Tag: teen appetites

NO! #atozchallenge

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Recently, I have come to the strange realization that cat treats and human treats are contained in similar bags. Sometimes, when I pull out a bag of chocolate covered somethings, the cats will suddenly appear in the kitchen, believing that they might get a small tidbit to keep their poor selves from starving to death.

This evening, I took a bag of chocolate covered blueberries out of the pantry and put them on the kitchen table. As frequently happens, I was distracted by the need to complete a task, and I went upstairs. As I was coming down the stairs, I thought I heard the bag rustle, as if someone was eating my treats! This must be the sound the cats hear before they come running.

C was in the kitchen, eating a snack and getting ready for bed. I studied him for a moment, narrowing my eyes. “Are you eating my blueberries?”

He nodded. “Yep,” he stated proudly.

“Um… no,” I stated matter-of-factly. “Those are my treats.” I moved the bag just out of his arm’s reach. His arm stretched, he leaned, and he pulled them back toward him.

“They’re my treats, too,” he informed me.

“Nope,” I tried again. “I paid for them. That makes them my treats.” I offered what I thought to be an irrefutable argument.

“But I am eating them,” he informed me, his own logic trumping mine.

I sat down and pulled the bag closer. “Go on,” I joked. “Isn’t it bedtime?”

“Just a couple more,” he teased.

“No!” I waved him away, stifling a giggle. “These are mine!” I clutched them to my chest like a treasure. He disappeared upstairs. No doubt, the minute I am not looking, he will eat them.

The letters N and O. Perfect together, but not always what we want to hear.

Glasses

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There are things I don’t really like about getting older. One of these things is that I now have difficulty functioning without reading glasses within easy reach. Like many people of a certain age, I have several pair of reading glasses stashed in various places in the house. At least that’s the plan. In fact, they all usually end up in the same place. Reading glasses… they have a tendency to wander.

Last week, I was certain I left my reading glasses on the kitchen table when I rushed out the door in the pre-dawn hours to attend an athletic competition with my daughter. My beau had arrived early to join us for the day. After a hello and a brief discussion, we grabbed the various bags, papers, cameras, and coffees and headed out the door.

Later in the day when we returned, I searched the kitchen for my glasses. I know I was exhausted and likely seeing double, but I could not find them anywhere. Not on the table, not on the counter, not in any of the logical places that I would have put them. “Did you, by chance, borrow my glasses before we left this morning?” I asked beau.

He shook his head. “Not that I can remember. I wasn’t here very long.” True. It was unlikely he would have had time, and I couldn’t remember him reading anything.

“I’m sure they are around somewhere,” I shrugged in attempt to reassure myself more than anyone else. Even though it was just a pair of inexpensive readers, it was my favorite pair. “Knowing me,” I continued, “I’ll probably find them in the refrigerator.” Truly, I didn’t suspect that I had left them anywhere they didn’t belong, but with the degree of busyness and distraction in my life, stranger things had been known to happen. I located a different pair of readers, and continued with the progression of the late afternoon.

I was now focused on throwing dinner together, so we could get out to the high school theater performance—the busyness and distraction continued. I cooked some pasta, and I went to the refrigerator for the cheese. When I opened the cheese drawer, I found my glasses, perched on the packages of sandwich meat. I laughed.

I laughed because I actually found my glasses in the refrigerator. And I laughed because I realized I had left my glasses on the table, just as I had thought!

At lunchtime, C had called me, trying to find the mozzarella in amongst several other varieties of cheese in the drawer. I knew I had just bought some, but he wasn’t finding it. While we were on the phone, he removed the drawer from the fridge, placing it on the kitchen table. While we were on the phone, he proceeded to “inventory” the cheese in the drawer as he removed each package. When he returned the cheese to the drawer, it seemed he accidentally included my reading glasses.

Whew! For now, I can rest easy in the fact that maybe, just maybe, I’m not going crazy. At least not yet.

