tales from the camp
I have two stories tonight.
The first story is about the big spaghetti dinner my mom cooked tonight. It was delicious as usual. There was salad and garlic bread and lots and lots of tasty sauce to put on noodles. Nobody makes spaghetti dinner like Mom. However, nobody has a sense of humor like mom either. I'm not saying my mom is a comedian or anything but she does have interesting timing.
Just as we're a third of the way into the meal, taking big bites and enjoying the company of family, she says,
"There's an extra ingredient in tonight's dinner."
She pauses and looks around the table waiting for us to guess what it is. I'm thinking rosmary or maybe a bay leaf, something savory that I smelled as she was cooking earlier.
"What's the secret ingredient," asks Chaos or me or maybe CC, I forget.
"Ants!" says my mom with a perfectly straight face.
I nearly spit out my dinner. "What!!!!" All of us stop eating mid bite.
"There were ants in the sugar bowl and I accidentally dumped in the sugar before I noticed them," says my mom matter of factly.
Thankfully, CC was nearby when this happened and she assured us all that there was only an ant or two in the sugar bowl and none of them actually made it into dinner. Or maybe she's just telling us that to make us feel better.
"Besides," says CC "Ants are sterile and a good source of protein."
Good to know. But I'll have to give my mom credit for making a good dinner because I kept on eating anyway. If there were ants in dinner, they tasted pretty good.
* * *
The second story is about a cooking mistep I made. The other day CC made a batch of banana muffins and to top them she melted butter and mixed together sugar and cinnamon. She left the extra cinnamon and sugar mixture out on the table for us to use on toast for breakfast. Then because my mom was worried about the cats getting up on the table and sampling the cinnamon sugar, she poured it into a shaker for us to use.
The next morning when I was helping get the girls ready for school, I made Super Chic a piece of toast and sprinkled it liberally with the shaker that was beside the toaster oven. It was kind of funny because Super Chic had been begging and begging for toast but when I put the toast in front of her, she just took one mouse bite and wouldn't touch the rest of it. That is not like Super Chic. She usually gobbles up her morning toast. Finally, I gave up and let her get up from the table so she could get dressed and go to school. She didn't say a peep about what was wrong with her toast. I just figured it was typical unexplainable three-year-old behavior.
Later CC woke up and sat down at the table to talk to me while I was feeding Baby Bug. I told her about Super Chic not eating her toast. CC didn't seem too worried and since she was sitting in the same spot, she decided she would eat the toast. It looked pretty tasty afterall.
After a few bites CC looks at me funny and says, "Why does this taste salty? Did Super Chic put salt on her toast?"
And then it clicked. My mom keeps vegetable salt next to the toaster oven. I got up and found the shaker to show CC. "This is what I put on it. Is this cinnamon sugar or is it vegetable salt?" I looked around and sure enough on another counter was another shaker filled with a similar brownish concoction. Vegetable salt and cinnamon sugar look almost EXACTLY alike.
Poor CC. She had taken two or three bites already. Salty buttery toast doesn't really taste that yummy, especially when you shake it on liberally. But most of all poor Super Chic. Now I know why she wouldn't eat her toast. It's just funny because she didn't say a word about it tasting funny. I guess she just figures it's normal for Aunties to do strange things with toast.
The first story is about the big spaghetti dinner my mom cooked tonight. It was delicious as usual. There was salad and garlic bread and lots and lots of tasty sauce to put on noodles. Nobody makes spaghetti dinner like Mom. However, nobody has a sense of humor like mom either. I'm not saying my mom is a comedian or anything but she does have interesting timing.
Just as we're a third of the way into the meal, taking big bites and enjoying the company of family, she says,
"There's an extra ingredient in tonight's dinner."
She pauses and looks around the table waiting for us to guess what it is. I'm thinking rosmary or maybe a bay leaf, something savory that I smelled as she was cooking earlier.
"What's the secret ingredient," asks Chaos or me or maybe CC, I forget.
"Ants!" says my mom with a perfectly straight face.
I nearly spit out my dinner. "What!!!!" All of us stop eating mid bite.
"There were ants in the sugar bowl and I accidentally dumped in the sugar before I noticed them," says my mom matter of factly.
Thankfully, CC was nearby when this happened and she assured us all that there was only an ant or two in the sugar bowl and none of them actually made it into dinner. Or maybe she's just telling us that to make us feel better.
"Besides," says CC "Ants are sterile and a good source of protein."
Good to know. But I'll have to give my mom credit for making a good dinner because I kept on eating anyway. If there were ants in dinner, they tasted pretty good.
* * *
The second story is about a cooking mistep I made. The other day CC made a batch of banana muffins and to top them she melted butter and mixed together sugar and cinnamon. She left the extra cinnamon and sugar mixture out on the table for us to use on toast for breakfast. Then because my mom was worried about the cats getting up on the table and sampling the cinnamon sugar, she poured it into a shaker for us to use.
The next morning when I was helping get the girls ready for school, I made Super Chic a piece of toast and sprinkled it liberally with the shaker that was beside the toaster oven. It was kind of funny because Super Chic had been begging and begging for toast but when I put the toast in front of her, she just took one mouse bite and wouldn't touch the rest of it. That is not like Super Chic. She usually gobbles up her morning toast. Finally, I gave up and let her get up from the table so she could get dressed and go to school. She didn't say a peep about what was wrong with her toast. I just figured it was typical unexplainable three-year-old behavior.
Later CC woke up and sat down at the table to talk to me while I was feeding Baby Bug. I told her about Super Chic not eating her toast. CC didn't seem too worried and since she was sitting in the same spot, she decided she would eat the toast. It looked pretty tasty afterall.
After a few bites CC looks at me funny and says, "Why does this taste salty? Did Super Chic put salt on her toast?"
And then it clicked. My mom keeps vegetable salt next to the toaster oven. I got up and found the shaker to show CC. "This is what I put on it. Is this cinnamon sugar or is it vegetable salt?" I looked around and sure enough on another counter was another shaker filled with a similar brownish concoction. Vegetable salt and cinnamon sugar look almost EXACTLY alike.
Poor CC. She had taken two or three bites already. Salty buttery toast doesn't really taste that yummy, especially when you shake it on liberally. But most of all poor Super Chic. Now I know why she wouldn't eat her toast. It's just funny because she didn't say a word about it tasting funny. I guess she just figures it's normal for Aunties to do strange things with toast.
posted by SAJ at 8:11 PM
4 Comments:
First of all, nothing Aunties do should ever be considered strange. It's what we do and we are entitled to to it our own odd way, with no comments, thankyouverymuch. Next, I've heard of a mom who put chili powder on her Snickerdoodles by mistake. It was a big success; now called ChiliDoodles and the preferred style!
Did she look at you sideways or slither away from you without saying a word? That would be the clue that she thinks you're strange.
Nothing, but nothing beats your Mom's spaghetti. I'll never forget the explosion the first time she made it for your Dad. He dared to ask for ketchup!
Ants are sterile? There is sterile and there is sterile. Which one do you mean? Most ants are the one but most definitely not the other. But eating them won't kill you either way. BTW termites, closely related to ants, have bacteria passed to them from their mommies that digests the wood, otherwise they couldn't digest it any more than we could.
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