Cooking separate meals for everyone in the family is starting to get to me—mainly because at least one of the three people for whom I’m cooking has actually been known to cry at the table because she has no interest in even tasting what I’ve prepared. When that happens, I feel as if time has been wasted.
This evening I made a shepherd’s pie and biscuits. Two people ate shepherd’s pie and biscuits. One person ate part of a biscuit and less than three bites of shepherd’s pie. (That person will go to bed without a snack.) I ate biscuits, and am getting ready to dig into some roasted flaxseed and a pomegranate, which I may or may not share with the child who barely touched her dinner. Sometimes I wonder if Harper is on the road to vegetarianism. A friend of mine has a daughter who hasn’t eaten meat since she was six. I believe she’s seventeen now. Some people (most people, really) just aren’t designed to eat meat.
Anyway.
I have a cold. It’s the sort of cold that provides daggers for the throat and haze for the brain and an on and off increase in body temperature. Sadly, I had no time for this cold today. Instead, I drove back and forth to school four times, to Target once, and am probably getting ready to pick up a book at the library sometime in the next hour. Then again, I’m currently wearing my pajama pants, and those pajama pants are covered in cows who are sleeping on moons. It is my firm belief that one should not leave the house wearing pajama pants—especially if the pants in question might stir someone to look up and whisper “Hey, diddle diddle.”
The Christmas tree saga continues. This afternoon I hung the wreath that my mother made for our family. Immediately, Scout began to sing.
Speaking of singing, today’s Christmas tune is brought to you by David Mead. His latest album was released on November 15th, and his voice affects me the way Paul Simon’s voice affects me. It’s a warm Saturday morning waffle on a rainy day kind of voice. Nothing but good.
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I have one of those people at my house, too. By which I mean a Will Not Try Anything Person, not a vegetarian. It’s exhausting.
(Feel better.)
Alas, my pajama pants don’t (didn’t?) have cows on moons on them (uh, waaay cool!), but they are (were?) grey and red plaid, and super comfy! They died a rippingly sad death an hour ago in the Great Squat Down To Pick Something Up Off The Floor episode.
RIP ripped pajama pants.
I shall go to my library in longjohns.
My son has been a strict vegetarian for three years, since he was 6. He saw a chicken truck on the highway, inquired, and promptly decided never to eat another bite of meat when I explained where the chickens were headed. He is incredibly healthy. Surprisingly enough, although he is still picky, he is more willing to try things now than he was when he ate meat.
Ahh, picky eaters. I have a daughter who will eat nearly anything placed in front of her without question. I have a son who eats almost no variety. If I don’t have his favorite foods on hand he will go hungry and ask me to go to the store tomorrow. Just won’t eat. Won’t try new things and when he gets bored of his usuals sometimes he just won’t eat anything. Bored being a more powerful feeling than hunger to him. I so can not identify. I don’t even know what shepherd’s pie is but I bet if I was hungry I wouldn’t even wait to ask what it was called before I scarfed it down. Must have given all of my food genes to my daughter.
I heard the funniest thing this morning on the radio from a comedian (Jim Gaffigan, I think) He said he’d be really bad at a hunger strike but he’d be really good at an eating strike.
My dad has become an extremely picky eater at age 88. My 82 yo mother is about to kill herself trying to cook for him. He’s suddenly decided that meat bothers his stomach. But so do nuts and thou shalt not even bring up beans. He doesn’t like cheese and milk gives him issues in the bathroom , so he eats a lot of potatoes and sweets.
The weird thing is that he used to be like me and ate anything that didn’t try to eat him first!
I especially like the quiet girly giggling accompanying the dog song, and also that my dog felt the need to sing to your dog who was singing about the wreath. So festive.
Oh, and I was also going to say that I had to give up my personal 8-month vegetarian thing recently, since my daughter won’t eat any sort of legumes and I don’t like feeding her a ton of soy products, and I just didn’t have the fight in me to continue on the path of multiple meal preparation. So sadly, poultry’s made a comeback here. (Not sadly for the girl, who’s ecstatic)
I’ve got a kid with type 1 diabetes, as well as nut, tree nut, shellfish (and any food that might be cross-contaminated by shellfish in storage, processing or cooking), cats, dogs, trees, molds and grasses.
He is the best eater in the family. Will try anything (after asking if it’s safe, and not cats and dogs) and appreciates spicy and ‘international’ flavors.
My other kid is 18 with the dietary interests of a four-year-old: cheese, salami, peanut butter and honey, simple pasta, white bread, french fries, hamburgers. We found out that he has really peculiar texture and smell sensitivities, something like when people who hate cilantro think it tastes like soap. Apparently many foods taste metallic and chemical-ly to him.
Both eat meat, but they don’t like processed meats.
We have a couple of great-nephews who are finicky eaters. They’ve gotten better now that they are teenagers, but one of them wouldn’t even eat toast. Kids are just weird about food.
I worried that when I went vegetarian and Chris didn’t that two meals would become an issue. It has not. If Chris want’s meat with his food, he either tells me ahead of time or fixes it himself. The meat has become the side dish in our house. But I’m lucky because Chris is an adventurous foodie and will eat many a vegetarian dish without complaint. Also, we don’t have kids. Those guys are your worst food critic.