Tag: teen appetites

Christmas Cookies

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Each year at Christmas time, I bake several different kinds of cookies, which I immediately place in the freezer until Christmas Eve. On that day, I make up plates of cookies and distribute them to friends and neighbors.

The day before my son came home from college, I texted him a picture of his favorite Christmas cookies. (Please ignore the fact that one is missing from the cookie sheet. It accidentally slipped from the spatula into my mouth when I was freeing them from the pan. Quality control is imperative, you know).

“Yum!” he texted in reply.

When he arrived home the next day, we sat down to dinner, and when we were done eating, he looked around the kitchen. “Where are the Christmas cookies?” he asked.

“That picture was from last year,” I lied, realizing I shouldn’t have let him know his favorite cookies were in the house. In my head, I could picture nearly empty containers of cookies on Christmas Eve….

“Oh!” he exclaimed in deflated response. “I was looking forward to those….”

And then I felt bad for telling him I didn’t have any. What kind of mother was I, sending him a picture of his favorite cookies and then telling him they weren’t in the house? I was caught between a lie and the possibility that my cookies would disappear before Christmas Eve.

I took a deep breath to calm myself. “They’re down in the freezer,” the words escaped me in a very small, quiet voice.

I sat back and watched as he ate a cookie. Then another. And another. Finally, I spoke up. “You have to put the cookies back in the freezer now.” And he did. Of course, I haven’t checked the contents of the containers since that night about a week ago now, so I am only assuming he hasn’t had more since.

But having my cookie connoisseur home with me has its advantages, as well. Last night, I made a new type of cookie for my Christmas plates. When they came out of the oven, I cut one in half and tried it. It was good. I brought the other half into the living room for C, who was the only one still awake. He thought it was good.

Of course, half a cookie isn’t a good indication of whether or not a recipe is actually tasty. A little while later, C came into the kitchen and asked if he could have one of the cookies fresh from the oven. I nodded and steered him to the baking sheet that had been cooling the longest.

I was at the sink cleaning up the dishes. I pretended not to notice when he polished off his first full cookie and took another, but secretly, I knew these cookies were a success. Score one for the new recipe!

Chocolate chips or…

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Yesterday, I baked some cookies. Baking cookies at this time of year serves two purposes. First, it provides us with dessert for school lunches. But second, using the oven takes the chill off the house when the sun goes down in the evenings. And so far, I really haven’t had to use my heat much this fall.

I asked W what he wanted in his cookies: chocolate chips or M&Ms. He opted for chocolate chips. I asked J the same question.

“How about nothing?” she suggested. She is one of those kids who has never really cared for sweets. Regardless of what I add to the cookies, she’ll pick them out.

However, I had just stocked up on baking supplies for my holiday baking. “I have toffee pieces,” I told her. “I can use those instead of chocolate chips?”

She shook her head. “No thanks.”

“Cinnamon chips? I have some of those….”

Again, she shook her head.

I opened the pantry cabinet. “Ooo, I know! How about Skittles?” I ventured hopefully. “I could put Skittles in the cookies.”

“Mom, that’s gross.”

I suppose that would be. Or, maybe not….

Pillage

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This evening, I was rooting around in the fridge, and I came across a large bowl with a very small amount of pasta sauce. “This can go,” I announced. “Especially since someone ate all the sausage out of it.” I placed the bowl in the sink.

“Who would do something like that?” W asked, feigning disbelief.

“Hmm. I wonder…” I let my voice trail off. “Perhaps your brother?”

“Oh, that’s right! He comes home for less than 24 hours, pillages our food, and then goes back to school. He doesn’t have to deal with the consequences.”

I looked at my son, nodding. Pillage. What a fitting word for what goes on with the food in my house. From now on, I am going to use that word with all of my teens.

Stop pillaging and shut the refrigerator! See what I mean? Perfect!

Reality

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After her drivers ed class today, my daughter assumed the “browsing position” in front of the refrigerator. She had the doors flung wide open, one handle in each hand, and she was searching. Up on tiptoes to check out what was behind the condiments on the top shelf. Bent down to look behind the bowls on the bottom shelf. I could tell this was serious business. It was lunchtime, and she was hungry.

She sighed. “Is there no tortellini left?” she questioned. Really, from where I was sitting on the opposite side of the door, it was tough to tell.

“Is it not in there?” I asked, not admitting that less than an hour earlier, I had offered it to her younger brother as a lunch option.

“I don’t see it.”

I opened the dishwasher, and the empty bowl presented itself as evidence. I closed the dishwasher. “No more tortellini,” I reported.

“And there’s no pasta salad left, either, is there?” She already knew the answer, but I could tell she was holding on to a shred of hope.

“No, there’s not,” I reluctantly reported. “We finished that for dinner last night.”

“So there’s nothing to eat!” she griped. “Why does everyone always eat all the food without me?”

Hmm… it must be a conspiracy.

Or, more likely, it’s the reality of life in a house with teenage boys.

