Just Eat It

At 17 months, Willem is working his way up the food chain and reminding me how trends in food have changed with each generation.  For example, he eats spinach, mango and pea puree which you squeeze out of a tube like toothpaste, onto a spoon.  This wonder product contains super grain salba, whatever that is, plus omega 3’s and is “packed with antioxidants” along with fiber and protein and is organic and gluten free to boot. That’s an impressive resume.  When you compare it to what I ate growing up, combined with exposure to DDT, mercury and second hand smoke, it’s a wonder I didn’t grow a second head like some of those mutant frogs they find in polluted backwaters.

My mom was and is a great cook (See my post “Food, Glorious Food”) and made a lot of mostly healthy meals from scratch, but the 50’s were the era of processed foods.  We ate sugared cereals like Frosted Flakes, Sugar Pops, Sugar Smacks and Cocoa Puffs, and we buried cereals like Cheerios and Shredded Wheat in sugar ourselves.  We ate bacon and sausage for breakfast, hotdogs, baloney and chicken liver (aka braunschweiger) for lunch and ham or Spam for dinner. Turkey sandwiches only made an appearance the day after Thanksgiving.  Miracle whip and Mayonnaise popped up in everything from salads to sandwiches to casseroles and the concept of lite mayo (or lite anything) wasn't even on the drawing board.

My mom served vegetables and a salad every night, but Jello with mandarin oranges and pineapple counted as a salad in the 50’s.  Tossed salads were made of iceberg lettuce which we now know has the same nutritional value as shredded tissue paper with salad dressing. 

At least we didn’t go through soft drinks the way kids do today.  Sports drinks like Gatorade hadn’t been invented.  In fact the only energy drink we ever had was an eight-ounce Coke on Friday night and it worked like a charm.  Naturally we did go a little crazy on special occasions – picnics with other families on Memorial day or the Fourth of July were a time for sparklers, wiffle ball and draining as many bottles of Dana  root beer, red pop, orange pop, and lime-green pop as possible before the adults started counting the empties.  One year, my dad’s high school friend, Bud, a W.C.Fields knock-off, told my brother, “If you take any more of those, I’m going to dump the rest in your dad’s gas tank.”  And he meant it.

In the 70’s, there was a lot written about the ill effects of too much salt, sugar, and chemicals like nitrites in kid foods, especially baby food.  I took it seriously and followed a book called, “Feed Me, I’m Yours” to what now seems like crazy extremes.  I made my own granola and edible Play Doh.  I cooked and pureed carrots, spinach, sweet potatoes and peas, laid out blops on a cookie sheet, froze them and then stacked up the frozen blops to use as needed. That worked well except for the time I used a knife to pry the frozen blops apart and wound up in the emergency room with a stab wound in my hand. 

I couldn’t puree any meat to a texture David would eat except chicken livers (the real thing, not braunschweiger) which I put in spaghetti sauce.  I didn’t serve bacon, baloney, ham, sausage or any processed meats except nitrite-free turkey hot dogs from the health food store. And, I now acknowledge that I was pathologically obsessed with David not starting on sugar at an early age to the point that, the first time someone gave him a cookie in a store, I grabbed it and popped it into my mouth. 32 years later, I still get a hot flash of embarrassment just thinking about that scene.  And, by the way, the theory that kids who don’t have sugar as toddlers won’t develop a taste for cookies, cake and ice cream later in life is totally bogus.

For today’s baby, eating combines gourmet foods and natural ingredients, beginning with the bib.  When Willem started eating real food, I was excited to find the best piece of baby gear on the Internet - a flexible plastic bib which catches everything that comes out of the mouth, rolls over the chin and heads for the floor. These bibs look and work exactly as they did when David and John used them, but now they have a pedigree a mile long – no PVC’s, BPA’s, Phthalates’s (look that up in Wikipedia), lead or anything even mildly toxic. I thought it was ridiculous to make a bib safe enough for a kid to eat until Megan sent us this YouTube video last winter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cOMfkZ2xZk

Willem’s culinary adventures started with Baby Mum-Mum Selected Superior Rice Rusks.  He has segued from pro-biotic oatmeal, to macaroni and cheese with butternut squash sauce to chicken mango risotto.  As a child, my acquaintance with delicacies from exotic cultures was limited to Chef-Boy-AR-Dee Ravioli and Chun King Chow Mein.  Willem, however, has savored couscous, hummus on bagel, black beans on crackers, pureed mango and pasta with both basil and sun dried tomato pesto and he isn’t even two yet!

It’s a little overwhelming, and I was worried about how we’d tempt Willem’s highly developed palate when he comes to visit us again.  Which Kroger’s carries sushi or dim sum or escargot in the baby food aisle? On our latest trip to New York, it was a relief to see him devouring cream cheese and turkey sandwiches.  And, apparently, it was love at first bite when he met up with Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks at his friend Mason’s house in Connecticut so the pressure's off.

Click this link for the source of this post's title   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za_hBk8gdZU

Yard Sales

At this stage of my life, I find myself doing things I thought I’d never do like shopping for eye wrinkle cream or going to bed at 10:30 on a Saturday night or eating a low-sodium turkey sandwich with low-sodium and low-fat swiss and lite mayo.

Now, unbelievably, I find myself ready to put in a good word about yard sales.  I admit that, in the past, I’ve viewed them as blights upon the landscape – really just heaps of trash with price stickers on them.  Yard sales were something you just had to put up with like a crying baby on an airplane or a woman with a fistful of coupons ahead of you in the grocery check-out line or getting crowns on your teeth.