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Radioactive

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Last night was leftover night at Mom’s Table (i.e. my kitchen). Even better from my perspective, it was do-it-yourself leftover night. Basically, do-it-yourself leftover night entails the hungry participant going through the contents of the refrigerator, locating something to eat, and heating it up. Or settling for cereal–that is always an option. Leftover night always occurs when the fridge is full of the remnants of some pretty good meals.

Take last night, for instance. We had a nice selection of food to appeal to even the hungriest of teenagers: chicken drumsticks, Swedish meatballs, pasta, pizza….

W rifled through the fridge and made his selection: chicken drumsticks. “How long should I put these two chicken legs in the microwave for?” he asked me, and I gave him my best estimation. A later taste-test revealed that my estimation wasn’t long enough, so he put them back in the microwave to heat longer.

“Careful when you eat those,” I told him. “The bones heat up first.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “And that’s exactly why—if you are in a nuclear disaster and you are eating an animal—you should avoid the meat closest to the bone. It has the most radioactivity.”

Well now.

I stared at him, my face—no doubt—perplexed as I processed this statement. Finally, I said, “Good to know.” Because truly, I had no other words. And someday, I might be in a nuclear disaster and have to kill my own food to eat…?

How in the world this kid knows the things he knows is beyond me. But he is always able to spew out interesting information at exactly the right moment. If I ever find myself in a nuclear disaster (or any random survival situation, really), I hope that I have this kid nearby!

Milk

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This morning on the Internet, I saw an article that said, 24 Recipes to Finish a Gallon of Milk. Curious, I clicked on it. I started reading, “Instead of pouring money and nutrients down the drain….” Wait.

What?

People have leftover milk that they have to throw away? They aren’t always wondering how the milk is going to last until they can get to the grocery store to buy more? Meanwhile, here I am thinking it has got to be possible to buy milk in containers larger than a gallon….

So I started to flip through the recipes, just to see what people who don’t drink milk might use milk for. Mac and cheese, fettuccini alfredo… no brainers. Corn husk meringue and corn mousse… WHAT?? Any thoughts on where I might find a corn husk or two at this time of year in the frozen tundra of New England?

Apparently, if you have some leftover milk, you can make your own Ricotta cheese, perhaps some yogurt, or a toasted marshmallow milkshake. Or here’s an idea: you could drink the milk. In our house, that’s what we do. We drink it. We use it on cereal. Sometimes, we cook with it—like when we make popovers. But we use it. Lots of it.

For a bit of perspective…. The childcare center where I work is collecting empty gallon milk jugs to make an indoor igloo for the children to play in. It will take 450 empty jugs to complete this project, so they put out an APB to all staff. The first week, I brought over three empty jugs. Last week, I had a bag filled with six empties, and I was going to take a walk over to the center. Unfortunately, between the cold and the windy, and the busy-ness of my office, I didn’t have a chance to bring it over. When it became clear that I wouldn’t have time, I brought the bag to my co-worker, whose daughter attends the center preschool.

She looked in the bag. “What have you been doing in your house?” she asked, as if having six empty milk jugs was the equivalent of an empty keg or two.

“I have three teenagers,” I responded with a shrug. It was explanation enough, though in truth, the milk jugs were not all from my house.

“Well, just keep bringing them my way! With this bag of empties, today I get to be the hero of the childcare center!” she announced.

Given the alternatives, I think we will continue to drink our milk. In fact, I am glad I don’t have leftover milk. I’m not sure how I’d feel about making corn husk mousse.

Macaroons

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I am not afraid to admit that I enjoy food. Good food. And I was lucky to grow up with a mother who was a good cook. But recently, I have been restricted in what I can eat.

I was placed on a gluten free diet as one step in the treatment of an illness. However, having spent the past many years—well, all of my life, really—as a lover of all things gluten, this change has been a difficult one for me to digest… quite literally. But I have been trying to be good because I know that watching what I eat will help me to feel better.

Over the weekend, I was lamenting the loss of all things tasty, wishing for something good and satisfying. I determined that on Monday, I would find some sort of treat. To that end, I scoured the aisles of my local grocery store and discovered a gluten free coconut macaroon, one gluten free food that I now actually look forward to eating. (Did I mention, I am a fan of food? Apparently, just not the gluten free variety….)

