Mid-CenturyModernMoms

The Blue Box VS The South

By Nina

The Blue Box.  What would we do without it?

Though their days of eating mostly yellow food (a basic rotation of pizza, potato puffs, chicken nuggets, mac and cheese) are over, my sons' love of the Blue Box endures.  They have learned make Kraft Mac and Cheese all by themselves, in one pot, and now that they're "men" they consider one box to be a single serving. 

Oh yes, when they were little I tried to get them to eat Annie's, but they never liked it.  (For a provocative comparison of the Blue Box VS. The Bunny click here.) I've made Mac and Cheese from scratch, seducing my sons with the richness of whole milk, sweet butter and good cheddar. No dice. My sons are still Kraft Mac and Cheese lovers and it kind of breaks my heart. 

Especially now that we live in the South where macaroni and cheese is not only considered a vegetable, but a sacrament. Homemade macaroni and cheese graces every holiday table.  It's at every pot luck.  Every cook has his/her special recipe. (Someone at my office uses whole cream in hers.)  Moreover, at any respectable southern Meat and Three restaurant -- where you get a meat dish as your main, and three sides -- macaroni and cheese joins up with a staggering array of vegetables and starches that round out your meal. For your edification, I present below, the list of sides at Mary Mac's Tea Room, Atlanta's most famous Meat and Three.  Sorry, y'all can only pick three.  My guys go for the cheese grits, cream corn and green beans. Yellow food dominating once again.  Personally, I'm partial to the collards, cabbage and butter peas.  You haven't lived until you've eaten fresh butter peas, not to be confused with green peas.

Mary Mac’s Famous Fresh Vegetables and Sides
Apple Sauce
Baked Potato
Black-eyed Peas
Brunswick Stew
Butter Peas
Carrot-Raisin Salad
Cheese Grits
Cole Slaw
Collard Greens with cracklin’ cornbread
Cornbread
Dressing & Gravy
Cream Corn
Dinner Salad
Dumplings
French Fries
Fresh Fruit
Fried GreenTomatoes
Fried Okra
Fruited Jell-O
Garden Salad
Green Beans
Hoppin’ John
Lima Beans
Macaroni and Cheese
Okra & Tomatoes
Pear Salad
Pickled Beets
Potato Cakes
Pot Likker
Rice and Gravy
Soufflé of the Day
Spiced Apples
Squash Soufflé
Steamed Cabbage
Vegetable
Medley
Sweet Potato
Soufflé
Turnip Greens
Vegetable Soup
Whipped Potatoes

With all this homemade goodness in our midst, are you beginning to understand how humiliating it is to have your sons reject your homemade mac and cheese in favor of the blue box? 

A Successful Day

Father's Day in my house was a totally successful day.  Not because we were "celebrating" Father's Day, but because we had to do a whole bunch of things and we all got through the day without anyone blowing up.

The most successful part of the day was our visit to Abe (17, PDD, ADHD, etc) at his new (therapeutic) boarding school.  He has now been there for 2 weeks and it's going fantastically!!!  I get wonderful reports about him from the staff there.  And his room was clean.  And he had learned to use soap, so he didn't smell. And he was a pleasant person to be with on our visit. And he was talking.  Wow!!!

Funky Granny came with us to see Abe.  Rosie came, too.  She said that she didn't want to come, but not too strenuously.  We walked around the campus a bit and then went to the world's largest mega-store to buy Abe a belt.  Rosie ended up with some very inexpensive T-shirts.  The family went to Friendly's for french fries and ice cream and then back to school.  Very pleasant, and a wonderful visit with Abe.  He's so much better than he was before he went to C.

On the way home, we stopped at 2 other mega-stores and did a variety of errands.  Cross those off the list of places we have to go this week!

And a nice day was had by all.

The Pros And Cons Of Raising Teenagers

Yes. Believe it or not, there are several advantages to parenting teens. Let's see if I can pull my brain together enough to get a few down here.

The positive list is first. The negative/educational list is later.

1. Teens are addicted to computers. If you own several computers the teens will leave you alone until the cows come home. That means they forget about food and phone calls and television. You can watch what you like, eat whatever you want and even talk on the phone without being bothered.

