From my stomach’s perspective, it’s like that popular children’s book about Alexander: yesterday was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad day.
Well, it wasn’t all bad gastronomically. But too much of it was. It just happens sometimes: I get too busy and made too many poor gustatory choices. Our housecleaner was working in the kitchen all morning (which was wonderful) so I took the kids to Bruegger’s. The egg sandwiches sounded tempting until it occurred to me that I’ve never seen a frying pan at Bruegger’s, so where exactly are they getting fried eggs from? Pre-packaged and microwaved? Instead I went with cream cheese. And a bagel. That’s not awful, but it’s not great.
My mother and I both like to cook, and since we’re next-door neighbors we frequently share our creations. She gave me a serving of a delicious chick pea, tomato and feta salad, so I had that for lunch, and then started to feel like I was more on track from a nutritional standard. But then in the late afternoon I embarked on a long drive to my in-laws’ house – I expected it to take an hour but it took more than two because of traffic – and along the way ate a bag of caramel popcorn and a chocolate bar. That was way more sugar and stickiness than I needed in one afternoon.
And when I arrived at my in-laws’, I was already late for the dinner celebrating my father-in-law’s birthday, so of course I dug right in to my mother-in-law’s homemade macaroni and cheese. Followed, naturally, by birthday cake. And not just any birthday cake: ice cream cake, made with mint chocolate chip ice cream, crushed cookies, and fudge sauce.
Did I mention that all of this was only a couple of hours after the sticky sweetened popcorn and the chocolate bar?
Some days are like that. Other days I try to practice good nutritious locavore habits, especially on Farmers Market days when I buy piles of fresh tomatoes, basil, peppers, corn, lettuce. At times like that, it’s easy to eat right, although there are favorite foods that make me think I would need to develop a much firmer ideology if I wanted to go whole-heartedly locavore: bananas, avocados and coffee are just a few of the distantly grown crops it would be hardest for me to give up.
So yesterday might have been dismal gastronomically, but rather than dwell on it, I remind myself that today I’ll do better. I’ll start the day with an aerobic workout and a quart of water, like I always do, and I’ll pursue better eating habits than I did yesterday. While it’s not exactly like we get a completely clean slate dietarily every day – what we eat obviously accumulates in and on our bodies in various ways – it’s also true that one bad day of too much popcorn and chocolate and carbs and white flour doesn’t mean I won’t adhere to better standards the next day.
And then once I’ve convinced myself of this from a nutritional perspective, I remind myself that it’s true in other areas as well. There are days when I scold the kids too much; I remind myself I can improve the next day. There are days when I do too little work, or neglect to read anything of substance, or grow exasperated with my husband. But just as with bad eating choices, none of those mistakes is irreversible.
So I take a lesson from popcorn and chocolate: it was the wrong choice, but I’ll make better choices another day. Forgive yourself. Try again. It’s much healthier in the long run than stewing in self-recrimination. There will be caramel popcorn days and locally grown tomato days, whether the food is actual or metaphorical. Not happy with the choices you made today? Do better tomorrow. That’s a good enough approach for now.
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Friday, August 27, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Four fussy eaters
“Did I tell you about the Spanish omelet I made yesterday?” my sister Sarah asks me on the phone. “I’m going to send you the recipe. I think everyone in your family would like it!”
Oh, what fantasy words those are. And how utterly out of reach. The thought of making an entrée that everyone in my family likes is a distant dream to me. And I already knew the Spanish omelet wasn’t going to fill the bill; my husband Rick is a fierce opponent of eggs.
Many parents of very young children complain about their kids’ picky appetites, but that’s not really the issue for us. My kids aren’t all that young, and their appetites aren’t exactly picky, in the sense that they’re not the types who will eat only chicken fingers and goldfish, say, or boxed macaroni and cheese. They’re just…well, they’re not omnivorous. They each have several things they like and a few they don’t. The problem is that my husband has his list as well, and I have mine, and if you drew a black-and-white Venn diagram, you’d find very few gray overlap areas. And this is one situation in which some gray areas would be most welcome, but we don’t have many.
My 7-year-old likes fairly plain foods. She likes meat without sauce, starches and vegetables without spice, and so on. This means she can eat a healthy variety as long as nothing has much seasoning, which means I need to remember to separate whatever she’s going to be eating early on in the preparations. I also have long believed she has sort of a biorhythmic appetite: she just sometimes seems too tired by dinnertime to make an effort with eating. When she asks for a bowl of shredded wheat and a sliced apple with cheese while I’m getting dinner ready, I’m usually willing to accommodate her, knowing she probably won’t be interested in anything that nutritious an hour later at the dinner table.