The other morning, while the kids were getting ready for school, we had a discussion of coconut macaroons. In fact, it became evident that the macaroons that I had been storing in my car—to keep them away from the hungry teenagers in my house—had traveled into the kitchen. What I didn’t tell the kids is that I bought a new container to keep in my car and I brought the nearly empty container into the house.

“Are those coconut macaroons?” W asked, a nearly imperceptible excitement in his tone.

“These are gluten free,” I told him matter-of-factly. “You can’t eat them.” I was satisfied that my reasoning would work to convince him that I was right.

W looked at me for a minute, his brows furrowed. He eyed the macaroons. “Mom, that’s not how gluten free works. People who are gluten free can’t eat food with gluten, but people who can eat gluten can also eat gluten free food.” Hmm, good point.

Yep, my son tutored me in the whole “Gluten Free” thing because somehow, I missed the fact that I am on a one-way street. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let him eat my macaroons!

And if you happen to have a gluten free macaroon recipe, can you send it my way? Thanks!

Mixed Up

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My mixer died at the worst possible time. Last week, as we were preparing for Thanksgiving, my chef-son was making focaccia bread. He had a large lump of dough in the mixer being kneaded with the bread hook. The normal whir of the motor was strained, with skipping pauses each time the hook traversed the bowl.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I told him, thinking he had put too much dough, or the dough was too stiff. It was a warning, really. I could hear the mixer deciding whether or not to continue its work.

“It’s fine, Mom,” C retorted in that terrible, sarcastic I’m-a-teenager-and-I’m-smarter-than-you way. “This is what it’s designed to do.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know that mixers are supposed to, well… mix. But my mixer is 20+ years old, and because I am a baker, it gets a lot of use. Every year at this time, it whips up batches of gingerbread, sugar cookies, butter cookies, chocolate pretzel cookies, and armies of snowmen. At this time of year, it is mixing twenty-four-seven. Well… almost.

And that’s why I was concerned that the normal whir was sounding like a hiccupped whine. It is “this time of year,” and I am just about to ramp up my baking.

I stood over the mixer, watching it knead the dough, debating whether to turn it off and have C knead by hand, or let it keep struggling. And just as I was about to say, “Stop!” …it did. Not exactly the way I meant. It just stopped working. For a moment, I stared in shock. What am I going to do now? I wondered to myself, thinking about the dozens of cookies that would not be mixed and baked for Christmas.

I looked at C, my mouth still hanging open, but he was already removing the focaccia bread dough from the bowl, preparing to knead by hand. He wasn’t going to let a little mixer malfunction stop him.

I swallowed hard and took my cue from my son. I closed my mouth and moved on with my Thanksgiving preparations. It was a lucky thing that my mixer died two days before the Black Friday sales. I got one heckuva deal on a new one—one that is (according to W) almost twice as powerful. I’m looking forward to my holiday baking.

If I really think about it, my mixer died at the best possible time!

Mistakes

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Writing 101, Day 13: Play with word count….

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This evening, in an effort to get to bed earlier, I made the mistake of asking my children to start their own lunches for tomorrow. If they don’t have time to eat the lunches I make, they will definitely not have time to eat the lunches they made.

It was an experiment that became the mistake I am not likely to repeat….

Snacks (2)

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It is a rare occasion when I arrive home from work and have both the time and the motivation to make a real meal for dinner. I am good at whipping up something quick—spaghetti, chicken parmesan, tacos, etc. But making a full, more complicated dinner takes time and energy that I don’t usually have when I get home from work.

So last week, I planned ahead. I made pasta salad on Sunday for a potluck, and I doubled the recipe so we could have it for dinner on Monday, the most hectic day of our week. Pasta salad, ham, and broccoli—a simple, quick dinner.

As we sat down to eat, C looked at the food. “This is what I had for lunch.”

“This is what I had for a snack,” J piped up.

“You had this for a snack?” I asked. Then I looked at C. “I packed you a sandwich for lunch,” I responded. “You didn’t have pasta salad.”

