother's teat.

From then on, Freddy has treated this particular toy in a gentle and almost meditative manner completely different from his approach to all his other toys.  When he plays with Baby or Squeaky Devil or Quadripus (who has lost several of his original 8 legs over the past year and is in grave danger of becoming a Triplapus any day now), he'll growl ferociously, shake the living daylights out of them, and eventually, rip them to shreds.  When Lambchop comes out, though, Freddy regresses to a tender stage of early puppyhood.  There is an uncanny transformation that takes place over a period of a minute or so: our assertive, strong-willed adult dog morphs before our eyes into a vulnerable, nursing infant.

It will happen before your eyes, too, as you watch this video:



Isn't that charming, and also a bit weird?  Lambchop seems to have a similar effect on Freddy to that of catnip on cats.  We've never been able to figure out what it is about this toy that elicits this remarkable response — is it the texture, the look, the smell of the thing?  Repeated washings have not diminished Lambchop's mesmerizing potency, but we are concerned that eventually she will just disintegrate into nothing.  Would Freddy accept a replacement if it looked exactly the same?

Let's hope we never have to find out.

Let's also hope that someday we do find the toy that will cause Willy's eyes to glaze over and to put that perpetual motion machine of a dog into a state of contented lethargy.