My 11-year-old son has a broader diversity of tastes. Unlike his sister, he likes spices and seasonings, garlic, onions, anchovies. In fact, it sometimes seems that his palate craves extreme flavors the way some people turn to extreme sports because they crave excitement. One of his favorite food items is balsamic vinegar. He’ll pour it on salad, eat the salad, and then finish off the vinegar with a spoon. He’ll refill his salad bowl with straight vinegar once or twice if I don’t stop him, which I eventually do because I think vinegar is bad for tooth enamel.
So his tastes are fairly convenient except that he passionately despises tomatoes. That’s it: just tomatoes. Which brings us to my situation: I’m a vegetarian. People sometimes mistakenly think that means I’m a picky eater, but I’m not: I like just about anything that doesn’t include meat. Still, the kids both like most vegetables, so there are dozens and dozens of wonderful things that I can make for a family dinner, except that my husband dislikes eggs, rice and beans, which are essentially a vegetarian’s mainstay. (He also doesn’t like tofu, but that hardly seems worth mentioning: who unless they are a vegetarian actually does like tofu?) And although he loves pasta, as do the rest of us (as long as Tim’s doesn’t have tomato sauce), for reasons of weight control he has been strongly advised to avoid it.
So making dinner has been a rather wearisome challenge lately. Despite my own vegetarian habits – I haven’t eaten meat since 1985 – I’m comfortable preparing it for my family; I actually think it’s better for the kids to eat some meat than to avoid it altogether. But no spices or sauces on Holly’s. No tomatoes with Tim’s. No omelets or rice-based casseroles for Rick. For years, before the kids were born and then before they expressed preferences, I was fine with cooking for both a carnivore and a vegetarian. That was easy compared to this.
Once in a while I hit on an effective menu, one that everyone eats enthusiastically. Something like pork chops – plain for Holly, sauced for Rick and Tim, none for me – and baked potatoes and steamed broccoli which we’ll all eat, though Rick doesn’t have more than a bite or two of high-carb potato. Tim and I both like salad for dinner; I add some tofu to mine for protein and feel like everyone is in good shape for the evening. But those meals are the minority. So I just keep working at finding the right mix of options for everyone, and sometimes we just all have leftovers and that’s okay too.
In a way, it’s a microcosm of family life. You try to please everyone, and you can’t, and yet everyone eventually finds something they can be happy with. Compromise and flexibility. In menu planning as in interpersonal dynamics. With lots of freshly grated Parmesan cheese on top if at all possible.
Oh, what fantasy words those are. And how utterly out of reach. The thought of making an entrée that everyone in my family likes is a distant dream to me. And I already knew the Spanish omelet wasn’t going to fill the bill; my husband Rick is a fierce opponent of eggs.
Many parents of very young children complain about their kids’ picky appetites, but that’s not really the issue for us. My kids aren’t all that young, and their appetites aren’t exactly picky, in the sense that they’re not the types who will eat only chicken fingers and goldfish, say, or boxed macaroni and cheese. They’re just…well, they’re not omnivorous. They each have several things they like and a few they don’t. The problem is that my husband has his list as well, and I have mine, and if you drew a black-and-white Venn diagram, you’d find very few gray overlap areas. And this is one situation in which some gray areas would be most welcome, but we don’t have many.
My 7-year-old likes fairly plain foods. She likes meat without sauce, starches and vegetables without spice, and so on. This means she can eat a healthy variety as long as nothing has much seasoning, which means I need to remember to separate whatever she’s going to be eating early on in the preparations. I also have long believed she has sort of a biorhythmic appetite: she just sometimes seems too tired by dinnertime to make an effort with eating. When she asks for a bowl of shredded wheat and a sliced apple with cheese while I’m getting dinner ready, I’m usually willing to accommodate her, knowing she probably won’t be interested in anything that nutritious an hour later at the dinner table.
My 11-year-old son has a broader diversity of tastes. Unlike his sister, he likes spices and seasonings, garlic, onions, anchovies. In fact, it sometimes seems that his palate craves extreme flavors the way some people turn to extreme sports because they crave excitement. One of his favorite food items is balsamic vinegar. He’ll pour it on salad, eat the salad, and then finish off the vinegar with a spoon. He’ll refill his salad bowl with straight vinegar once or twice if I don’t stop him, which I eventually do because I think vinegar is bad for tooth enamel.
