Anna's Prayer For Her Hero

Anna, in a recent prayer said, "We thank thee that William is brave and fearless."

Welcome to the Cafe Gratitude

So with Thanksgiving behind us and a whole lot of us not feeling all that grateful I have decided to take some drastic measures. After yet another meal of children saying, "I don't like this" or, "Can I have some cereal instead?" I decided that I would have our children eat for at least a week of dinners what other people around the world eat: rice and beans. Tonight's dinner was amazing. We had black beans and rice with some homemade whole wheat tortillas (our kids burned through 2 dozen) a plate of carrots from our garden and one orange cut into six slices.  I said a blessing on the food that went something like this: "We are so thankful for this meal, for the beans and rice that are so healthy and filling, for the carrots that came from our garden and for the abundant land where we live, we thank thee for the orange that has come from so far to give us vitamin C and for the tortillas. We are thankful that no one has allergies to wheat and that we can eat all of this and be filled. We are thankful for this clean water that came from our faucet and that we didn't have to walk for miles down to a river to get it...at this point the kids were all snickering and I could no longer restrain myself. I laughed too and then exclaimed, "What? I'm being serious! I AM grateful for all of these things! " Then I wrapped up my prayer and we ate. That is the amazing part. We ate! ALL OF US!! Lizzie glowered for a few minutes and then with a resigned air ate her food. Sammy, being the good sport that he is said thank-you every few minutes (while eating half the tortillas) Anna and William ate without complaint. (Even after finding out they couldn't drown their carrots in ranch)

Maybe this is the answer? I don't really know. I told our children that so many people in the world live so simply. One in seven people are undernourished. The amazing thing is with our simple dinner we still had a fresh fruit and vegetable and plenty of food. No one was still hungry when dinner was over.  It is this type of awareness I want to instill in our children. They have no idea how lucky we are. Indeed, I think truly I have no idea how lucky we are. I guess we shall wait and see. As for the name, "Cafe Gratitude", I put a sign up on the door "Welcome to the Cafe Gratitude" for Sam and Lizzie to see as the walked in after school. They knew immediately that the day of reckoning had arrived!

(Incidently, there is a Cafe Gratitude restaurant in L.A. that serves organic, vegan, locally grown food.)

I'm Not Alone

I just saw this on one of my favorite blogs:

http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2012/11/16/moths-invaded-our-pantrybugs-like-real-food-too/

This just made me thankful that the only things I have found infested are those that I haven't adequately stored and they are both in the garage. (Our bulk oatmeal and hot chocolate). So far our only pantry issue each year is an occasional mouse in the fall and all we have to do then is throw Kevin in there, close the door and WHAMMO! Mouse is gone within seconds!

Hot Chocolate Anyone?

I just learned a lot about pantry pests. I see them so infrequently that I have never taken the time to figure out what they were. Today, I learned that some of the most common found in Utah are the Rice Beetle and the Sawtoothed Grain Beetle. Fortunately my food storage doesn't ever get to the beetle stage. Ok, it did once- I bought a couple of bags of Lundberg Farms brown rice from Costco and put it in a bucket in the garage. A couple of months later I pulled it out and I could see the black rice beetles through the opaque walls of the bucket! I was utterly disgusted and Costco was kind enough to take it back. Unfortunately it sometimes happens that I find the little babies in my food storage.  Fortunately it doesn't happen often. Sadly, it happened today.

This morning was a misty, grey, amazingly beautiful fall morning...one of those times when you feel like you can reach out and hold a piece of air in your hand it is so moist. I went outside and noticed some elderly men in the ward using a big noisy machine to split our even more elderly neighbor's wood and stacking it into a perfect wood pile. I decided to acknowledge their kindness by having the kids bring over some hot chocolate.  A few years ago we bought a HUGE bag of hot chocolate powder and have been using it each cold season. This was the first time this year we had pulled it out. We are hot chocolate pros around here (usually). We have the disposable hot cups with the cool lids, and even spray cream to top it off. So, I made the hot chocolate, enough for the men and for the children.  William and Lizzie brought it over and then came back to drink theirs.

A few minutes later Lizzie pulled something out of her mouth and handed it to me asking me what it was. I saw to my horror that it was a larvae. Dead, of course since it had been boiled (for some reason the fact that it was dead did not lessen Lizzie's discomfort or disgust!).  Suddenly it dawned on me that those men were drinking our wormy hot chocolate! What should I do? If I go over there to tell them and they have already drunk it, or worse yet they were in the process of drinking it, what do I say? Or what if I said nothing and they realize it is wormy??? They would never be able to trust anything coming out of our kitchen again!! (A vision of future church social functions passed before my eyes of people whispering warnings to each other about the unsanitary nature of my food.) After much deliberation (and a call to Grant for advice), I walked next door and talked to the first man (we were yelling over the noise of the machine) and said, "Don't drink the hot chocolate, it isn't good." (I didn't use any words like larvae, worms, infestations...) He said it was fine but too hot to drink so he had put it in his truck. I approached the next man and gave him the same warning. He said he had drunk about half and assured me that it was really good but hadn't had time to finish it. I looked around and found two cups still full, snatched them up and raced home. I thoroughly inspected each one and to my relief found nothing amiss.

So here is the question in all of this:

Why couldn't I have just had the satisfaction of doing a good deed without the mortification? Maybe I felt a little pride in the idea of serving and having people think well of me? I know that I am often too concerned with what other people think of me. I am trying so hard to root out this need I have to seek approbation from friends and family. Why not just allow myself to make mistakes and laugh about it? Why did I need to warn the children, "Tell no one about this!" What kind of message was I sending them? I know, it was, "If you make a mistake just don't tell anyone".  (The warning didn't work anyway, the moment another neighbor, Lois showed up Anna announced, "Guess what, we have worms in our hot chocolate!") I think I will have a little talk with the children tomorrow about owning our mistakes and the power of a sense of humor in times like this.  I think that being able to laugh about this would be a good thing. Perhaps I will be able to laugh someday, but not today. And perhaps someday my children will trust me to not give them bad food because right now they certainly don't!

