When you consider it a culinary success if the pop-tart stays in one piece.
Nothing strikes fear in the heart of a parent as a call from your child's school in the middle of the day. A moment of wild conjecture comes to you when you first hear the teacher's voice asking to speak to you -- broken bones? black eyes? throw up down the teacher's bra (again), brain injury from the monkey bars? the shuttle hit by a semi?
Fortunately, our totally cooperative, wildly eloquent, teacher Paul knows this. Immediately after hello he says "Everything is fine, your daughter is OK. I just need to discuss her lunch with you." Paul is a wonderful teacher, and good-looking -- in an intense, pale, slightly long-haired hippie way.
I take a long slow breath and sink back into my computer chair as the sudden worry wears off. "Her lunch?"
"She told me she doesn't eat cheese on hot days so she refused it."
"We didn't predict that the fog would burn off before lunch and make it warm. She had the yogurt too."
As a peacenik he doesn't question my daughter's pickiness, but goes on to say how yogurt was just sugar and that she needed some protein. He had told my daughter to eat just a LITTLE cheese. He had come back later and she had just crumpled the cheese up into little pieces and said she HAD eaten a little. "There was no way to know for sure, I had to believe her," he said.
I could picture my daughter telling him this. I saw her with had both hands on her hips and a sassy half-smile on her face. I was sure she had been enormously pleased with herself for the cheese trick. She should be, I smile despite myself. At seven she can already radiates a sort of old-fashioned Betty Boop sexiness planted in the midst of an innocent little face. Though beneath it all she is like a tiger secure in her preeminence in the jungle. She beat him. Paul is puddy in her little hands.
But the lunch problem persists despite her sassiness. Being left wing and living in Berkeley should include the ability to prepare healthy fibered-filled for your kids, yet his is difficult for me. I was raised in in a little backwood Southern town where lard and Wonder Bread were considered delicacies -- this just doesn't fit into my hip California home.
I look over at the my lunch on my desk, microwave popcorn (not even the trans-fat free kind) and Diet Coke (not the aspartame-free one of course), and said, "Well, I suppose I can set a better example."
"Uh huh" he said but in a way that was like he wanted to hear more. What could I tell him? He wouldn't understand that no matter how many times I was shown, how many recipes I followed, my brain refused to hold on to the pathways necessary to cook a meal. It had to be easy to put together without heat otherwise I was cut-a-slit-in-plastic-before-microwaving gal when it came to cooking. If it didn't come in a can, or frozen, or in a box with directions, I just can't handle it. I try, I do try!
"I think the yogurt will hold her until she comes home from her snack," I told him and thinking 'oh please don't ask what snack is..'
We both hangup, neither satisfied with the conversation. He is probably looking over at my healthy wirey child and sighing, and I'm sitting at my desk thinking about the future, when my girls grow up taller and healthy and taste something burnt, undercooked, half cooked, or just plain icky ... I think that they'll will say, fighting back grin as much as their spitting-it-out reflex. "This is just how mom used to make it..."
Fortunately, our totally cooperative, wildly eloquent, teacher Paul knows this. Immediately after hello he says "Everything is fine, your daughter is OK. I just need to discuss her lunch with you." Paul is a wonderful teacher, and good-looking -- in an intense, pale, slightly long-haired hippie way.
I take a long slow breath and sink back into my computer chair as the sudden worry wears off. "Her lunch?"
"She told me she doesn't eat cheese on hot days so she refused it."
"We didn't predict that the fog would burn off before lunch and make it warm. She had the yogurt too."
As a peacenik he doesn't question my daughter's pickiness, but goes on to say how yogurt was just sugar and that she needed some protein. He had told my daughter to eat just a LITTLE cheese. He had come back later and she had just crumpled the cheese up into little pieces and said she HAD eaten a little. "There was no way to know for sure, I had to believe her," he said.
I could picture my daughter telling him this. I saw her with had both hands on her hips and a sassy half-smile on her face. I was sure she had been enormously pleased with herself for the cheese trick. She should be, I smile despite myself. At seven she can already radiates a sort of old-fashioned Betty Boop sexiness planted in the midst of an innocent little face. Though beneath it all she is like a tiger secure in her preeminence in the jungle. She beat him. Paul is puddy in her little hands.
But the lunch problem persists despite her sassiness. Being left wing and living in Berkeley should include the ability to prepare healthy fibered-filled for your kids, yet his is difficult for me. I was raised in in a little backwood Southern town where lard and Wonder Bread were considered delicacies -- this just doesn't fit into my hip California home.
I look over at the my lunch on my desk, microwave popcorn (not even the trans-fat free kind) and Diet Coke (not the aspartame-free one of course), and said, "Well, I suppose I can set a better example."
"Uh huh" he said but in a way that was like he wanted to hear more. What could I tell him? He wouldn't understand that no matter how many times I was shown, how many recipes I followed, my brain refused to hold on to the pathways necessary to cook a meal. It had to be easy to put together without heat otherwise I was cut-a-slit-in-plastic-before-microwaving gal when it came to cooking. If it didn't come in a can, or frozen, or in a box with directions, I just can't handle it. I try, I do try!
"I think the yogurt will hold her until she comes home from her snack," I told him and thinking 'oh please don't ask what snack is..'
We both hangup, neither satisfied with the conversation. He is probably looking over at my healthy wirey child and sighing, and I'm sitting at my desk thinking about the future, when my girls grow up taller and healthy and taste something burnt, undercooked, half cooked, or just plain icky ... I think that they'll will say, fighting back grin as much as their spitting-it-out reflex. "This is just how mom used to make it..."
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