by Cathy
Eating is so overrated.
Do you realize how easygoing life would be if every living animal (including us) didn't require food to survive? There would be no vicious slaughter scenes to watch on the National Geographic channel, animals wouldn't go extinct, and as for us humans? We'd have waaaaaaay less to worry about.
When I was young, I would watch my mother stand in front of a gaping freezer door, completely beaten down and underwhelmed at the prospect of having to think about dinner for the next night, just minutes after cleaning up the dinner from that night. Like clockwork, she would always say, "Now, what should I make for dinner tomorrow night again?! Goodness this whole food thing...what a nuisance!" I used to watch her, equally unmoved at the nightly scene because I knew I didn't have to worry about it. Until I had kids and they grew up.
I quietly muse to myself almost daily about how great it is that I don't have more than two kids, simply because of the fact that each one of those two kids has the exact opposite taste in food. As hard as I've tried to "make them eat what we eat" or what each other eats for that matter, it ends with the outcast family member staying hungry and then whipping up a late night dinner of Cheerios, bagel and cream cheese or oatmeal at all hours of the night.
Bella prefers chicken nuggets only with BBQ sauce; Ari prefers fish sticks only with ketchup.
Bella prefers pepperoni pizza; Ari prefers cheese.
Bella prefers Pasta Roni; Ari prefers mac n' cheese.
Bella prefers homecooked chicken; Ari prefers red meat.
Ari eats lentil soup but only if she has sliced bread to dip into it. Bella will go nowhere near it.
Ari eats apples, carrots, tomatoes, olives, grapes, strawberries and cherries. Bella? I'll be lucky if she takes a bite of one of these, and the veggies MUST be accompanied by ranch dip to even be considered for consumption.
Then we have the required food accoutrements that need to be on hand in order to eat a specific homecooked meal. For instance:
- Bella will not eat my Greek pan-fried potatoes and scrambled egg "frittata" unless she can have it with Greek feta cheese.
- She will opt out of having pasta unless we have Greek mitzithra (salty, shredded sheep's milk cheese) to sprinkle atop. Absolutely no smelly-feet-Parmesan cheese for her.
- The jam has to be strawberry and has to be jam. Jelly is too watery and preserves are too chunky.
- The sliced bread has to be fresh and not dried out or "smell weird".
Sometimes, I start to feel a little like Mrs. Peters in The Seven Silly Eaters.
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| "Mrs. Peters was a wreck." I LOL at this every time I read it. |
By the time I crank out a daily breakfast, lunch and dinner item that will make everyone happy, I am too tired to cook anything for myself. "I wish I didn't have to eat. What a bother this whole food thing is," I always say to myself as I think of my mother. So instead, because we, as humans, HAVE to eat, I end up eating the leftovers of the kiddie food my kids don't finish. So for lunch today, I had some neon mac n' cheese with a half-bitten watermelon slice I bribed my kids (mainly Bella), to eat.
This is why I say that if we took food out of the human survival equation altogether, mothers would never have to roadrunner back home after work to prepare food for their family; we'd all save hundreds of thousands of dollars because there would be no grocery shopping to do; we'd all have more free time to spend with our families since we don't need to take time to do said grocery shopping, shlepping, shuffling, unpacking, repacking, refrigerator and cabinet organizing, food preparation, clean-up and dishwashing; and last but not least, we'd cut down on waste consumption enough to make the planet turn green overnight. Win-Win!
Sigh...but since we gotta eat to survive, I am now leaving it up to my kids to prepare what they like or at least, tell me what they prefer to eat so it prevents me from going into Mrs. Peters Wreck Mode. On the other hand, a bowl of Cheerios, a bagel and cream cheese and some oatmeal now and then doesn't sound like a bad dinner after all.
