Sunday, February 22, 2009

Spinach: 0, Marshmallows:...0


Carter has a nose for vegetables. Anything green is out, and anything with too many vitamins is an automatic "no", unless it's an especially sweet fruit. We are having to learn to be stealthy. On the other end of the equation, he offers a hearty, "yeah!" when he is offered something new and nutritionally vacuous to try. Today at a birthday party, it was a marshmallow, his very first. It was a big fluffy, sugar-coated square, almost the size of a tennis ball. I cut him a strip. Upon fingering it, he turned skeptical. "What's coming out of it?" he asked, handing it back to me. I thought for a moment, and then realized that he was experiencing the special marshmallow sticky ooze for the first time. Just as well if it repulses him; less work for the toothbrush tonight.

Monday, February 16, 2009

No real insight

Flipping channels last night, I came across an episode of the "Real Housewives of Orange County" that promised to tell, among others, the tale of culture shock experienced by one Housewife and her daughter as they traveled to Berkeley. It sounded interesting at the time; perhaps it would give me insight about my culture shock in Orange County, as I feel much more at home in Berkeley? No such luck. Nothing deeper than that the "bums and hippies" weirded them out, wheat grass smells funny. Too bad. But what did I expect, really?

A friend from my writing group lives in "Coto". I really like her. OK, so she's a republican, but she's clever and funny, and college-educated... which, she pointed out to me once, is something that none of the "Housewives" is, alas. But at least the daughter is enrolled in UC Berkeley, (and talking about transferring to UCLA, where I guess the bums and hippies are fewer.) Party/study/shop on.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Love and fromage

My friend M. recently joked that her husband's hatred for cheese was potentially grounds for divorce. It made me laugh, but I could relate. On all the important things, we're good. But on food, once you get beyond our shared eggplant aversion, we diverge pretty drastically. He dislikes mushrooms, olives, and artichokes, all of which are on my top ten, (somewhere behind cheese). For him, licorice and cupcakes are two important food groups, ones I could do without (the first more readily than the latter, admittedly). I doubt taste in food is ever a real "deal-breaker" for a relationship, and yet, it strikes me that it is nonetheless important, something I confront every time I sigh and turn the page in a cookbook past a great recipe that is half mushrooms.