The Rules of Eating

I don't actually cook every day, so I cook on the weekend. That way we have yummy, economical, home-cooked meals fresh and ready when dinner time comes. Except, when we don't have them. Maybe on the weekend I am, hypothetically speaking, looking at a potential college for PPP. Hypothetically. Not cooking. Also not grocery shopping.

Tonight I am serving rotisserie chicken fresh from a huge chain grocery store and Stauffer's Macaroni and Cheese. If you cook it just a minute longer it makes this cheesy brownish crust in the corner. That's the only part I like.

On to the rules - # 1 - hungry means fast. Restated - "give me sugar, and I want it now." Today, after my particularly wild morning that started in the dark headed to the airport followed by a traffic jam that made me LATE to school, I was feeling the hungry -means-fast feeling. And, within the friendly halls of my school I rounded up these choices:Two beautiful pears.

Brown-sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts with the University of Florida Gator logo somehow reproduced on the icing. (Yes, that is Vergil's Aeneid, in Latin). They look alarmingly like temporary tattoos people put on their faces at football games and swim meets. If I had gone through the whole football themed box of Pop-tarts, theoretically I would have also seen Ohio State or Boston College. Question. Why are we putting tattoos on Pop-Tarts? To make them even more disturbing? Is the tattoo infused with vitamins? Does it make them even more nutritious than a brown sugar Pop Tart is already? Who would CHOOSE a Pop Tart over any other food because of the college logo? "Sorry Mom, I only eat UT Vols Pop Tarts!" It's the sugar!
Which did I choose? Seriously?


Two beautiful pears or two Pop-Tarts with a tattoo? Remember, HUNGRY means FAST.

Surprise - the Pop-Tarts. I ignored the logos. I also ignored the jarring juxtaposition of Pop Tarts and the Aeneid. I ate them because they were easier and ...easier...and more disgustingly junk-foodish. But so gooey and hot.


Under what circumstances would I have chosen the pears?

• The circumstances of the pears being the only food available.
• EVER.

Why? Hungry means sugar. I always choose Pop Tarts over Pears. But I choose Toaster Strudel over Pop-Tarts, and there is some faux fruit-ish substance within the Toaster Strudel, which is actually like a Pop Tart on steroids.

So.. the rules. I use another little-known rule to make sure that my growing adolescents eat nutritious and well balanced meals. One is taking advantage of the rule of home means hungry. Both PPP and our Young Son walk in the door starving. Same with The Sophisticate and BigB. It makes no difference if they walk in at 3:30 or at 5:30 or at 3:17 a.m. Home means hungry. Let there be food, because the fastest, easiest thing is what's going to get eaten.

SO, back to the rules again - the plan is to put out the food that the minions are LEAST LIKELY TO EAT first, when they are starving, and they will eat it. Put out a bowl of freshly washed grapes. Our Young Son chooses this begrudgingly, unless he is starving, when he will eat 4.7 pounds of grapes in roughly 12 minutes, then ask "Are there any more grapes?" It also works with brussell sprouts, the fresh kind. I discovered this when I steamed some up and they were ready before the rest of the meal - and they became finger food for the minions, who tossed them back like bon-bons or truffles or some exotic mushroom and gourmet cheese combo, that I only hear about while planning people's wedding menus.

Here are a few things my unsuspecting offspring have eaten, when I apply the 'starving to death, here's your only choice' rule:OK, that's not fair. That's Mimi's salad, and it has a lot of bacon on it. Even I will eat that salad. So will our Young Son...in fact he'd eat all of them.

Back to the rules - here are some things they have eaten after arriving home STARVING.

• Salad, of any kind . . . often without bacon
• 2 whole pineapples
• 3 quarts of strawberries
• avocado
• smoked oysters
• asparagus
• spinach
• a whole rotisserie chicken
• almonds with no salt

If I DO NOT supply a "healthy alternative," they will eat bowls and bowls of cereal or a whole stack of Club Crackers until I provide an alternative. Then, they will say "I'm not hungry, I just ate a bowl of cereal." Never mind your actual food.

Back to the rules. The "don't count calories" are a mystery. When one eats more calories than one expends, one gains weight. Unless they are 'don't count' calories, like the ones in the 'Hundred Calorie Packs." Or the ones that you lick from a bowl, or eat directly from a knife. Those no-count calories. Pop Tart calories count. Trust me. I have tested the theory. Often. They count. Every single one of them. But they shouldn't. SO...back to the rules. No count calories apparently actually don't count for some people. Our Young Son is - how to put this delicately and not offend his sensibilities since he is one of my three loyal readers? Our Young Son is LEAN. Very, very, very lean. It starts with an 'S' and it rhymes with BRAWNY. He thinks he eats a whole lot. I think so too. But, since he is not moving from the S word to Brawny, I have decided to count his calories. If Michael Phelps needs 10,000 calories a day ( or some obscene number ) then our Young Son, by a complex algorithmic calculation needs about 6OOO calories. Or I made it up. (Actually, I did Google up a website, and he needs more than 4000 to maintain, so there.)He thinks he's eating that much, but since he's not gaining - from the S word to the B word - then we are going to COUNT CALORIES. For Weight GAIN. I have counted a lot of calories. But not for weight gain. EVER.

A food diary. For weight GAIN. That is a concept I cannot grasp.

I'll report back.