So his tastes are fairly convenient except that he passionately despises tomatoes. That’s it: just tomatoes. Which brings us to my situation: I’m a vegetarian. People sometimes mistakenly think that means I’m a picky eater, but I’m not: I like just about anything that doesn’t include meat. Still, the kids both like most vegetables, so there are dozens and dozens of wonderful things that I can make for a family dinner, except that my husband dislikes eggs, rice and beans, which are essentially a vegetarian’s mainstay. (He also doesn’t like tofu, but that hardly seems worth mentioning: who unless they are a vegetarian actually does like tofu?) And although he loves pasta, as do the rest of us (as long as Tim’s doesn’t have tomato sauce), for reasons of weight control he has been strongly advised to avoid it.
So making dinner has been a rather wearisome challenge lately. Despite my own vegetarian habits – I haven’t eaten meat since 1985 – I’m comfortable preparing it for my family; I actually think it’s better for the kids to eat some meat than to avoid it altogether. But no spices or sauces on Holly’s. No tomatoes with Tim’s. No omelets or rice-based casseroles for Rick. For years, before the kids were born and then before they expressed preferences, I was fine with cooking for both a carnivore and a vegetarian. That was easy compared to this.
Once in a while I hit on an effective menu, one that everyone eats enthusiastically. Something like pork chops – plain for Holly, sauced for Rick and Tim, none for me – and baked potatoes and steamed broccoli which we’ll all eat, though Rick doesn’t have more than a bite or two of high-carb potato. Tim and I both like salad for dinner; I add some tofu to mine for protein and feel like everyone is in good shape for the evening. But those meals are the minority. So I just keep working at finding the right mix of options for everyone, and sometimes we just all have leftovers and that’s okay too.
In a way, it’s a microcosm of family life. You try to please everyone, and you can’t, and yet everyone eventually finds something they can be happy with. Compromise and flexibility. In menu planning as in interpersonal dynamics. With lots of freshly grated Parmesan cheese on top if at all possible.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Brown-bagging it: How not to pack a school lunch
When my son was just a toddler, I realized what I was doing wrong when it came to his daycare lunches. I was packing to impress his teachers, rather than to satiate his appetite.
I couldn’t bear to pack food I wasn’t proud to be serving my child, knowing that every item from his little lunchbox passed through a teacher’s hands as they helped lay it out on a tiny tray for him. Never mind that three-quarters of the menu came back home in that same lunchbox at the end of the day; I wanted to be sure my yogurt brand and peeled apple slices were a daily reflection of my conscientious attitude toward parenting.
So I was thrilled to realize once my kids started public school that no adult was watching them eat anymore. The parent volunteers who patrol the lunchroom are way too busy to inspect any one child’s lunch box, and the professional lunchroom aides are far more interested in seeing which table can win The Quiet Game for a chance to be First Group Out to Recess to glance at what the kids are eating.
Still, I always packed with an eye toward nutrition. I don’t shop as vigilantly as some of my friends – my neighbor buys all her groceries at Whole Foods and wonders why her weekly food bills are at least $50 higher than mine every time we compare – but I’m careful with preparation. Even if I buy the mayonnaise at Market Basket rather than the organic aisle of Whole Foods, I spread it thinly, and though I let my kids have regular Oreos once in a while rather than Paul Newman Organics, it’s only one per lunch.
But recently I’ve been trying to offload more household tasks onto the kids, and school lunches seemed like an obvious place to start. I suggested to Holly that she pack her own lunch earlier this week. I knew what she’d be choosing among; it was all groceries I’d bought, so how bad could it be?
Well, it turns out that even in my fairly carefully stocked kitchen, you can make yourself one ugly lunch if your taste so dictates it. Whereas the lunch I made for myself yesterday consisted of a slice of fresh mozzarella and a slice of hydroponically ripened tomato with a thin layer of grain mustard on a ciabatta roll, Holly went through the very same kitchen and came up with this menu for herself: string cheese, squeezable yogurt, pepperoni slices and a mini-cupcake. Yes, I admit those were all items I bought, but not to be eaten together. Sometimes the kids ask for special snack items that I don’t particularly approve of but think are okay to buy now and then, like squeezable yogurt. And the cupcakes were an impulse buy to reward Holly for being such an agreeable shopper during a rush-hour trip to the supermarket earlier in the week. The pepperoni? Well, we made pizza last month. I didn’t know it was still there in the fridge.