We got an early, bad exposure to yard sales with a next door neighbor who ran one every weekend for a year or more.  On Saturday mornings, Bill would cover his front lawn with tables of glass and ceramic vases, piles of chipped china, boxes of rusting tools and kitchen utensils, mounds of discarded clothing and shoes,  and stray chairs, desks and bookshelves.

It drove Paul so crazy that, one day, after disgustedly surveying Bill’s merchandise, he said, “Why don’t you just put that stuff out for the trash?”

The indignant reply, “This is all GOOD stuff!” summed up the motivation for every yard sale aficionado.

Soon Paul began fantasizing about making a film short in which he would drive up to yard sales in the neighborhood and, at each one, offer to buy everything they had to sell.  Then he would motion a gigantic garbage truck in and throw every last tea kettle, roller skate, lamp and Encyclopedia Britannica into the truck.   He relished the thought of the camera recording shock and awe on the faces of the sellers as an energetic trash masher chewed, chopped and pulverized all of their “good stuff.”  I had not planned to accompany him on that film shoot, which, fortunately, never got past the planning stage.

Later, when the David and John were young, Paul’s mother showed me the possibilities of yard sales.  In order to have toys on hand for her many grandchildren, she scoured the neighborhoods, finding things David and John loved like a Fisher Price airplane, a schoolhouse and puzzles.   She got a little carried away when it came to buying used bikes, however, and amassed a huge collection of derelict two-wheelers in all styles, colors and sizes for the lake house, which gave the entire family plenty of hands-on experience at replacing chains and changing tires.

Without telling Paul, I checked out some sales myself, scoring things like a Fisher Price garage, a big yellow truck full of blocks, a toy treehouse and a metal board with alphabet letter magnets. I couldn’t justify buying the boys a play kitchen at full price but I found a toy stove and refrigerator for $10 at a yard sale.  Sure, they were scratch and dent models but the boys didn’t care, plus they were stocked with play food including plastic apples and bananas which doubled as hand grenades and guns. (See my post “Arms and the Boys.”)

I never got around to having my own yard sale – after all, I could only push Paul so far. Besides, when my friend Tina held a yard sale in the upscale Chicago neighborhood of Winnetka, she attracted a horde of rapacious bargain hunters, like a reincarnation of Genghis Khan and the Mongols.  Her 4-year-old daughter Claire was so enchanted by the crowd and the excitement that she didn’t want it to end.  She had brought out and sold most of Tina’s designer lingerie and was back in the house emptying Tina’s sweater drawers when her parents caught on and cut short her brilliant sales career.

One September when David and John were in grade school, I had nightmares about all the new toys, books and games that were about to descend on our house for the boys’ November and December birthdays and Christmas.  (See my post, “Toy Story.”)  Finally, I issued a Mother Edict - no more stuff was coming into the house until some stuff went out - and suggested they have their own yard sale.  It worked out great – the boys cleared out toys that were past prime, made some money and had fun bargaining with the buyers – or mostly great, although John immediately plowed his profits into a PlayMobile castle and, when the kids next door left with a wagonload of David and John’s old junk, I was afraid their mom would never speak to me again.

Now, as a grandparent, yard sales have become my new best friends.  You can find necessities like car seats, high chairs and porta-cribs at great prices, along with tons of toys.  While I had saved David and John’s Legos, PlayMobiles, matchbox cars, trains and big metal trucks, I didn’t have much in the way of toddler toys for Willem’s visits this past summer.  Thanks to yard sales, The Boss played with a fire truck, a farm, a Noah’s ark, a push and ride toy and a big car instead of my food processor, Paul's golf clubs and our ceramic tulips.

While it wasn’t apparent to Paul, I did exercise discrimination in what I bought.   I said “No” to some great deals - a grocery cart (only $1), a lawnmower (only $2), and a tool bench (big and flashy) because a Brooklyn baby has groceries delivered, doesn’t see his Dad cut the grass and wouldn’t know what to do with a tool bench except climb on it.  I also risked being labeled a “No-Fun Nana” when I turned down an electric riding car and, in fact, nixed everything electric or battery powered.   I neglected to do my homework, however, when I bought a toy garage with all sorts of cool features like an elevator, a car lift, ramps, a tow truck and a gas pump.  What I didn’t see but what Willem saw first was the battery-operated sound panel – just push the buttons and you get a phone ringing, gas pumps dinging, an engine revving and tires squealing.  Caveat Emptor.

Now, Megan has been making the rounds of “stoop sales,” the Brooklyn equivalent of yard sales, because there’s no point to pay full price for toys that the Boss may only play with for a week or two.  Recently, she brought home a toy stroller which saved Willem, who had been snatching them from other toddlers in the park, from a life of crime.  She also scored hits with a toy recycling truck and a fire truck, which Willem embraced like it was a newborn baby.

With Christmas coming, I’d suggest she focus on finding what Willem loved the most when he stayed with us this summer – a Schwinn Airdyne stationary bike.   Every chance he got, he was in our unfinished basement cozying up to the Airdyne, admiring its big, caged wheel, lovingly caressing the frame, and reverently spinning the pedals.  So, if Megan is a really good Santa, she’ll get it for him, and while, she’s at it, she might also pick up a lawn and leaf blower as a stocking stuffer.

Thanks to Paul for photographing all the Brooklyn street scenes.