food poisoning

Last night the only sweet in the house was the last pack of Nature Valley Granola Bars from the enormous box I got at BJ's 7 months ago and the remaining bit of hot pink butter cream frosting from Steel's birthday (10/31/09.) I combined the two and triumphantly brought them to the couch where Tim and I spend most of our evenings. I was flabbergasted when he declined.

Eating things my kids have refused is 80% of my diet. Maybe I'll start an uber-green fad diet for moms...Day 1-breakfast: a smoothie consisting of the milk that your child has held in a sippy cup in her armpit all night and the unfinished fruit from yesterday pulled from a baggie in the freezer. Polish off the pancakes remaining on their sticky plastic plates. (I currently draw the line at soggy cheerios although I'm sure I could whip them up with the Braun handheld mixer to incorporate them into into tomorrow's pancake batter for a book deal.) Lunch: bed of lettuce smothered in a salty balsamic vinaigrette with the shrimp and peas from last night's dinner dumped on top. If there was leftover salad, just throw it in the blender with some V8 and call it gazpacho. Voila..soup and salad. I'm sure I could get the percentage up to 95. It could be a hit like "Julie and Julia." hmmm... Liz and Listeria? Elizabeth and Ecoli? My dad always threatens opening an Italian restaurant and calling it Sal Monella's. He's kidding; I'm serious.

Incidentally, one of the big issues in my parents' divorce was lettuce. Peter would take the nice green leafy bits and put it back in the fridge. Susie couldn't throw the bitter white crap away, so she'd eat it herself and complain about being a second class citizen. Tim will open 4 snack-packs of pretzels ignoring the dregs of the ridiculously huge BJ's vat-o-pretzels he bought. Meanwhile I'm crushing them up with a rolling pin to use as breading for fish. All of you men out there take note: just throw the stuff you don't want away; it'll save your marriage. Otherwise you're insinuating that it's not good enough for you, but it is for the rest of the family.

unless it's hot pink butter cream frosting.

The tragic thing is I do it in my pottery too. I have a whole range of dinnerware that I call "sustainable" because it's glazed with the stuff I clean up from the floor. I sieve the funk from the bottom of my mop bucket and re-use the glaze. I'm sure I ruin so much pottery trying to make this work, but I just can't bare to:
a. throw the heavy metals down the drain
b. waste anything.

I wonder if I'll ever be one of those moms who just says, f-it and gives the kids macncheese and hot dogs. One of the teachers at school sees my kids' lunches as an indication that, "It's always cocktail hour at the McDonald home." (Clearly she's clairvoyant.) This morning each lunch consisted of: 6 toothpicks stabbed through slices of cucumber, cream cheese and chicken breast; a half a blood orange sectioned into 4; a strawberry yogurt; and a tiny piece of a brownie. Jack Peter requested capers in his lunch but wouldn't allow them on the toothpicks, so I dumped them in his Tupperware. I was chastised in the car on the way home because he didn't get any capers, and "brownies look like poo." I opened the boxes. There was a sad little pile of capers left in Steel's.

"Jack Peter, I'm sorry I put them in the long wrunch." (That was before I'd had my first drink.)

He just looked at me sneakily and whined, "Yiz, I want a yittle yunch!" imitating one of his friends who can't say her l's yet.