Monday, July 13, 2009

Snack

If there is mousse involved, I probably did not make it.

Tomorrow is my turn to provide “snack” for Bob’s summer school class. The guidelines are simple: A fruit or vegetable, a carb, and a protein. I’ve seen the other snacks roll through in the last few weeks. Cereal, rice, baby carrots, yogurt – what you’d expect. Occasionally an inspired mom will bust out with the errant mango chunks or micro-waved potstickers, but mostly it’s a string cheese festival. Then, there was Mrs. G.

Mrs. G had a kid in the school last summer. Bob was not in school then and I do not know Mrs. G, but her snacks are the stuff of legend. The teachers describe her as the “Foodie Mom.” She brought hand rolled sushi, homemade spring vegetable hand pies, oiled cutting boards filled with organic charcuterie and dried figs. The kids loved it.

I am by no means a foodie or even a foodie-lite but I am sort of nuts (ask anyone) and also oddly competitive, especially in areas that Do Not Matter.

Here’s my crazy: I spent an hour today brainstorming Amazing Snack Ideas. This is time that would have perhaps been better spent doing really almost anything else. Taking my once every 48 hours shower? Enjoying a TiVo’d episode of Tori & Dean? Preparing “snack” for people that actually live in my home and are at this moment foraging for weird old bean dip in the back of our refrigerator?

Here is today’s remedial mini-epiphany: I do not need to compete with a Mommy faux -Nigella Lawson by learning to press my own tofu or by baking individual brie and rolling out a carving station for a dozen three-year-olds. I am not Foodie Mom. I am Always-Leaves-Her-Travel-Mug-of-Coffee-By-the-Sign-In-Sheet Mom and I am sticking with my strengths.

Oh and tomorrow is: watermelon, string cheese, rice cakes.

7 comments:

  1. Congratulations. Free of competition! Stick with your strengths - know (and like) yourself. A good goal for all of us.

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  2. Stick with what you do best! I started bringing brownies to daycare for the workers and I'm now the brownie lady. I can't go into the building without someone asking me when I'm going to bring brownies again. They may know you as the Always-Leaves-Her-Travel-Mug-of-Coffee-By-the-Sign-In-Sheet lady but at least that comes with no expectations!

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  3. I'm so like that! Yet, I would have so brought something awesome... then I would have complained when all the kids hated it LOL

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  4. As someone who claims you have to "make" watermelon because it involves a real kitchen utensil, I think you're almost at a Nigella level.

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  5. Thanks for your support everybody. You each deserve a graham cracker.

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  6. Wow, I'm impressed that you stopped after one hour. Your sense of control has inspired me! I will try to remember this tomorrow when I"m typing a simple e-mail that I turn into a novel.

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  7. Oh yeah - forgot one good recipe that I did recently - cut cheese into cube and then wrap with proscuitto. it sticks to the cheese so you don't need toothpicks and tastes quite delish. :)

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