Tag: food

Random Acts of Interference

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There are days—too many, if you’re asking my opinion—when I have run out of some food item or other, and I have to stop at the grocery store on my way home from work. Grapes come to mind, for instance. Or milk.

So the other day, I was on my way into the store in somewhat of a rush. Someone had planted one of those “Gotcha!” displays right as you’re walking from the door to the food aisles, and you have to walk right by it because the cash registers prevent you from walking a different way. The “Gotcha!” displays are there to grab your attention and convince you to buy something you absolutely don’t need and didn’t intend to buy when you walked in the door.

On this particular day, I discovered that M&Ms had three new flavors, and the display urged customers to buy all three and vote on their favorite. But what caught my attention was the bright pink bag. New M&Ms? In a bright pink bag? What flavor could they be…?

And like a magnet, the colorful display pulled me off my very focused task of buying Oreos (because those are healthy), grapes, and strawberries. I stood examining the bag, the flavor (raspberry crunch), and anticipating how that flavor might taste for just a split second too long.

“Ma’am, you don’t need any of those,” I heard from behind me. I turned to see a man, a complete stranger, leaning on his cart, waiting to get by my distracted self. I considered this interruption, and I smiled.

“Thank you,” I said. “You are absolutely right. I do not need those. I was trying to figure out what flavor they were.

“Those crunch things? My wife eats those all the time.”

And for a split second, I wanted to say, Oh, your wife needs them, but I don’t? But I didn’t because this man had just saved me from hundreds of unnecessary calories.

“Have a nice day!” I said instead. “And thanks again. Because I really didn’t need those!” I took my basket and walked away smiling.

Someday, I thought, I am going to master the art of interference so I, too, can thwart someone’s encounter with the “Gotcha!” display.

 

Just once…

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I went grocery shopping on the way home from work yesterday. Grocery shopping is probably my least favorite job of the week, so I would definitely consider it a chore.

It was Friday afternoon, and the market was crowded with faceless shoppers on their way home from work. The only thing that would have made it worse was if there had been an impending snowstorm when everyone has to go out for bread and milk. Who knows why….

Anyway, I picked up everything I thought we might need for the majority of the week since I don’t want to go back right away. I got bread and milk and meat and veggies. The grapes looked good—green with a hint of blush (and they were not mushy)—so I picked up a couple pounds them. I might have gotten more, but I’ve learned over the years. If I get grapes and they are a touch too sour or the flavor isn’t just right, no one eats them.

I arrived home to two teens who could help me unload the groceries while I started dinner—it was fairly late by this time. I pulled the grapes out of the bag and tossed them into a colander and washed them. I tried one, and it was the perfect flavor and firmness. I ate a couple more as I made dinner.

When J came into the kitchen to set the table for dinner, they were still in the colander in the sink, so she tried one, as well. Her reaction was nearly identical to mine. “Ooo, those grapes are good!” she commented, stuffing a couple more into her mouth.

“Umm, dinner in two minutes!” I told her.

“They can be dessert!” she informed me, eating a few more.

When dinner was nearly done, J brought the grapes to the table. With two teens digging in, those grapes didn’t stand a chance. By the end of the meal, there were three grapes remaining. The two teens were too stuffed to eat even three grapes more.

Just once, I would like to come home from the market and not have to return in another day or two to pick up something that we have run out of. Apparently, this week is not my week. At least I can take comfort in the fact that they’re eating healthy!

 

Forbidden

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I have all manner of items—ranging from helpful to slightly odd—stuck to my refrigerator with magnets. I have magnets with helpful information—the non-emergency number for the local fire department, the hours for the dump, my plumber’s contact information. I have photos of my kids when they were much younger, the rehearsal schedule for the high school theater department, information for an upcoming summer camp job, a small calendar, and various magnets and magnetic clips.

Some things have been on my refrigerator for so long that they have become invisible to me. For example, one day last week, I suddenly noticed I still had a 2017 full year calendar stuck on the refrigerator. It had obviously arrived as a Christmas card in 2016, and it hadn’t been moved since. Until last week when I re-noticed it.

But the most unusual item on my fridge—depending on your perspective—was brought to my attention over the weekend. C was home from college for spring break, and while he was waiting for his bagel to toast, he was studying the items on the fridge. I had gone to the basement to get something, and when I returned, he said, “Hey Mom?”

“Yeah?” I responded.

“What’s this note on the fridge with the phone number that says ‘Do Not Call’?”

I burst out laughing because something that seemed so harmless to me suddenly took on a much more ominous and taunting quality. A post-it note with a phone number that we were not to call. Perhaps I was provoking my kids to see if they would take the bait and call this forbidden phone number.