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Appetites

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For some reason, I had ventured into this summer thinking I might catch a break in the grocery department. My youngest was planning a backpacking trip right after school ended, a week at camp in June, and another week at camp in July. With all that time away, I wouldn’t have to buy as many groceries, right?

Wrong. Instead, my son has been on a feeding frenzy this summer. When he returned from three days of backpacking, he needed calories. And lots of them. With three days of hiking—and carrying a pack to boot—he had worked off most of the nearly non-existent fat reserve he maintains. His muscles needed fuel.

When he returned from camp, the story was nearly the same. The boys were active from sunrise until bedtime—classes and hiking and traipsing around the camp, uphill in all directions, it seemed. And the boys were responsible for cooking their own meals. Some days, the food was overcooked; some days, it was closer to raw. He ate, sure, but….

These teenagers, their hunger comes in layers. There is the: I just got up and I’m kinda hungry hunger. That one is easily satisfied with breakfast, or in the case of my oldest, who rises midday, lunch.

There is the: I’ve been at practice for three hours and I didn’t eat enough before I went. Please let me at the food NOW kind of hunger. That one requires some leftover dinner, generally a more substantial meal will satisfy this hunger.

My youngest has been experiencing the: I’ve been away [at camp, backpacking, etc.] working out all day and I haven’t had anything to eat all week but rehydrated pack food or food burned by the boys in my patrol kind of hunger. This is serious. This hunger requires hundreds maybe thousands of calories over a period of days to finally satisfy. In truth, I am not sure there is enough time between camp pick up last Saturday and camp drop off this Sunday to make a dent in that hunger. And the food at the grocery store is getting sparse from my frequent visits.

Catch a break on groceries? Not a chance. The money I don’t spend on the weeks my youngest is away is just a small down payment on the groceries for the following week. He is hungry, and he needs fuel for all of his summer activities. And he’s not the only one. I have three active teenagers, after all.

*[Image is a photo of the typical state of the food supply in my house.]

The Door

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My son stood in front of the open refrigerator, door wide open, staring at the contents. The light spilled out onto the floor, where it turned the tile a brighter shade of white. The cold air cascaded from the opening in a mist of fog that quickly dissipated in the summer heat. My son was transfixed, as if waiting—I suppose—for something appealing to suddenly materialize on the shelf in front of him.

“Close the refrigerator!” I scolded. “Figure out what you want before you open the door. Don’t browse.” I have yet to figure out why I have to say this so often….

He closed the door. “There’s nothing to eat in this house.”

I don’t know how that can be. Before I went to the grocery store yesterday, I asked him if there was anything he wanted me to get. All he said was sub rolls. I got the sub rolls, so he really has nothing to complain about.

But that is neither here nor there. I’d rather take a step back and examine the habit of standing in front of the open refrigerator door.

From the kid perspective, I can understand the disappointment of opening to fridge with the expectation of something great only to find nothing that you want to eat. I can almost understand the need to wait and hope for something appetizing to appear. Because really, if you stand there long enough, staring at the available options, something may eventually inspire the palate, right? A combination that wasn’t previously realized might become evident. Something worth eating must be contained in the refrigerator somewhere, mustn’t it? Search long and search hard, and eventually you will find it.

From the parent perspective, particularly the single parent perspective, I see the cost of standing in front of the open fridge—the energy wasted. I see the food that was purchased only yesterday being cast aside as inedible simply because the teen might have been eating that food last week (with great fondness), but the same teen doesn’t care for that particular food item this week–and won’t care for it until well after it spoils.

Yes, there are two perspectives to this problem, both justified, and I am in search of the win-win solution. The solution would be a refrigerator in which amazingly appealing food will appear, as if by magic, when you open it. That would solve this problem once and for all. And it might solve another problem or two, as well….

“What’s for dinner, Mom?”

“I don’t know. Open the refrigerator and see.”

Graduation Gift

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I’m stumped on a graduation gift for my son. It seems he has everything he needs right now. And the things he doesn’t have, I can’t afford. Actually, I can’t afford much at the moment, so it’s good he has what he needs.

I put this issue in the hands of my fourteen-year-old as we walked around the mall Wednesday on a mission to return a purchase. We were browsing the electronics store and the game store, and I thought maybe he would spot something worthy of a graduation gift for his brother.

As we strolled, W suddenly veered into the mall chocolate shop. “I think I found a graduation gift,” he said, as he walked toward the display of colorfully wrapped truffles. The display was full and nearly spilling over. There was a sign that boasted the current “deal” on a bag of these sweet chocolaty treats.

“We can get him a bag of 50 truffles,” W told me, pointing to the sign. I read the line to which he was pointing, and I read it a second time. I cocked my head slightly, perplexed by the discrepancy between what I was seeing and what he was saying. I read the line above W’s finger, and the line below.

“That says there is a deal on a bag of 75 truffles,” I told him. “Where do you see ’50 truffles’?”