When Holly proudly showed me the bounty of her first attempt to make her own lunch, I bit my tongue. It ranked about a C+ for nutritional value and even lower than that for gustatory appeal, in my opinion, but she’d done it herself, which was what I wanted. I’ve been packing children’s lunches for the past 11 years; the prospect of handing over the responsibility was enticing. And I was willing to take the consequences, mostly because I knew no one would notice. No one looks at what the second graders are eating.
Holly punctured that illusion five minutes after she got off the bus. “It was lunch-date day!” she crowed. “I got to have lunch with Mrs. Graham!” Once a month or so the kids have the opportunity to eat lunch with one or another of their teachers from years past. Mrs. Graham was Holly’s first grade teacher.
But with 20 second graders clamoring for her attention, it wasn’t possible that Mrs. Graham had observed the contents of Holly’s lunch box, I told myself. “Was it fun?” I asked. “Did you catch up with all your first grade classmates?”
“No,” said Holly cheerfully. “Just Mrs. Graham. I was the only one who remembered it was lunch date day. So I got to have her all to myself.”
Oh, wonderful, I thought. On pepperoni and Go-gurt day. “Was it a nice lunch?” I asked.
“It sure was!” Holly said. “I ate my cupcake first!”
So Mrs. Graham now knows the worst: not only do I let my daughter bring a cupcake (a mini-cupcake, in all fairness to me) for lunch but I haven’t even taught her the self-discipline not to eat dessert first.
“What did you talk about?” I asked, almost afraid the answer would be “The food groups.”
“Lots of things. Second grade, books, Girl Scouts. Oh, and also, Mrs. Graham told me her son is starting kindergarten at our school,” Holly answered.
I perked up. Really? He’ll be a kindergartener at our school? Great. I plan to sign up for lunchroom volunteer duty as early in the year as I can. With any luck, I’ll see Mrs. Graham’s son eat his cupcake first, and feel exonerated at last.
I couldn’t bear to pack food I wasn’t proud to be serving my child, knowing that every item from his little lunchbox passed through a teacher’s hands as they helped lay it out on a tiny tray for him. Never mind that three-quarters of the menu came back home in that same lunchbox at the end of the day; I wanted to be sure my yogurt brand and peeled apple slices were a daily reflection of my conscientious attitude toward parenting.
So I was thrilled to realize once my kids started public school that no adult was watching them eat anymore. The parent volunteers who patrol the lunchroom are way too busy to inspect any one child’s lunch box, and the professional lunchroom aides are far more interested in seeing which table can win The Quiet Game for a chance to be First Group Out to Recess to glance at what the kids are eating.
Still, I always packed with an eye toward nutrition. I don’t shop as vigilantly as some of my friends – my neighbor buys all her groceries at Whole Foods and wonders why her weekly food bills are at least $50 higher than mine every time we compare – but I’m careful with preparation. Even if I buy the mayonnaise at Market Basket rather than the organic aisle of Whole Foods, I spread it thinly, and though I let my kids have regular Oreos once in a while rather than Paul Newman Organics, it’s only one per lunch.
But recently I’ve been trying to offload more household tasks onto the kids, and school lunches seemed like an obvious place to start. I suggested to Holly that she pack her own lunch earlier this week. I knew what she’d be choosing among; it was all groceries I’d bought, so how bad could it be?
Well, it turns out that even in my fairly carefully stocked kitchen, you can make yourself one ugly lunch if your taste so dictates it. Whereas the lunch I made for myself yesterday consisted of a slice of fresh mozzarella and a slice of hydroponically ripened tomato with a thin layer of grain mustard on a ciabatta roll, Holly went through the very same kitchen and came up with this menu for herself: string cheese, squeezable yogurt, pepperoni slices and a mini-cupcake. Yes, I admit those were all items I bought, but not to be eaten together. Sometimes the kids ask for special snack items that I don’t particularly approve of but think are okay to buy now and then, like squeezable yogurt. And the cupcakes were an impulse buy to reward Holly for being such an agreeable shopper during a rush-hour trip to the supermarket earlier in the week. The pepperoni? Well, we made pizza last month. I didn’t know it was still there in the fridge.