Really, that was not it at all. I had been at work one day when I received one too many robo-calls on my cell phone. I contacted my carrier, and they gave me the number for the national “do not call” list. I had called, but now my kids needed to call from their own numbers. I had scrawled the number on this paper, and carefully labeled it, so I wouldn’t forget, and then, I stuck it on the fridge, so it wouldn’t get lost.

But my son’s interpretation of this note has given me an idea. If you suddenly find a note like this around your house, it’s probably not the national “do not call” registry, so I would suggest you not call it. Just don’t ask me where the note came from….

The Middle of the Night

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Many years ago, when my children were very little, I was in a writing group. This was a group of women who met every Wednesday to write. Unlike many writing groups, we did not meet primarily to critique each other’s writing. We spent much of our time actually writing with the option of sharing our work at various points in our session.

This blissful few hours each Wednesday night was an oasis from the trenches of early parenthood and my early days as a single mom. During this time, there were no diapers, no schedules, and no crying babies. It was me, this group of women, and our pens and notebooks.

When I was void of ideas, I would often start my freewriting with, “It is two o’clock in the morning, and I am….” I found this starting point could lead me in a variety of directions and was often all I needed to jump-start my writing brain. Because I am usually not awake at two a.m., crazy things would often happen on the page—a meandering sort of writing that could lead anywhere.

One memorable piece started with “It is two o’clock in the morning, and I am weeding the garden.” In the piece, I was weeding hastily, taking out the day’s frustrations on my garden. And in my haste—and the dark and the furious pace at which I was working—I accidentally pulled up something that was not a weed, but was a thing of beauty. It was, at the time, a reminder that beauty was all around me and I needed to take the time to appreciate it.

These days, there is a bit of a wrinkle to the middle-of-the-night writing prompt. The wrinkle is that I live with teenagers, and on any given night, I could write about what is actually happening in my house in the middle of the night.

It is two o’clock in the morning, and from the comfort of my bed, I hear the refrigerator close and the microwave open. It must be snack time. Either that, or all of the food in the house is being sucked into the black hole that exists just beyond the microwave’s false back. It is amazing how much food seems to disappear in the middle of the night….

And I can continue to write, documenting more of my night. Four thirty in the morning, and someone is stirring. A light comes on, and a teen is up, preparing to catch a bus scheduled for 5:30. As the heat clicks on and the wind howls just beyond my window, I remember the child out camping in the woods tonight, and I shiver.

I am usually not awake in the middle of the night, but crazy things often happen in my house—a messy sort of meandering night that is always a possibility when there are multiple teens and young adults residing in the house.

Positivity Post: Snow

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Lately, we have been walking the line between seasons. The temperatures have been rising a bit, the ground has been bare, the birds are more vocal, and it has been feeling a bit like spring. Until last night when a storm blew in. This morning, we awoke to a foot and a half of snow and no school—a late season snow day when I was done with snow days. Mother Nature had other plans.

It is March, after all. After I had my daughter in early March, I began to realize how snowy this month can be. Countless birthday parties were cancelled, postponed, or spontaneously re-created because of weather—so many, in fact, that it was the topic of her college essay. But snow—even when we thought we were heading into spring—is really just a bump in the road.

For example, this time of year, with the longer days and the warmer temperatures, the snow will melt in no time! The melt of a foot and a half of heavy, wet snow will raise our water supply, decreasing the likelihood of drought conditions in the summer.

So today, I enjoyed the snow. This morning, I got some extra exercise as I removed the snow from my car then shoveled around and under my car—a necessity if I wanted to move out of my parking place. Late in the day, I went out with my daughter and took a few pictures of the snow. My focus was on bits of snow clinging to individual branches and the manner in which the white background made the details more vivid.

    

In between, I did some snow-day baking. Homemade bagels—an experiment that I will definitely improve upon. They don’t look so pretty, but they are delicious! I also made some chocolate orange biscotti. This was made from a recipe that I discovered years ago, but haven’t made since. For some unknown reason, today was the day. The biscotti is just as good as I remember!

         

March… it really does come in like a lion. Two nor’easters so far this month with another promised for next week. After that, maybe we’ll see a restart to spring. And maybe this time, spring will stick!

Bread

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My daughter was recently telling me about an experience she had at school. Her English teacher was talking about his experiences when he was younger. He told the students that there was a time when people started to realize that bread was not good for them, and bread companies almost went out of business.

“Can you imagine if that had happened?” he asked them. “There would be no bread anymore.”

“What do you mean there wouldn’t be any bread?” my daughter responded. “People would just bake their own bread.” Because that’s a simple solution.

But then she realized that her classmates were looking at her as if vines were growing out of her head and traveling down her back. “No one bakes bread,” they told her definitively.

At that point, I imagine she shrugged, puzzled, and went about her business. She turned to a friend and quietly said, “My mom bakes bread all the time….”

That afternoon, as she told me the story, I could only chuckle. “I have to agree with your classmates. No one bakes bread anymore.”