“Well, I don’t,” W admitted. “But by the time we give it to him, it will be a bag of 50!”

Ah, always thinking, that kid—50 truffles for the graduate, 25 for the little brother. What a perfect graduation gift!

Cookies

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I picked up my son from the eighth grade class trip (very) late on Friday night (technically, the wee hours of Saturday morning). On the drive home, there was a tired, train-of-thought conversation that involved discussion of the things my deep thinker had been churning in his mind on the 12-hour bus ride home.

“You know, the Capitol dome was constructed of cast iron,” he told me. “In the 1850s and 60s,” he added. “That must have been quite a feat of engineering.” He stared out the window as the darkness passed by while he thought. “I wonder how they had the technology to get that up there back then.”

Nearly nine million pounds of ironwork, I have learned. My son thinks about the process of construction: how they created this immense structure. How they managed to move it to the top of the Capitol building. Meanwhile, my mother-mind wonders about the safety of the building on which that weight is resting and the lives of the people within that building. That’s a lot of weight for the walls and foundation to hold.

“And you know,” he continued, breaking me our of my reverie and revealing the randomness of his reflection. “The National Archives are much harder to get into than Nicolas Cage makes it seem.” I chuckled as my mind drifted to thoughts of the movie, National Treasure.

“Of course,” I told him. “That’s Hollywood. They had to make it possible, or the story line wouldn’t have worked.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I just wanted to point that out. It’s really hard to get in there.”

“I’m sure it is. Think about what’s in there.” I paused to see if he had anything else to add. The silence stretched until I asked, ”Did you finish all the cookies I sent?”

“Oh, I finished those a long time ago… on the bus ride down on Tuesday.”

“Did you share them?”

“I tried.”

“What do you mean, ‘you tried’?” I asked.

“Nobody wanted any,” he stated, as if teenagers don’t get hungry.

I puzzled over this one for a minute. Eighth grade boys and homemade cookies. This didn’t seem right to me. “No one wanted any? Did you offer them one?”

“Well,” he hedged. “I probably could have done better with that.”

“You didn’t offer one to anyone, did you?”

“Yes, I did.” he said.

“And….”

“Well, when I offered one to Jon, he was wearing ear buds.” He paused here before he said, “He didn’t answer.”

“So you ate them all?”

Even in the darkness of the car, I could see the smirk on his face.

Few Words

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My son is on his school’s annual 8th grade class trip. He is my youngest. He is the third child to go on this class trip. And he is the child of the fewest words.

My first child FaceTimed with me from the long bus ride from our town to the 8th grade destination. It was the day after his birthday, and I had sent cookies on the bus. Likely, there were not enough cookies for everyone on the bus, but he had a lot of cookies. And he wanted to show me all of the fun they were having on the bus.

My second child texted me at various times throughout the day as she endured the long bus ride. Endured is exactly the word I would use. She hates traveling, and she hates sitting in confined spaces for long periods of time. She texted me any time she felt she needed support or distraction.

My third child would likely not have any contact with me whatsoever from the moment I dropped him off until the moment he had to climb back in my car for the drive home. When he left, I reminded him that he had his cell phone and charger, and one quick text at night would let me know that he was still alive and with his school group.

So tonight, I texted him: “Did you have a good day?”

His reply: “yes.” Did I mention that he is a kid of few words?

“Anything exciting happen?” I tried again.

“No.”

Okay then.

Tomorrow, I will ask him about food. That subject should get the attention of any teenage boy, shouldn’t it?

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*Image is a photo of word art at the Culinary Institute of America

Period. #atozchallenge

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Recently, I found a chocolate bunny that was left over from the Easter holiday. I stuck it in a sandwich bag, and I broke it into pieces. (Had I done the reverse—broken it up and then put it in a sandwich bag, I might have lost some of the smaller pieces…). I had been eating little bits from the bag each night.

After a few days of this nibbling, I went into the pantry closet to have my nightly ration. I looked where I thought I had left the bag, but I couldn’t find it. I searched one bin, then another. No bag of bunny bits. Bummer.

I must be going crazy.

The following night, I thought I should look again. Perhaps I had missed it the day before.  Again, I searched the logical places, and again, I came up empty. Where could I have put that bag? I strained my memory trying to recreate my actions in returning the bag to the pantry.

“I know I had a chocolate Easter bunny in here,” I said to no one in particular. “I just can’t seem to find it.” I sighed. Loudly.

“Wait. That was yours?” C asked from where he sat in the living room.

I turned and looked through the doorway, studying him sitting on the couch, suddenly alert. “Did you eat it?” I asked accusingly.

“Nope. When W got home from school the other day, he found it in the pantry, and he asked if it was mine. I said no, so he assumed it was his. He ate it.”

“He ate my chocolate bunny?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” he said, sounding not quite certain. “You’ll have to ask him.”

“Ugh! I have been going crazy looking for that bunny!” I made the statement as dramatically as I could.

“Mom,” C retorted. “You are going crazy. Period.”