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September 27, 2004 - 9:37 am

EAT YOUR VEGETABLES

The Boy (age 5): I wish the whole world was made of milk and peanut butter & jelly...and a little bit of spinach with lemon sauce.

My kids have pretty good eating habits because when it comes to feeding children I have this theory: They won�t beg for Twinkies if you don�t give them Twinkies. When they were younger, their agonizing cries at bedtime of �I�m starving! My stomach hurts because I�m so hungry!� were met with, �I�m sure you are. Remember this feeling the next time I tell you that if you don�t eat what�s on your plate, you will be getting nothing else to eat until breakfast.� (Pretty decent mom impression, huh?) I�m a firm believer in self-preservation � if they are hungry enough, they will eat what you give them. And I can hold out longer than they can because I�m not hungry. I ate my dinner and I have earplugs to block out the crying.

The Girl: This lunch box is really heavy. What�d you put in here, mom?
Me: A brick.
The Boy: Mmmm. Bwiiiiicks.

I have good eating habits, too; I was even a vegetarian for about ten years. This was not due to any animal rights activism or anything like that. It happened sort of gradually, beginning when I was about eleven with a severely undercooked chicken breast ingested at Piccadilly with a friend�s parents and vomiting on them when I discovered what I had eaten. From there, I moved on to revulsion at the sight of sickly chickens with broken necks hanging out of the cages on a chicken truck I was driving past on the interstate. Who wants to eat that? And then there was that story my mom always told me about when she was little, growing up on a farm, and a chicken, freshly beheaded by a farm hand, chased her around the yard until she fell down and it ran right over her, sans head.

The Boy (looking at the chicken-broccoli casserole on his plate): There�s moss gwowing on the chicken.

Once I was a full-blown vegetarian the �Why are you a vegetarian?� discussion always irked me because that is never an innocent question. That guy is looking for a fight. So I learned to respond with, �I don�t like how meat tastes.� Even though it wasn�t necessarily true, it usually worked better than �None of your damn business. Fuck off, loser,� which just made them want to make love to me. Yawn.

I started eating meat one night a couple of years ago during that life altering phase in the fall of 2001 when I adopted Ben Franklin�s philosophy of �everything in moderation� (except for drinking and running, which I began completely abusing). I was at a cabin in north Georgia with some girlfriends for our yearly girls� retreat/wine fest (which is just around the corner again!) when Wendy threw a New York Strip steak on the grill with my asparagus. One little bite and the rest was medium-rare history.

John has really enjoyed the change since I do most of the cooking and he had sort of become a part-time vegetarian by default until I reverted to omnivorousness. But the kids are still trying to catch on to the whole meat thing:

The Boy: This hot dog looks kinda like a sausage �cause of the lines on the end of it.
The Girl: Yeah. I think it�s in the sausage family.
The Boy: Kinda like turkey�s in the chicken and ham family.
The Girl: Turkey�s not in the ham family!
The Boy: Oh yeah. �Cause ham�s in the cow family, like
hamburgers.

~Samantha

recommended:
reading -Bitter with Baggage Seeks Same: The Life and Times of Some Chickens by Sloane Tanen and Stefan Hagen
viewing - Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
listening -"My Lean Baby" by Frank Sinatra

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