More Food Talk

I’m not currently knitting and Christmas is a boring blogpost so I thought I’d riff on food some more.

Now that you know I’m against additives in principle but eat a ton of them anyhow I’ll open up yet further: My kids eat Little Debbie Cakes for breakfast.

[pause for the collective gasp]

Yes, damned near every day. Wanna know why? Because they’re one of the few things I can get them to Actually Eat in the morning that is neither messy nor time-consuming for any of the concerned parties.

We tried other things but none worked nearly as well. Cold and hot cereal neither worked because they caused too many last-minute changes of clothes for Youngest Duckling and BIL is lactose-intolerant so he had to get a separate breakfast. NObody wanted anything to do with eggs in any form, toast got left uneaten and enough bacon to feed three kids plus special-needs adult was Just Too Much (both mess and time) for weekdays. Bagels or English muffins are well-received but the cream cheese gets eaten off the tops and replaced by Youngest Duckling (who then leaves the starch behind) and isn’t used at all by BIL…and the Mess Factor rears its ugly head again. Mess is also what precludes muffins; last time we had those the crumbs were strung across three separate rooms and the stairs just in the course of finding shoes and hairbrushes.

But a Little Debbie Cake? Everyone likes those. BIL gets his with juice but I make the kids drink milk so that I can at least pretend there’s a protein content to the meal. The kids go to school with a full belly and energy rather than lethargic from sleep and skipping breakfast which in my mind is a greater good than a "proper" breakfast they won’t eat.

Sure they like "breakfast pastries" too but that Little Debbie is a cheap bitch so she’s better. Also if Eldest Duckling runs late (as she is wont to do) the individual wrapping makes it easy for her to grab-n-go.

Before you ask, not one of my kids has a weight problem, either. However, I think that doesn’t have to do with what they eat nearly as much as the environment in which they eat it: I’ve gone out of my way to make sure there are NO emotional issues attached to the food. None of that "I spent all afternoon cooking this so you’d better be appreciative" crap at my house, youbetcha...and my favorite serving style is buffet.

Part of why MIL isn’t working out is because she is hugely invested in the control aspects of food: stands there over the kids and says "I know you like [food du jour] so you’ve got to eat some more of that" while piling on unrequested second helpings. She also constantly reports to me in great and worried detail just exactly what and when my kids are eating with all sorts of highly opinionated commentary. Insists on knowing first thing in the morning what I plan to have for dinner that night, which makes me completely nuts...especially when she then becomes completely inflexible about last-minute changes.

There are many food styles...mine is about as laissez-faire as one can get.