When living with teenagers, I’ve learned that it helps if you develop a taste for things that they don’t like. This helps one avoid situations where I find myself disappointed to learn that the Pringles I bought to munch on while watching a baseball game are gone, even though I bought them 45 minutes before the first pitch. It also helps me not start the day in a pissy mood because the small single serving bags, which came in a box of a dozen, are gone a day and half after I bought them.
Sorry I have to fight back, this is ridiculous.
Seriously people, a 640z bottle of my beloved grape juice (Ok so I eat like a 5 year old) lasts 19 minutes in this house. Absurd.
This is how I developed a taste for raisins and dates, right out of package. It explains why I can always find thick cut orange marmalade in the fridge and why on Saturday’s I can often be seen opening a can sardines in mustard sauce. It’s food that no one else around here will eat and because of that very attribute alone, I like it. It’s reliable food, meaning it’s reliably there, it lasts more than one day, and when I want it I know it’s there for me. It’s parent of teenagers comfort food.
Most of it, especially the marmalade and the sardines even evoke a response from other family members when I eat it, making it that much more delicious. On our recent NBA road trip my kid asked me very nicely if I wouldn’t mind NOT eating sardines in the car, stinks to bad he said. Since he asked nicely I didn’t, I had kippers instead.
Herring are not sardines, and if you don’t know the difference you’re a dumbass. As I told him he was.
Since nothing good, as defined by low nutritional value and can be eaten with one hand, lasts around here for more than about one minute, I tried just not buying inhalable much loved snack food.
You know I’ve read where if you give your kids broccoli and apples growing up, keeping them away from Doritos and Hershey bars that they’ll grow up loving that stuff and not liking the other.
Pu- Freaking-Lease. This is the sort of advice you get from women who write children’s books for a living. No one likes that stuff, some might pretend to like it because they pretend they like being healthy and think they’re making difference. You know, today, April 21 is one of those days where people adopt stupid stuff because it makes them feel good even though it does nothing, oh I forgot, happy Earth Day to you too.
Kids will eat broccoli without complaining until they get their first Hostess Ding Dong and then it’s Katie bar the door. And even stuff that is horrifically bad for you, if it tastes good and makes you feel good, you’ll ignore a lot people telling you otherwise, and just because you don’t do it, doesn’t mean you wouldn’t if you could. Hello Winston’s, how ya doin?
I plan to start smoking again in about five or ten years, but that time my natural life expectancy will be far shorter than my smokers life expectancy and I can go back to enjoying myself on the porch once in while with a delicious and soothing product that is a close to a gift from mother nature as a head of lettuce or a can of 100% unfiltered sweet Texas crude, still warm from the ground.
I digress, so I’ve tried not buying junk food, and to be honest I don’t buy much of it anyway, the occasional treat. But I decided to give it a try and go completely cold turkey, all healthy food.
Well, how’d that work for ya you ask, kids went into DT’s, I found one kid sucking maple syrup right out of the bottle. “Put it over ice stupid, better that way.” I told her. The other kid had sold plasma or something and was using the money to buy nacho cheese Doritos and giant cans of Snapple ice tea which he hid in the garage. I though the had liver problems as his hands were always yellow until Mrs S hipped me to what was going one. BTW, I found her little stash of Dove Bars and Swedish fish.
The only one really eating this crap was me. And to be honest I made up for it by grazing at work, there’s a lot of crappy food to graze in the modern Cube Farm.
Well, I gotta come up with the strategy now, the oldest kid comes home from college in five short days and I’m going to be triple teamed again.
I’ll have to think about this a bit.
