Wednesday 15 August 2012

A new culinary low

In no particular order, the least appetizing things I have ever put in my mouth are probably
1) a sad collection of flaccid chicken "tenders" from Burger King, more out of need for a bathroom plus hurricane refuge than actual nutritional requirement
2) fish eyeballs in Japan (social pressure. I was surrounded by Asians and wanted to prove I could casually eat fish eyeballs too. As it turns out, no one except me did.)
3) clumps of peanut butter and stale breadcrumbs wadded together in a ball (the last food from a camping trip in Patagonia that accidentally went on two days longer than menu planning had allowed for). 
To that sorry catalog, I can now add tonight's dinner, as an example of how motherhood has broken me. Baby and I went to the Google office in San Francisco today for lunch (we have an insider contact, and Larry & Sergei periodically treat us), which was as usual excellent: delicious, healthy, and varied. Baby was therefore (duh) totally uninterested in it, and decided, after dropping as much as she could down her jersey and smearing the remainder into her hair, that the crumbs of stale oatcake in the bottom of my handbag were way more appealing. I scraped as much of the Google lunch as I could off her jersey/hair, stuck it in a baggie, and thought, well, it'll still TASTE good, and I can give it to her for dinner tonight. Come dinnertime, I pull it out of the fridge, warm it up a bit on the stove, and stick it front of her with a cup of prune juice (we have issues at the moment), and announce "MMM! Lovely dinner! Eat up!!" in chirpy mummy voice. My usually voracious miniature packwolf is uninterested; she condescends to eat maybe one and a half noodles and half a green bean, and then sets about the enthusiastic creation of three dimensional abstract art with the rest (including the prune juice) on her high chair tray. 
I wash her off, stick in her pyjamas, read "Party Time" and "Goodnight Gorilla" for the 3021st time (each), put in her bed, and come out, hungry for my own dinner now. I had been planning to grill some chicken and have it with leftover brussel sprouts, but that seems like a lot of work. I also have to clean up the high chair and the floor under the high chair. I have no pride. I went to get a fork. 

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