When Holly proudly showed me the bounty of her first attempt to make her own lunch, I bit my tongue. It ranked about a C+ for nutritional value and even lower than that for gustatory appeal, in my opinion, but she’d done it herself, which was what I wanted. I’ve been packing children’s lunches for the past 11 years; the prospect of handing over the responsibility was enticing. And I was willing to take the consequences, mostly because I knew no one would notice. No one looks at what the second graders are eating.
Holly punctured that illusion five minutes after she got off the bus. “It was lunch-date day!” she crowed. “I got to have lunch with Mrs. Graham!” Once a month or so the kids have the opportunity to eat lunch with one or another of their teachers from years past. Mrs. Graham was Holly’s first grade teacher.
But with 20 second graders clamoring for her attention, it wasn’t possible that Mrs. Graham had observed the contents of Holly’s lunch box, I told myself. “Was it fun?” I asked. “Did you catch up with all your first grade classmates?”
“No,” said Holly cheerfully. “Just Mrs. Graham. I was the only one who remembered it was lunch date day. So I got to have her all to myself.”
Oh, wonderful, I thought. On pepperoni and Go-gurt day. “Was it a nice lunch?” I asked.
“It sure was!” Holly said. “I ate my cupcake first!”
So Mrs. Graham now knows the worst: not only do I let my daughter bring a cupcake (a mini-cupcake, in all fairness to me) for lunch but I haven’t even taught her the self-discipline not to eat dessert first.
“What did you talk about?” I asked, almost afraid the answer would be “The food groups.”
“Lots of things. Second grade, books, Girl Scouts. Oh, and also, Mrs. Graham told me her son is starting kindergarten at our school,” Holly answered.
I perked up. Really? He’ll be a kindergartener at our school? Great. I plan to sign up for lunchroom volunteer duty as early in the year as I can. With any luck, I’ll see Mrs. Graham’s son eat his cupcake first, and feel exonerated at last.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Giving thanks for...food, recipes, ingredients, flavors, textures, tastes
With one day left until Thanksgiving, I’m starting my holiday cooking and baking in earnest – and feeling a lot of gratitude for food and recipes and ingredients and results. Simply having enough food to feed my family is one of those categories I’ve termed the massive blessings, but food to have fun with falls into the category I’ve been ticking off during this pre-Thanksgiving countdown: non-esssential but tremendously appreciated blessings for which to give thanks.
I feel so fortunate for the delicious and wonderful food all around me, both the food created in my kitchen and the food that comes into it. Even with an increasing societal priority on locavore shopping, I can’t resist celebrating the variety of delicious things we have access to both locally and beyond. Apples, oranges, peaches, bananas, avocadoes. Arugula and romaine. Garlic, grapefruit, plums. Amazing varieties of cheese, from the creamy to the pungent to the savory. Salsa seasoned with plenty of cilantro; guacamole with lime juice and salt. Chewy whole wheat bagels studded with seeds and sprouts. Artisan breads, better than those I bake myself no matter how many different ways I try. Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, for baking and eating. Edamame, barley, adobo sauce, for dressing up soups and chili. Coffee beans, dark and slippery with oils, to be transformed in the morning into hot rich coffee.
In the summer, fresh creamy ice cream from the popular stand down the street and seafood from the docks in Maine. Black bean burgers and swordfish steaks off the grill. Blueberries and blackberries from the bushes right here on the farm. In the winter, grilled cheese sandwiches with caramelized onions, big pans of homemade macaroni and cheese, hot chocolate chip cookies. On vacations, regional foods to sample and new tastes to explore. Dishes I haven’t mastered myself but can buy wonderful samples of right near home: curries, sushi, scallion pancakes, Thai noodle dishes. Take-out choices the kids love to eat on Saturday nights: hot pizza with cheese sizzling across the top; greasy tasty Chinese appetizers; subs bursting with the varied textures and fresh flavors of cheese, tomatoes, pickles, mayonnaise. Celebratory desserts: birthday cakes, cupcakes, ice cream sundaes. Fattening-but-fun snack food for Superbowl parties and poker nights: homemade chili con queso, hot artichoke spread, layered taco dips.