“Yes I did,” he retorted. “You packed me a snack. I eat lunch when I get home from school.”

“What?” I studied his face. He was serious. “Wait… you eat a full meal when you get home from school?”

“Yeah, Mom. We eat so early at school, that’s just my snack. I eat lunch when I get home.”

“Every day?” I asked him.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Well, that might explain where all the food has been disappearing to….

Brussels Sprouts

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This morning, my youngest almost caught me putting Brussels Sprouts in his lunchbox. Almost. But I snuck them in before he saw me. Yes, you heard that right: Brussels Sprouts in his lunchbox.

This is the point in the school year when I start to get bored with the lunches I pack for my children. Now, I understand that my children are perfectly capable of packing their own lunches. However, they would put it off until the last minute, remember as they are running out the door, grab something from the pantry, and call it lunch. On any given day, such a “lunch” might consist of an entire ‘party size’ bag of chips or a single granola bar. Then, the kids would arrive back at home hungry and cranky, and they would snack their way through the pantry and the refrigerator before dinner, ruining their appetite for real nutrition. Since I don’t want to take my chances, I pack their lunches. Every day.

So last night, I put out the question: What do you want in your lunch that I haven’t been putting in there?

And W, being the smart-alec 14 year old that he is, said (without hesitation), “Brussels Sprouts.”

“Ha!” I chuckled. “What do you really want?”

And I got the typical 14-year-old-kid response: “I don’t know.”

Surprisingly, I actually have Brussels Sprouts in my refrigerator. Last week, there was a story on NPR about the local crop of Brussels Sprouts, the fact that they are in season despite the cooler weather, and how they are actually sweeter after the cold sets in. And I bought some on my next trip to the market.

This morning as I packed lunches, I popped two Brussels Sprouts into a sandwich bag. I was getting ready to draw a smiley face on the bag in Sharpie when I heard the upstairs bathroom door open. I quickly threw the bag into W’s lunchbox, minus a note or smile face. I went about the rest of the breakfast/lunch preparations as if nothing unusual had happened. Because in our house, that really was nothing unusual.

As expected, he didn’t eat the Brussels Sprouts. Instead, he jokingly offered them to a friend, who actually took a bite. From the report I got, I’m pretty sure when W found the bag in his lunchbox, it was good for a mid-day giggle.

The Kitchen

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The tile that hangs over my stove… a perfect image for The Kitchen

“You smell like food,” my daughter told me when I picked her up from practice. It was late for dinnertime, though we hadn’t yet eaten. While she was gone, I had been busily cooking.

“Yes,” I said. “I do smell like food.” I had noticed on my drive to meet her that my clothes had picked up the smell of onions. And maybe a slight cooking (i.e. burning) smell.

“Where did you go?” she asked, disappointed that she might have missed dinner out. Apparently, she was convinced that when someone’s clothes smelled of food, that person had been to a restaurant.

I thought for a second, calculating my reply. “Hmm,” I stalled. “I went to this place called ‘The Kitchen.’ Have you heard of it?” I asked. “They have great food there.”

Despite the fact that I was watching the road in front of me, I could feel the smile spread across her face. “I think I’ve been there. And the food was quite good.”

“There was a bit of an accident today though, which might be why I smell like food. The chicken and dumplings went over…. I haven’t finished cleaning it up yet.”

“Oooo! You made chicken and dumplings?”

“I did. That Kitchen is one of the best places to eat.”

“I love chicken and dumplings!” She was suddenly excited to get home. “So why is it that anytime someone smells like food, it smells like a fast food restaurant?” she asked.

I had to admit that on this particular evening, my clothes held a scent reminiscent of fast food. It was sort of a burnt onion smell, most likely because my dinner went over on the stove and therefore, didn’t cook in the most conventional manner (well, the part that left the pan, anyway).

However, I’d like to think that when I leave the house smelling of chocolate chip cookies, or pumpkin muffins, or gingerbread, people notice the comforting smell of Kitchen spices. And in that case, they might be inspired to go home and spend time in The Kitchen, too!