As a mama with four little girls under the age of nine, I normally LOVE any food that they will willingly eat without me pinning them down and shoveling it into their mouths. Day after day, I prepare three square meals for four very different individuals with very different preferences. That is TWELVE VARIED MEALS A DAY, if you are keeping count.
Tomatoes on this plate, cucumbers on that place, no pork for the youngest, no crust for the middle child, the oldest hates ranch dressing, the others consider it life blood. Everyone is screaming, everyone needs more, foods cannot touch, and GOD FORBID they are required to use the same spoon for both applesauce and cottage cheese.
What cruel mother would even suggest such a rotten thing?
The mealtime song and dance is getting so very old and, quite frankly, it is starting to crush my soul day...by day...by day. This is why it kills me to write a post like this. I’m about to hate on the foods that give me the will to carry on. These foods are foods that all my kids willingly eat. In fact, they love these foods.
The problem is that I haaaaaaaate them. How ironic is that?
Let’s start with that a-hole rice. Yeah, rice, I’m talking to YOU. Rice is just about the the easiest thing on the planet to prepare. It takes a mere three minutes, and my family would gladly eat up an entire box every single evening. Super. Except that rice is evil.
Have you ever tried to clean a boatload of rice off hardwood floors? Holy mother of hell, it is a nearly impossible task. It cannot be swept up, and if you try and sweep it up, you will just drag the ricey residue across the entire floor. It gets stuck in every single possible crack and crevice within 20 feet of the dinner table. Not cool, rice. Not cool.
Then there is popcorn. Oh, popcorn. At first you seem so simple, but what a fallacy that is! Each popcorn kernel has the ability to break into a million microscopic pieces and then multiply in the abyss that is your couch cushions. Well then, how amazing!
As an added torture bonus, the kids manage to spread buttery grease onto every surface of the house. Double whammy! Alas, it isn’t a true movie night without this greasy mess, so we are stuck with you, popcorn.
Cereal. This one truly breaks my mom heart. I want NOTHING MORE than to love cereal. Nearly every single morning, that rectangular box of crispy goodness stops my band of screaming misfits from destroying my will to live. What could possibly be the problem with cereal, you ask?
Well, first of all, cereal is a serious smoke and mirror act. At first you want to worship it for saving your ass at 6 a.m., but then it turns on you. Yep. Too soggy, too much milk, not enough milk. It spills, it sticks, the twins paint the counters with it, and then I get to chisel it off the granite later in the day. We are f**king done, cereal. Waffles it is. Waffles would never do me wrong like you have.
Another food my kids absolutely adore is a nice ripe cherry. Cherries are a great and healthy snack! They are also the fruit of Satan himself. Have you ever combated a cherry stain? It’s the pits. (See what I did there?) No, really though, once that juice hits any fabric, you might as well toss the article or burn it. You will never EVER get that antioxidant laced goodness out. It’s so unfair.
Why can’t my kids love Kale like they do cherries. Kale is an antioxidant abundant super food and it has never threatened to destroy me with its super staining powers. Cherries come with a real added torture-bonus in that they contain pits. In my world, this means all kids screaming at me in unison to remove the pit from their cherry. If I’m really lucky, they succumb to their impatient tendencies, discover the pit in their mouths, and spit it across the room. Or choke on it.
Moving right along to our final food offender, we have applesauce. I’m going to be straight with you all. Applesauce can go straight to HELL. I have been messing with this goopy demon since the girls were babies, and I really don’t think that, in 10 years, they’ve gotten any better at maneuvering the slop into their mouths.
It is sticky, it creates a film on all surfaces, and it doesn’t even hold any nutritional value. It’s kind of a stupid food, actually. Why not just slice up the apple and call it a day for humans over the age of two? Another great question would be why does an applesauce hater like myself find herself throwing a giant container of this shit into the grocery cart week after week? Got me.
So there they are. Five foods that I continue to feed my children daily even though they are crushing my faith in humanity.
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