This
morning I ate the best blueberry muffin I ever had in my entire life. At least
I think I did. Let me explain.
Pushing up on 53 years old, I have had a fair amount of blueberry muffins
throughout my lifetime. I didn’t have many—if any—in my youth, as the concept
of fruit in a dessert-type item nauseated me. (At that time, I was all
chocolate all the time.) But sometime in adulthood I accepted, indeed, even
embraced the idea of the blueberry muffin.
For three years in my early 20s, I lived and worked in Manhattan. It was about
a 20-minute walk from my small studio apartment on the Upper East Side to the
MAD Magazine offices on 52nd Street and Madison Avenue, and I passed
countless eateries along the way. Restaurants, bakeries, street vendors—the
breakfast options on my daily morning commute were endless. I was living on my
own for the first time and with that newfound whiff of freedom, I decided I
would be fearless. I would put myself out there and eat non-chocolate pastries
that I never dared try before. For the first time I experienced the wonder of a
bear claw, the glory of an almond croissant, and yes, the majesty of a
blueberry muffin.
I am not going to lie for the sake of this blog post and say that blueberry
muffins were my favorite because that’s simply not true. But I did like them
very much and made them a regular part of my breakfast rotation. Sometimes I would
get them from a bakery, sometimes from a breakfast cart, and sometimes I would
even bake them myself. (No, that last part is a lie. I never baked a blueberry
muffin in my entire life. But wouldn’t it be cool if I did?) During my years in
Manhattan, I must have had something on the order of 200 blueberry muffins. Most
of these blueberry muffins were very good. A few were duds.
When I moved out to Arizona in 1995, I continued to eat blueberry muffins,
though perhaps not as frequently. Using standard deviations, supply chain
economics, and numbers I’m simply pulling out of my ass, I would estimate that
since moving to the Grand Canyon state I consume approximately 40 blueberry
muffins a year. That makes about 1,080 blueberry muffins I’ve had in Arizona. Adding
that to the 200 from New York days, it seems I’ve had an estimated 1,280
blueberry muffins in my lifetime.
So how do I know the one I ate this morning was the best? I don’t. I can’t. But
people say that sort of thing all the time. “This is the best pizza I’ve had in
my life.” “This is the best lobster I’ve had in my life.” “This is the best frog
eye salad I’ve had in my life.” Granted, sometimes this is simply hyperbole,
but other times people seem sincerely committed to the notion that whatever it
is they just ate is really the best version of that thing they have had. How
does one know that?
I am a man who loves keeping track of things with spreadsheets, but it has
never occurred to me to keep a spreadsheet of all the items I eat and their
relative tastiness. And even if I had such a spreadsheet of every blueberry
muffin I’ve ever eaten, how would I know if the amazing one I had on March 23,
1994, was any better or worse than another amazing one I had on October 10,
2008, or any other amazing muffin day? How
accurate can one’s taste memory really be?
And yet the blueberry muffin I had this morning, which I got from the café at
my work, was so amazingly delicious that, at this moment, I feel it is the best
one I have ever tasted. And who are you to say any different? Do you secretly
keep a spreadsheet of all the blueberry muffins I’ve had throughout my life?
And if so, how did you get access to such information? And more importantly,
please email it to me so I can continue to build on your incredible work.