But back to today, the day before Thanksgiving, a holiday whose traditional dishes are not among my favorites overall but still fun to make once a year. Today I’ll prep the stuffing and cranberry sauce and make pumpkin pie, fruit crisp and the kids’ favorite chocolate mousse pie (essentially whipped cream flavored with chocolate swirled in a graham cracker crust. I myself wouldn’t mind if I never saw another one as long as I lived, but it’s their favorite holiday dessert, and I do like having special culinary traditions just for them). Earlier in the week I made several logs of Cheddar cheese wafer dough, which I can quickly slice and bake tomorrow. At some point between now and then I have to home in on a plan for roasting brussel sprouts (confirming how to spell brussel sprouts wouldn’t be a bad idea either). Other family members will bring traditional mashed potatoes and Rick’s favorite Thanksgiving vegetable of mashed carrots and turnips (as I say every year, I’m fine with having that on the table as long as I don’t have to prepare it or touch it).
We certainly don’t need all this food. We’re lucky to have enough of anything at all to eat. But what a bonus blessing that so many magnificent tastes and textures exist. In this well-known picture book Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban, Frances ends a brief phase of eating only bread and jam with a multi-course picnic lunch. After she reels off the many items on her menu to her friend Albert, he says, “I think it’s nice that there are all different kinds of lunches and breakfasts and dinners and snacks. I think eating is nice.”
“So do I,” responds Frances.
I couldn’t put it better myself.
I feel so fortunate for the delicious and wonderful food all around me, both the food created in my kitchen and the food that comes into it. Even with an increasing societal priority on locavore shopping, I can’t resist celebrating the variety of delicious things we have access to both locally and beyond. Apples, oranges, peaches, bananas, avocadoes. Arugula and romaine. Garlic, grapefruit, plums. Amazing varieties of cheese, from the creamy to the pungent to the savory. Salsa seasoned with plenty of cilantro; guacamole with lime juice and salt. Chewy whole wheat bagels studded with seeds and sprouts. Artisan breads, better than those I bake myself no matter how many different ways I try. Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, for baking and eating. Edamame, barley, adobo sauce, for dressing up soups and chili. Coffee beans, dark and slippery with oils, to be transformed in the morning into hot rich coffee.
In the summer, fresh creamy ice cream from the popular stand down the street and seafood from the docks in Maine. Black bean burgers and swordfish steaks off the grill. Blueberries and blackberries from the bushes right here on the farm. In the winter, grilled cheese sandwiches with caramelized onions, big pans of homemade macaroni and cheese, hot chocolate chip cookies. On vacations, regional foods to sample and new tastes to explore. Dishes I haven’t mastered myself but can buy wonderful samples of right near home: curries, sushi, scallion pancakes, Thai noodle dishes. Take-out choices the kids love to eat on Saturday nights: hot pizza with cheese sizzling across the top; greasy tasty Chinese appetizers; subs bursting with the varied textures and fresh flavors of cheese, tomatoes, pickles, mayonnaise. Celebratory desserts: birthday cakes, cupcakes, ice cream sundaes. Fattening-but-fun snack food for Superbowl parties and poker nights: homemade chili con queso, hot artichoke spread, layered taco dips.
But back to today, the day before Thanksgiving, a holiday whose traditional dishes are not among my favorites overall but still fun to make once a year. Today I’ll prep the stuffing and cranberry sauce and make pumpkin pie, fruit crisp and the kids’ favorite chocolate mousse pie (essentially whipped cream flavored with chocolate swirled in a graham cracker crust. I myself wouldn’t mind if I never saw another one as long as I lived, but it’s their favorite holiday dessert, and I do like having special culinary traditions just for them). Earlier in the week I made several logs of Cheddar cheese wafer dough, which I can quickly slice and bake tomorrow. At some point between now and then I have to home in on a plan for roasting brussel sprouts (confirming how to spell brussel sprouts wouldn’t be a bad idea either). Other family members will bring traditional mashed potatoes and Rick’s favorite Thanksgiving vegetable of mashed carrots and turnips (as I say every year, I’m fine with having that on the table as long as I don’t have to prepare it or touch it).
We certainly don’t need all this food. We’re lucky to have enough of anything at all to eat. But what a bonus blessing that so many magnificent tastes and textures exist. In this well-known picture book Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban, Frances ends a brief phase of eating only bread and jam with a multi-course picnic lunch. After she reels off the many items on her menu to her friend Albert, he says, “I think it’s nice that there are all different kinds of lunches and breakfasts and dinners and snacks. I think eating is nice.”
“So do I,” responds Frances.
I couldn’t put it better myself.
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