2. Teens sleep in, every day. This means you can sleep in as well, assuming you don't have a job to go to or a class... The house is very quiet when the teens are sleeping, nice and silent.

3. Teens will always eat pizza. If you forget to make dinner, pizza is only a phone call away.

4. Teens leave their dirty clothes on the floor. If you have a dirty carpet~NO ONE will ever know. They cannot see the carpet through the clothes.

5. Teens like to stay up late. You will never feel lonely again at 2am. Your teen will be awake with you.

6. Teens love to eat late at night. Here's your excuse for a midnight snack. "Oh hi honey, I was just making the kids some food." (He/she'll never know you planned on eating as well.)

7. Teens are messy everywhere~this means you can blame them even if you made the mess. This is very handy if you have a spouse who's anal-retentive.

8. Teens NEVER fill the gas tank. Something else you can blame on them. "Sweetie, I just filled it. Fido must have used the car and all the fuel I put in it."

9. Teens forget to turn off lights. You'll never come home to a dark house while you have teens.

10. Teens eat lots. When they are old enough to drive, they are old enough to do the grocery shopping for you. This is very advantageous for those of us who detest grocery shopping.

For all of you who have younger children or no children, let's talk about teens. Don't be scared...well, really smart parents are scared. Teenagers are frickin' scary!

Janice's not-so-well-known facts about teenagers.

1. Teens are full of drama and angst and over-reaction. Full of it. When BBB was 13/14 all I had to do is glance his way to elicit this angry response: "What? WHAT? Why are looking at me thatway?" Dang boy I was flipping my hair off my face. I did not even mean to look his way. YIKES. The really fun days were when he got home from junior high, slammed the front door shut and stomped right on past me. The best way to react: IGNORE their presence until they seem calmer.

2. Just when you you get a grip on how to handle new and exciting behaviors, they change. Get to used to it. At 19 BPB still does this. Life with a teen is rarely if ever predictable.

3. Be prepared to have your teen ignore you and if anyone they know is close by they will pretend that have never seen you before. DO NOT embarrass your child by saying Hello to anyone. Pretend to be invisible!(I, personally, love messing with my teens' minds, so I would always introduce myself to anyone that was even close by.)

4. (AHEM)If male teens spend extra time in the bathroom do not knock on the door and scream, "What is taking you so long in there??". Trust me on this one.

5. Teens love to think they are independent. They will want you to drive them to and fro, here and there, up and downtown and everywhere but they will want you to let them go out of the car without a kiss goodbye, without you sticking your head out the window and screaming: "Hey my honeybabysugar! I love you!!!" This will cause your teen to turn beet red and flee from sight rapidly, maybe never to return. ( No suck luck. They always come home~they know where the money and food are.)

6. Teens sleep ALOT! Particularly boys between the ages 13-17. My BBB took naps last summer because he was so tired from growing. They will grow! One day you need to look down to meet their eyes. The next day they are looking down at you. It's disconcerting.

7. Teens eat 24 hours, 7 days a week. Not kidding! Get ready to serve up seconds and thirds and fourths. Also try to have snacks on hand at all times. Teens are hungry at 12 noon and 12 midnight. Just stock up! My food bill is 4 times what it was when the boys were younger.

8. Teens lie. If they get caught red-handed they will deny, deny, deny. Dr. Phil says, "How do you know if your teens are lying to you? Their lips are moving."I find this to be true in older teens the most.

9. BIG WARNING HERE: Expect your teen to go from acting like a 14yo to a 2yo in 30 seconds or less. No warnings. Temper tantrums, inability to make decisions, crying for no reason, slamming doors and stomping their feet.I think that is enough for now. You are most likely thinking it might be a good idea to sell your 10yos on the black market.....don't even dream about it. Teens always get returned to owner.

Two different stories, one hurting kid

I attend a support group for parents of 'difficult' adolescents. Which isn't really what it is at all, incidentally. All of the parents who attend this group have kids with some type of mental or emotional disorder. We have depressed kids, suicidal kids, bipolar kids, kids with rare genetic disorders, kids who just don't fit any mold. The thing all these kids have in common is that they've been hospitalized, many multiple times, because they were either a danger to themselves or a danger to others. Oh, and they all have parents who are tearing their hair out in frustration trying to figure out just what to do.

