My oldest son invited a friend over this past Shabbat afternoon. They were playing nicely in the backyard when another friend stopped by to join them. Through mitosis or spontaneous generation (high school science was not good to me) I soon had a crew of 5 8-11 year old boys running around outside, inside and through my home. I love this. My house is not always the ‘it’ place to be, but on this day we were hopping.
Things were going well when I was suddenly struck with a terrifying thought – these children are going to want to eat!
Despite their direct relation to me, my kids are not eaters. They like food, so long as it is macaroni and cheese, and they like to snack only in shockingly small quantities. But I have heard the rumor that growing boys will eat you out of house and home, and here I was woefully unprepared for the storm that hit just moments later.
‘Mom, my friends are hungry, can we come in for a snack?’ (Insert creepy ‘eee eee eee’ sound from the movie Psycho. You have to add your own sound effects, but I provide the script, so it’s kind of the least you can do…)
And so began my personal episode of ‘Iron Chef – Snack Edition’ in which my mission was to feed these children quickly and without dairy (curse you, lactose intolerance).
Thinking on my feet, I grabbed a box of saltines, a jar of peanut butter, and a bunch of bananas. The members of my family generally find this to be a healthy and acceptable snack. But I received blank stares from the hungry pack and a pleading look from my son, who said ‘Mom, do we have anything, um…. else?’
I was suddenly overcome by the urge to be cool. I know the warning – ‘be your children’s parent, not their friend’, but does that mean I must abandon all aspirations of awesome? I wanted ours to be a house of good snacks regardless of transfats and refined sugars.
See, my child is already the principal’s kid. It is unfair to also make him the kid with the dorky refreshments. Besides, the therapy jar has recently been pillaged by someone who really wanted this funky new pair of sandals, so better that we just handle this issue now before it spirals out of control.
So I put on my game face, dug deep into the pantry, and pulled out the following:
¾ bag stale tortilla chips
½ jar of salsa
1 long ago forgotten bag of Mike & Ikes
1 box of graham crackers
1 pitcher lemonade
½ pan of Duncan Heinz brownies
I looked at them filled with hope and angst.
And they dug in. It was over in 7 minutes, but it was glorious. One gracious child even paused to say ‘Fissis bes snakeve’, which, as I am now fluent in the language of Ravenous Boy With Full Mouth, can be translated as ‘This is the best snack ever!’
Oh success, thou art sweeter than Mike & Ikes!
I have taken away four key lessons from this happening;
1) Sandals are cheaper than therapy.
2) If we were all just a bit more tolerant of lactose the world would be a better place and an easier one to feed.
3) There should be a word to describe peer pressure that comes not from one’s peers, but from the peers of one’s child. That word should be something other than ‘pathetic’.
4) Spinach is to Popeye as refined sugar is to me. It’s got a bad rap, but it gives us the ability to do heroic and beautiful things.
I hit the supermarket with a vengeance this week. I hear boys are like feral cats, in that they sometimes smell bad, and that if you feed them they are likely to return. Come boys. Come with your preferences, your allergies, your intolerances. This Iron Chef will never again be caught unprepared.
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