The Boys Speak

Sam and I were discussing what he wanted for Christmas and why he was so excited he said:

"Last year I didn't really want anything for Christmas and that's because I didn't know neodymium magnets existed, or powerful lasers or the periodic table!"

Sam's Christmas list is as follows:

Neodymium magnets (he would like the ones with a 300 lb pulling power but knows he wont get it)

A science tie for church

A huge periodic table poster for his room

A powerful laser that can burn through things. (Something I'll let him buy when he is a grownup)

This week William was in the bathroom and was calling to me urgently. I was in the middle of washing all of our garden onions, carrots and beets for winter storage but came into the bathroom since he apparently really needed my help. He asked me the following question:

"If you could extroy (destroy) one thing in the world what would it be?" And without waiting for an answer he excitedly exclaimed, "I would extroy badness!"

Halloween

I have had so much to record that I haven't taken the time to record any of it! It all started with a very memorable Halloween.

This year I was feeling a bit "Scrooge-ish" about Halloween. Although I loved the night as a child, I was feeling like our culture was trying to dupe me as a parent...those costumes that are so expensive yet so cheaply made, all that candy that is just poison to our children's bodies and detrimental to their behavior (not to mention that this year the bags of candy were smaller than last year but even more expensive...do they think I don't notice???)  So, Grant and I bribed our children. We told them if they didn't go trick or treating all night we would have a party and play bingo for "Cash and Prizes" (we used that term every time we talked about the bingo game. It was so fun to hear little William tell his music teacher that we were going to "Play bingo for cash and prizes"!)

Halloween morning I woke up with an awful case of pink-eye. It was so gruesome I felt it completely apropos to this day even if it was painful and inconvenient. I spent the day preparing for our dinner that night. I call it my "Pinterest Dinner" since all my ideas came from, yup, you guessed it, Pinterest! We had a peeled watermelon "brain", worm sandwiches, hot dog mummies, monster mouths (apple lips with almond slivers coming out for teeth) and a skeleton body made of vegetables.

Delicious "Worm Sandwiches"

Everything was ready when Grant and the kids came home from work and orchestra. By that time I had a sore throat and was feeling like I would love to just climb into bed. William was so excited and trying to be so helpful. Anna had missed her nap so she was very ornery.  We had put a plastic table cloth on the newly re-finished table, lit tea candles by each plate, and had dry ice "smoke" streaming over the whole table.  Sam was almost speechless with joy at the prospect of FIVE WHOLE POUNDS of dry ice.

During dinner, (a dinner that scared Anna so much that she didn't want to sit down at the table), Anna's plate caught on fire.  I was getting something so not at the table and Grant who has been so busy at work that he was practically sleeping with his eyes open didn't really notice.  William was the first to see the flame and was calmly repeating, "fire... (3 second wait), fire... (another wait), fire..." Until Lizzie saw it and screeched, "FIRE!!!!!" Sam put it out and I rushed over just in time to see the melting plastic plate burn through the table cloth, and all the layers of finish, glaze and stain on a small spot of the table I had just spent a month refinishing. I slumped into my chair totally flummoxed.  (I'm not sure if flummoxed is the right word but it sounds like what I felt!) Grant, trying to be the encouraging fellow that he is said, "Oh don't worry! Look how tiny the spot is! You can hardly see it!" I croaked out, indignantly, "That isn't really what I want to hear right now!" Our discerning children picked up on my hint right away and started sympathetically saying things like, "Oh Mom! We know you worked so hard on this table! You must feel so, _____________ (they filled in the blank with words like sad, frustrated, upset, disappointed)." I felt somewhat consoled.

A couple minutes later the Saxeys, our best friends in Alpine showed up for trick-or-treating.  We all went to the door and I shared the sordid tale with Becky who responded with "Oh, I'm so sorry! You spent so much time on that table! You must feel so frustrated!" I shot a look Grant's direction and said, "See!? Becky knows what I needed to hear!" Poor Grant by this time was probably dreaming of his bed and a break from his emotional wife.

Well, things looked a little brighter once dinner was over. Anna went to bed, Grant had Lizzie and William fish around in our costume box and put something together in five minutes and then took them trick-or-treating to the few houses on our street. I cleaned up the dishes and got the bingo game ready. Sam didn't want to go with the other kids because he was too busy playing mad scientist with the dry ice.

Bingo was a lot of fun. The prizes were little bags that either had cash or a gag gift. I was super excited about the gag gifts. There was a woopie cushion (a huge hit), bacon bandaids, fake barf, a laser pointer that has two buttons, one that makes the laser work and another that shocks when pushed (it was a decent little shock too!), an ice cube with a fly in it, and "Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans" which are jelly beans with unique flavors, some delicious, some disgusting. Examples: Earthworm, earwax, booger, vomit, sausage... Sam was really excited to try them all until he ate the booger bean. He was sitting at the table when he popped it in his mouth and started to chew. Then, he started to gag. He gagged all the way across the kitchen until he reached the sink where he threw up! I couldn't help but laugh by this time. Things just never go as you plan no matter how much work and planning you put into it.

The rest of the night went without hitch. We started the movie, "The Ghost and Mister Chicken" at 9. I put William to bed then and fell asleep with him, I think I was more tired than he was.

Next year we will just go trick-or-treating like every other normal family in America.