We're a fairly tight knit group of moms. We not only support each other in our quest to find the best care for each of our respective kids, we attend each other's school meetings, visits to special programs, and just to hang out and give each other hugs. In the short time I've been part of this group, I've made a good friend, and I've gotten a lot of great advice. It's really a fabulous support group.

So what's the but?

Today, for the first time, we had a dad come to our meeting. It wasn't a big deal that he was male, as we're all grown ups. He is a single dad and he introduced us to his daughter (figuratively) who is a hurting buckaroo for a variety of reasons. We all encouraged him to take certain types of actions, we listened to his story, we were more than supportive to him, we didn't scare him off, and he promised to return.

And the problem is?

Oy! Privacy. My favorite issue. His daughter and my son were in a program together. A program that encourages the kids to share their issues with the small group. What my son knows of this girl is not essentially what the father reported to our group. This makes me VERY uncomfortable. Because I know things about her that her father doesn't, from the things my son reported. But it gets even more uncomfortable. While my son was in this program, another friend of his who we'll call Dirty (because he is) was also at the program. Dirty and my son have known each other for years. Dirty and this man's daughter evidentially had it in for each other, and when Dirty came over during this time, he talked a lot about this particular girl. Now, I had no clue I'd EVER meet this girl's parent. They live hours away from us. Who would have thunk it? But damn... the girl who was a big topic of conversation in our house for weeks is this guy's daughter. Doesn't that suck?

I know I need to keep my mouth shut. I'm not completely idiotic. But I feel incredibly uncomfortable knowing some things that her father SHOULD know, but apparently doesn't. His daughter is in a lot of emotional pain for reasons totally unknown to him. But not to me. And if that doesn't bite, I don't know what does.

That's one of the problems with your kids being in programs. So much is shared, some of it the truth, some of it false, but a lot of it just plain painful. They're encouraged to get their pain out their, to acknowledge it and then move on. The groups help these kids to learn coping mechanisms, to recognize where their behavior comes from, and to be able to grow from their problems. Those are all good things. But the problem is that the kids gossip both amongst themselves, and they often come home and bitch about the other kids in the program. Which is exactly what happened here. My kid and Dirty weren't outing this girl. They were talking about how tough she was to deal with, and during those discussions, personal things were revealed.

So, here I am, brimming with information I wish I didn't have and not knowing what to do with it. Any advice?

Launching Pad

By Nina Rubin
In an effort to save some dough (and because hotels were going for more than $300 a night) I recently spent two nights in my college son's D.C. "launching pad" over his graduation weekend.  My darling and personable first born (a.k.a. Jaws to MCMM readers)  has sublet a 2 bedroom apartment in a groovy Arlington, VA building that boasts a health club, party roof deck, a pool, and a concierge -- before he has actually landed job.

That's not intended to be a snarky comment.  Honestly.  Jaws is not a slacker and he will get a job.  I mean, he has to.  He's not being subsidized by his parents, his school loans are coming due and his savings are not endless.  He's a great kid -- a mensch as we Jewish parents like to say.  But I had to laugh when I compared his first digs with my first apartment after college.

My apartment:  $185 a month, divided by 2 roomates.
His apartment:  $800 a month...just for his room!
My apartment:  In an Italian neighborhood where old men played bocci ball and widows wore black for their entire lives.
His apartment:  Nobody over the age of 50 in evidence.

His apartment came with a flat screen tv and a refrigerator that makes ice.  Jaws and his roomate each have their own tv in their own private bedrooms.  They don't have a car and they don't have silverware.  But they have cable and TIVO. They have granite countertops.  I have formica.  They have stainless steel appliances.  And here's the real rub...they have a Harris Teeter supermarket and a dry cleaner in their complex.  Jealous?  Moi?

We were all back together again in New York over Memorial Day weekend celebrating Grandma Isabelle's 85th birthday. Hanging out in my mom's kitchen yesterday, Jaws asked lots of sweet cooking and grilling questions, having recently discovered that if one cooks, one has copious leftovers, and one saves money.  He asked his grandmother for a few of her recipes and she sent Jaws flying back to Washington  loaded up with a flank steak, flatware for 12, a box of home baked brownies, grilling tools and a bottle of teriyaki marinade.  As I've said elsewhere, they don't make 'em like my mother anymore. Her care packages are, legendary and eclectic.

