School's out for summer and I've concluded it would be cheaper to colonize Pluto than feed my children.
They spend most of their vacation as bears do – preparing for winter by eating everything but the paper and boxes in which the food's packaged. Then they go into hibernation until about noon each day, after which they rise up like starving buzzards, circle the pantry looking for innocent, unguarded Pop Tarts® and fall ravenously upon them, leaving only crumbs behind.
I don't mean to suggest my kids don't have high standards. They firmly believe there's a proper time and place for eating. The time they've settled upon is any time they're awake and the place is wherever it most annoys me – the den, their bedrooms, on my bed – but never the kitchen.
The frequency of their meals is fairly predictable: If they're exhaling, it's meal time. And when they're so full they can't possibly hold another morsel, they take pity on all their friends who've already finished eating their own parents out of house and home and import them to help complete their culinary scorched earth policy.
Fundamental to that policy, of course, is to eat whatever I've planned for dinner that night – or at least one of the ingredients for the cake I promised to bake for some function. Don't ask me how they always manage to zero in on the one irreplaceable item, but their instincts are infallible.
If salad's on the menu, my daughter will eat all the lettuce. If it's spaghetti, I discover they've pillaged the uncooked noodles. Need milk in that recipe? The gallon that was there this morning is now a memory. Olives? Nope – ate them at lunch. The leftover chicken that was destined for the evening's casserole?
"Well, gee Mom, you should have said something. How was I supposed to know I wasn't supposed to eat it?" Foolish me – I should have realized that six chicken breasts make a perfect afternoon snack for a twelve-year-old girl and her little brother.
The things that disappear from the pantry and refrigerator boggle the mind. Why would anyone eat all but one of those little pre-cut cubes of cheese? Who would think of consuming an entire box of crackers, two pounds of grapes, the rest of the yogurt and a gallon of Gatorade before lunch?
This tendency to cut through the groceries with the efficiency of a buzz saw makes it difficult, if not darned near impossible, to plan ahead. If I have the time and forethought to sit down and work out weekly menus and then shop for the things I need, half the ingredients are gone by the time I cook the meal.
So be forewarned: If you suffer the misfortune of receiving a dinner invitation to my house, please have the good sense to bring your own food along. Otherwise, you'll receive a glass of tap water and whatever crusts the locusts living under my roof might have missed.
Take my word for it – one cube of cheese doesn't go very far divided five ways.