A Traditional Mom

Tradition, tradition – all this talk of the tradition rich schools that our offspring attend makes us sound like some kind of tradition-whores. Seriously? What about MY life? MY traditions? Seriously? I have no life. I feed, encourage, support, teach, guide and document these young adults who are still under my care. Can’t I have a few traditions too? Yeah – it’s my traditions right now. Because I said so.

The traditional ‘what am I going to wear today?” ritual – in which I pick through the huge pile of clothes on the chest beside my bed to find something to wear. I wear the same thing over and over and over again, simply based on its location in the pile. I do smell them before putting them on. This week I found a skirt that has been missing since I went to the Latin convention in April. I thought I left it in the hotel, but it surfaced this week. The benefit to choosing from the pile in the dark is that I don’t see the wrinkles and the food spills until I get to school – where ever-observant middle school students point out the stains, while the tres blasé high school students pretend not to notice but titter amongst themselves about the remnants of oatmeal on my skirt. As if I am not standing 3 feet away. Once I wore (on purpose, as a test) the exact same outfit to school every day for a week. No one said a thing. Black skirt, denim shirt, clogs. 5 days straight. It helped that it was on top of the pile every morning. They were so kind not to judge me. Hah!

Traditional Post Labor Day White-Putting-Away. The Sophisticate, PPP and I wore all our favorite summery white clothes all of Labor Day Weekend. I wore my white sunglasses until the last glimpse of the Gustav tinted sunset disappeared Monday evening. And now the sunglasses, along with the daughters' sundresses are retired. If I had white shoes or white pants, I would put them away too. . . forever. I am using “put away” loosely, as in relegate to the bottom of my pile of clothes. A few weeks later, the white sunglasses are now “put away” on the kitchen counter. But I am GOING to put them in the top drawer of my dresser. I hope I remember that when it’s spring, or in the bleak midwinter when I want to pull them out to remind me that summer is coming.

The traditionial "I hate to make the lunches" rant. The rant rages on in my head. I am OK if I get them made while I am cooking something else. I am unhappy if it's sleepy time for me and I have not made PPP's crustless chicken salad sandwich and grapes, or our very lean Young Son's two ginormous meaty sandwiches plus all the other caloric things I can find to put in a bag. It's a good thing they can get food at school, because the twin to this tradition is the traditional "I forgot to make the lunches, do you want string cheese and mandarin oranges, or do you want to get something at school?" I think the Sophisticate is sneaking in and making her lunch when no one is home.The traditional after school snack followed by nap on the couch. I walk in the door starving, a left-over primordial response to the end of the school day, and sleepy from getting up in the middle of my biorhythmic night. (see above: I'm not the only one who indulges in this one.) I eat a very healthy snack, like Toaster Strudel, with the little white icing squeezed out of the plastic packet, which looks alarmingly like toothpaste. I then sit down on my couch and consider my need to grade papers. I fall asleep instantly, a direct physical response to being in a small enclosed space with children grades 6 – 11. It’s a day full of drama and hormones. It’s exhausting…trying not to laugh at their self-absorption. I meant to say it’s exhausting preparing interesting and challenging lessons and then presenting them in a dynamic and engaging way. While planning two weddings. And wrangling this household. Any of that. All of that.

BigD’s ritual call on the Friday afternoon drive home. BigD works in a town other than our own. He drives home on Friday afternoon. He texts me when he leaves.
BigD: I’m just now leaving and I will be home at 8:17 pm.
Me: OK.
BigD: I have a ham. (I don't even ask).
Me: I’ll be asleep on the couch when you get here.

Then, when he’s about an hour away I text him:
Me: We are out of Dog Food you better get some, if you want to make it up the back steps.
BigD: I have this ham.
Me: We don’t have any Diet Coke, either. If you want some, bring it.
BigD: OK, anything else?
Me: M & M’s.
“M & M’s” signifies the end of the traditional Friday night phone call.
The traditional Friday night dinner ritual: “What kind of take-out are we having tonight?” All that stuff we bought and cooked last weekend, to be prepared and all that? It's gone. There is no cooking on Friday night. We go through take-out phases. There was the pizza phase, which lasted roughly 17 years. Then there was the Chinese phase, when we were deluded into thinking that it’s OK to spend all that money on Chinese food for these hungry people, because we will “have leftovers all week.” We don’t have leftover anything. Ever. We are currently in a sub sandwich phase, and we order the large size sandwiches, so we can have leftovers. We don’t have leftovers, but we order as if we will. The leftovers are gone by 10 pm.The FOOTBALL thing – My tradition is the chatting and the picture taking and the talking about how interestingly the other parents behave. I do pick up crowd signals, so I pay attention when things get exciting. Or someone gets hurt. It also changes dinner into Corn Dogs.Traditional stalker pics. I love it when they don't know I'm watching. Traditionally.

The traditional sock basket. We've had a sock basket since PPP was a baby. Theoretically, one sorts all the socks into a basket as they come out of the dryer, or when found stuck in a nightgown or down in a corner of the dining room sideboard. The idea is to immediately pair the socks up and voila – socks, in pairs for all. Our version? We dump the socks into the basket and when someone needs socks, he/she goes into the sock basket and finds two that are similar enough to wear. So, tradition lives on, and our Young Son is found digging through the sock basket every morning. And it seemed like such a good idea. The cat sleeping in the sock basket tradition. OR, the traditional cat gives-birth-in-the-sock-basket. Self explanatory.