When I got back to Atlanta last night, I was dying of curiosity so I called the launching pad.  I heard the sound of happy young people in the background and beer cans popping. "How was the steak?" I asked.  "Fabulous," Jaws said.  "But we kind of incinerated the burgers...the flames got a little out of control out on the balcony." 

Yup, it's happening.  He's out on his own.  With two interviews coming up this week.  You  live, you learn, you launch.

Oops...

by Ilona

Great excitement in the Ilona household today! Bekah and I finally got around to trying out the cookie press we bought at the Pampered Chef party a month ago.

(Note to self: Do NOT take enthusiastic and social teen to party at which one might be tempted to spend outrageous amounts of money on luxury goods. Enthusiastic and social teens are so damned appealing that it is very hard to say "NO. No, we will NOT be purchasing the cookie press at $41.50, and we will even more so NOT be purchasing the $40.00 deep dish pie plate, even if it IS in a very pretty cranberry and even if you DO love pies and even if you WILL make pies yourself -- AND clean up the kitchen, mum, really!!!"

It is very difficult to say NO to all that sweet and sincere enthusiasm without looking like a total wet-blanket drip of a mother in front of a room full of completely besotted adults. "Isn't she cute? My 14-year-old is never so sweet and enthusiastic.")

So we haul the cookie press out from under the counter. We mix up the recipe included with the kit. We ooo and aaaah over all the different shapes.

We learn a bunch of stuff, too. We learn that you need to set the press flush against the cookie sheet. Flush. And press the handle once, and only once. We learned that it is wise to scrape the exterior surface of the disk after every couple of cookies. We learned that if you tip the barrel up, you will get air bubbles in the batter. We learned that when you change disks, you need to tap the barrel to get the dough to settle against the disk again.

We learned so very, very many things!

Then we set the three dozen cookies into the pre-heated oven. And within three minutes, we have learned another, VERY important cookie-press lesson. When you are preparing cookie-press dough, you may not (NOT!) substitute margerine for butter:

Ahem.

What happened to my little helpers?

A major Jewish holiday, Passover, is starting on Saturday night. With the onset of Passover comes an amazing amount of household work. Not only does every single corner of the house have to be cleaned to rid every room of possible leavened products, but the dishes, silverware, pots and pans, and utensils all have to be changed. This means emptying out your kitchen and replacing everything with special Passover dishes, etc. Wow, what fun this is. Next comes covering your counters with tin foil or plastic so your Passover dishes don't touch a counter that has touched leavened products. Your kitchen ends up looking like a space ship gone insane with all the tin foil.

Once all that is done, and you're suitably exhausted, it's time to cook two HUGE dinners for large crowds of family and friends. Special foods. Foods that contain no leavening, and are made of odd things like matzah meal and potato starch. Everything cooked from scratch because the prepared products are disgusting. Salty, tasteless, and scary.

Now, when my teens were little, they were great helpers. They would get all excited about turning over the kitchen, especially when they got to the tape. Taping the tin foil down is evidentally a way cool thing for a kid to do. Both of my kids liked to help with the cooking. They weren't all that excited about the cleaning, but they understood that no cleaning meant no cooking and no eating...for a week. Um, yeah. I could always count on them to peel potatoes, carrots and apples. They liked to chop up spices and vegetables. They are both decent cooks, as I have always had them help me with dinners as well as special meals.

But this year? Help? They think not. Both of them have been completely resistant to helping out. When I call them down for a quick job, it's always "five more minutes" or "I"ll do it later". And then they never come down. So of course, the nagging starts, and with the nagging comes the kids yelling back at me and calling me all sorts of delightful names. I get mad, they get madder, I get madder still, and things just don't get done.