This was one of those moments when my daughter realized that even though she might think our family is completely normal, maybe it’s not. And it was a moment for me to recognize that my kids might be a bit sheltered.

So what if my kids live a sheltered life? If “normal” means we don’t eat home-baked bread, I’d rather not be normal!

 

Annotation

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When you live in my house, you never quite know what you’ll come across. Last week, I found that my grocery list had been annotated.

Generally, when I write an item on the list, I do it quickly with very little thought. As long as the item makes it to the list, all is good. Apparently, sometimes my handwriting is not legible to others in the house, which shouldn’t really matter where the grocery list is concerned since I am the one who buys the groceries.

And yet, someone noticed that what I had written—the word “bread”—did not seem to resemble the word, and wrote some wise-crack note to let me know such was the case. When I took the time to study my hasty handwriting, I could see how an unsuspecting reader might misread the word. But really, who writes “mead” on the grocery list? I don’t think they even sell mead in the grocery store.

Just wait…. The next time he’s home, I’m going to add some crazy items to the grocery list. Then I’m going to send him to the store to find them!

Teen Dinner

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So there I was yesterday afternoon, minding my own business, sitting in my office proofreading a document. It was 3:30, and I was thinking about how the evening was likely to play out. At home, my youngest was packing for a weekend camping trip with the Scouts. When I left work, I would go directly home and drive him to where the troop would be meeting. However, I had just reread the email, and a worrisome feeling came over me like a shadow.

According to the email, my son was responsible for eating dinner before the troop assembled, a fact which was frequently true before camping trips. However, before I left for work on this particular morning, I had cooked a pound of spaghetti and popped it in the fridge so the assembly of a dinner casserole would be hastened before I sped off to a class. In my mind, I could see the bowl in the fridge, his hands reaching for it, and the majority of it disappearing before I even got home. Once he got to it, that will be the end of the spaghetti.

Anticipating his approaching dinnertime, I texted him, listing the food options he might choose other than the spaghetti. Thankfully, we had some leftover chicken he particularly liked.

If you are looking to evoke a slight panic at the end of the work day, there really is nothing like the realization that your hungry teen might consume your partially prepared dinner!

Family Dinner

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When I was growing up, we always had our evening meal together as a family. I have maintained that tradition as much as possible in my life with my children, as I feel it is important that we sit down together and share a meal and conversation. At dinner, we can sit together, relax, and enjoy each other’s company while we are doing something we need to do anyway. After all, from my experience, there is nothing as effective as food to bring teenagers to the table.

Our family meals might start out calm and orderly. “Could you pour the milk?” “Please pass the salt.” “This is really good, Mom. Thanks.” But any time you have three teenage siblings in the same small space for any length of time, “calm and orderly” can unravel fast and stuff begins to happen. I’m just gonna say it: Our family dinners can get a little rowdy. Take last night, for example.

I don’t know how things deteriorated as quickly as they did, but it started with one of the younger siblings deciding that the oldest would be responsible for fetching anything that was needed—milk, salt, dessert, utensils. The jovial requests picked up in intensity. When younger brother said, “Hey C, can you get me some ice cream? Oh, and I’ll need a bowl. And a spoon. Don’t forget the ice cream scoop…,” C decided spoon, bowl, and scoop would be best delivered via air mail. And so, a spoon flew across my kitchen into the [thankfully] nimble hands of little brother.

“Did you just throw that?” I turned to ask. But by the time the words had come out, a ceramic bowl passed through the air from one boy to the other. “STOP!” I commanded. “Do not throw dishes and utensils!” Seriously? Why is this even something that has to be explicitly stated? This could have gone very badly, but thankfully, it did not. It was not until a few minutes later, when C was playfully tossing a cup in the air to tease me that he dropped it. At least that one was plastic. It does make me wonder what they do when I’m not home.

Come to think of it, this may just be the very behavior that has carved so many chips out of the edges of my dishes….

Positivity Post: Secondhand Banana

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On school mornings, we have a routine. Sometimes one element or another will change up a bit, but generally, there are things I can count on each morning. One of those things is that on her way out the door, J will say to me, “You can have the rest of my banana.” And every morning as quiet settles over the house, I look on the table, and there rests a two-thirds eaten banana, splayed out for my review and approval.

Now, I will admit that at first, I didn’t see the appeal in this meager offering. As it sat on the table, the empty part of the peel would deepen in color, browning with an unappealing cast of rotten fruit.

But then, I realized that I cut up fruit each morning to have with my yogurt—kind of an “on the fly” fruit salad. Tangerines, melon, strawberries, pomegranate… whatever I have on hand that’s in season. I could use the bit of banana to add to my salad! And so I began to look forward to that little bit of extra sweetness [and love] each morning.

When life (or a teenager) hands you secondhand bananas, make fruit salad!