I've make everything myself so far, and the rule has always been that nobody eats ANYTHING unless they make sure that it's OK to eat now and not for the Seders. This isn't a new rule, it's the same rule we've always had. But my son... he doesn't follow rules anymore. Rules are made for other people, not for him. He's special, you see. Specially obnoxious. He went through the Passover food bags and helped himself liberally to things that were not for him. Like an entire Passover rainbow layer cake. Oh, and an entire jar of chocolate spread (It's an Israeli thing). But this was the real kicker. He ate a huge bowl of chopped liver. Not only doesn't he like chopped liver, but it wasn't even finished. I hadn't put it thru the blender yet and it was big chunks of liver, onions, and hard-boiled eggs. YUM! He pronounced it disgusting but at the whole bowl anyways, because he was 'hungry.' 

I'm ready to strangle him. I miss my little helpers. Yes, they made huge messes in my kitchen, but sharing the holiday preparations with my kids was delightfully special. I loved watching their kitchen skills progress, their interest in combining ingredients grown, and their ability to change a recipe to suit our tastes take hold. I don't like these snarling teenagers that just want to take, take, take and do little to nothing in return. I know it's a phase, but do I have to like this phase? Because right now, I do not like it at all.

Things That Go Crunch In The Morning

By Nina

One of the most pungent smells of Mommy-dom, at least to me, was the singular odor of soggy Cheerios.  One whiff of a swollen O floating in a sea of milk and like Marcel Proust, I'm time-machined back to the diaper years with visions of chubby toddler fingers putting Cheerios to mouth. 

I myself have never been much of a cold cereal eater. I don't like things that go crunch in the morning. Perhaps when in dieting mode I'll pour milk on some fibrous flake and call it breakfast, but generally I like my carbos steaming hot -- as in a nice big bowl of Cream of Wheat, oatmeal, or mashed potatoes.  And I like 'em with a pat of butter and a sprinkle of salt -- hold the sugar please.

But Grumble and Jaws, whoa! -- these boys consume cold cereal by the boxful. Always have. Grumble, I fear, is a walking Frosted Mini-Wheat. He drinks skim milk by the gallonful.  Both kids gave up the breast at 9 months and never looked back, working their way down from whole milk to 2% to skim.  They now declare whole milk "disgusting," "undrinkable."  Miraculously neither one got hooked on chocolate milk.

Nope, just hooked on Honey Nut Cheerios, Frosted Flakes, Capn' Crunch, Cheerios, Cookie Crisp, and (gag me) Reese's cereal. The sugar content of these brands is hideous.  But I have always drawn my maternal line in the sand at Lucky Charms.

Not just because the Lucky Charms package is ghastly, and not just because of the sugar content. Newsflash: The nutrition stats for Lucky Charms are actually "better" than those for Frosted Mini Wheats. No, Lucky Charms are verboten in my house because of the green, pink, and blue marshmallow bits which turn milk into billious pastel swamp water. What kind of mother allows marshmallow bits for breakfast? Well, actually the same mother who allows cold pizza, Capn' Crunch, and Wal-Mart banana muffins, loaded with trans fat to be called breakfast.

So imagine my surprise when I found Grumble eating handfuls of dry Kashi 7 grain puffs right out of the box one day. I always have serious cereals like Kashi, Raisin Bran and organic granolas on hand for my bed and breakfast guests, who are often academics visiting Emory University.  "This is good," Grumble crunched. I think the stuff tastes like packing material.

As his 10th grade year moves into the final lap and our mornings grow even more hectic and rushed, Grumble and I are eating breakfast on the fly -- grabbing a banana to eat in the car, or stopping at Panera on the way to school.  It just doesn't feel good.  In fact, it kinda makes me yearn for a bowl of heart healthy Cheerios.

 

 

Show Daily Values

 

Am I Blue?

by Judy Merrill Larsen

Being a mom means you're gonna make mistakes with your kids.  We all know that, right?  I freely admit lots of screw-ups and I am also very free with my apologies (saying "I'm sorry" also makes it harder for them to stay mad at me.).  Here are just a few mistakes:

~lack of vegetables.  Yes, I serve plenty of salad.  And fruit.  But I have never served peas (other than peapods) in my kitchen and I never will.  I hated them as a kid.  Yuck.  I also don't like many other cooked vegetables.  Too mushy. If I don't like 'em, I'm not cooking 'em.  Mushrooms are also on the list.

~lack of baby books/scrapbooks.  I took tons of pictures.  I saved report cards and "special" papers.  The pictures are in photo albums up until about age 8, the rest are in boxes up in my office.  But at least the boxes are labeled.  The scrapbooks are pristinely new and empty.

~um, I sometimes yelled.  Lost my temper when it wasn't really their fault.  Cursed in their presence.  Didn't always set a good example.  Might have been inconsistent.

~My #1 Son (dubbed "Earthworm" by his brother; "Greenboy" by me) complains that I still don't have a compost heap in my backyard.  Sorry, mea culpa, I'm just not a person who wants to trot out back with my egg shells and banana peels.  I do recycle though. 

But, you know what?  I can totally relax now because all these things (well, except for the compost heap.  And peas.) are reversible.  Correctible.  Unlike my cousin (distant cousin, I want to add) who turned his family blue.  Yes.  He really did.  And it's permanent.  Seriously.  It can't be undone. 

Now, it's not smurf blue.

It's not even as bad as that guy who was on the Today show a few weeks back who was really blue. 

But, there is a distinct blue undertone to their skin nonetheless.  And it won't fade or go away.  It's there.  Apparently, the rest of his family (but not him.  That's telling.) were advocates of some dietary supplement.  He felt it was too expensive.  So, rather than buy it from their handy dandy local drugstore, he figured he'd make his own version.  I mean, heck, why not?  He'd had a chemistry set as a kid. 

How complicated could it be?  So he sent away to some mail order place and ordered all the ingredients and mixed them up.  Look at all the money he was saving, he probably bragged to them.  But, oops, there was a glitch of sorts.  Rumor has it that he ordered a slightly different version of aluminum than people are supposed to ingest.  And a few weeks after they'd started taking his formula, somebody commented that they were all (except for him who didn't believe in the supplement) looking a tad blue.  Just a tinge, but noticeable.  Oh, and did I mention it's PERMANENT?!

So, when I'm reviewing my litany of parental offenses, I take great pride in knowing I've never changed the color of my children's skin.  Perhaps I'll still get that Mother-of-the-year award after all.

Guess What? Teenagers eat a LOT.

Today I did my monthly Trader Joe's run. TJs is one of those stores that you go to and stock up on all your favorites. It's not a 'just run for a few things' kind of store, at least for our family. We have our favorite products and we tend to buy them over and over and over again. I happen to love TJs food, and the prices can't be beat. Plus, they always have a little snacky and some nice, piping hot coffee. Good tasting coffee. OK, it's served in teeny little cups, but they don't care if you refill the teeny cup two or three times, especially if your cart is filled to the top with food.

I'm standing in the corner slurping down the coffee and snacking on a delightful carmelized onion tart ($4.99 for the box) when an older man, meaning older than me and not yet dead, came up to get his own caffeine fix. He looked at my cart and made some stupid remark about buying the store out. Ugh, why do people feel the need to comment on other people's lives? I paused, and then I said, "I've got teenagers" which, to me, explained the cart piled up the ceiling. But being and old nosy man, he had to comment some more. "I've raised three teenagers and they never ate that much that we had to push a cart that filled up."

Well, thank you Mr Nosy for your commentry. Perhaps you starved your children. Perhaps your wife, who obviously did the majority of shopping, never let you see the mountains of food she bought when your kids were teens. Maybe you raised all girls. I don't know, but I don't think my shopping is so out of hand that you needed to comment on it.

But it did get me to thinking. I know that several of our readers and writers have raised or are still raising teenage boys. They tend to eat a lot, right? I mean, they tend to have a hollow leg that holds the overflow from their stomachs, because there is no way the amount of food they eat can actually fit in a normal sized stomach. Or at least it seems that way.

My son is 15, and the amount of food he consumes daily would scare any mom of toddlers. I knew going in to parenting that teen boys eat a lot. But I had no clue that they could, and do, eat 3 dinners a night. Or be 'starving' an hour after a big dinner. Or could eat a whole package of turkey bacon in one sitting. Without vomiting, btw.  Maybe my son is unusual, but he eats like a horse. A horse that has gone over to the dark side and eats meat and plenty of it.

Is he that unusual? I don't think so, but I'd like to hear what you all have to say on the topic. Can you describe your teenagers eating habits? Are boys bigger eaters than girls, like they are in my house? Enquiring minds want to know.

Labels: food, teens