Only the best for me and mine

I found that I always choose the red "bacon"-flavored treats first from the Milk Bone Flavor Snacks I give Lucy, much in the same way I always go first for the "Special Dark" candy bars in the Hershey's Fun Size mix.
I happen to prefer dark chocolate, but I'll bet all colors of Milk Bones probably taste the same.
Poor dogs don't know any better. Or maybe they're just lucky they don't have too many choices.

Some dark glasses, por favor

On Sunday, my family of five did what we usually do on Sundays after church: We went out to lunch at Mazatlan Mexican restaurant.
It’s fast, it’s inexpensive, the food is pretty good and we feel like regulars there. It’s usually the only meal we all eat out together, and we rarely stray from the plan.
Once in a blue moon we might get chicken from Church’s, but Mazatlan is our go-to place on Sundays.
Except for last Sunday.
On last Sunday, I decided we should try a new place, the Cinco de Mayo place in Merchant’s Walk, located in what once housed Pargo’s restaurant, for you long-timers.
As usual, it took some convincing.
“But we like Mazatlan,” my 6-year-old protested.
Then the twin eighth-graders joined the protests.
“Yeah, we like it. We know the place. They know us. We even know what number to order without looking at the menu,” they added.
Then I found myself having one of those conversations in which I’m saying the most ridiculous things just to get my kids to see how narrow-minded they’re being.
“But what if we go to Cinco de Mayo and it’s the best Mexican food you’ve ever had?” I asked.
Of course, one twin is an expert in logic.
“What if we go and it’s the worst Mexican food we ever had?” he asked.
“But what if it’s not?” I retorted, like the mature person that I am. “You won’t know unless you try it. And if it is, we won’t ever go back.”
So we went. As we compared and contrasted the salsa and the atmosphere, Henry said, “I feel like we’re cheating on Mazatlan.” I rushed to our defense.
“We’re allowed to try new places,” I said. “It’s the American way.”
“Yeah, freedom of choice,” Owen said.
The result was a split decision: One son and I liked the new place a lot, especially the gravy they serve on their enchiladas instead of rojo sauce. My husband, of course, liked both. The other two sons still liked Mazatlan.
The truth is that Mazatlan had become “our place.”
So this past week, we headed back there for our Sunday meal. But we all slinked in.
When the host seated us in one of the round corner booths, we all looked at each other and giggled.
“Why do I feel guilty?” my husband asked. “It’s like they know we cheated and went somewhere else last week.”
“I know,” I said, diving into the chips and salsa. “Just act normal.”
So the waiter came out, we ordered a No. 2, a No. 12, beef fajitas, a tostaguac and a kids’ beef burrito with queso, as usual.
The guy we call Cowboy, who always wears a flat-top haircut and plaid shirt, brought out four platters on one arm, as usual.
We ate and talked and laughed and looked each other in the face, catching up on each others’ lives, as usual.
Then we piled back into the truck to head for home. The boys, who were on a post-lunch high, bickered until I had to yell at them to calm down, as usual.
It’s not brunch at Tavern on the Green, but straying helped my family realize that we kind of prefer “the usual.”

Pull up a chair

The first Thanksgiving that my oldest nephew, Walker, sat down at the “adult table,” I didn’t know how to act.

It’s not like we were telling dirty jokes in the dining room, but it just never occurred to me that, at age 15, he’d want to be there with us geezers. He’d always seemed happy at the kids’ table in my mother-in-law’s kitchen with his two brothers, one sister and four younger cousins.

He’s a smart kid, like all his siblings, who must have outgrown the tedious mealtime banter with my then-fourth-graders and 3-year-old Owen, who had learned enough information to be dangerous.

Back then, for instance, you could just mention how good the Easter ham is, and Henry would randomly say, “The Inuits didn’t have to do anything to their food. They just buried it in the snow to keep it from getting spoiled.”

Then Owen would hold up his fork and add, “This is the Jaws of Life. If Nana’s house catches on fire, call 911. I’m a fireman.”

Why wouldn’t a high-schooler want to stay for that?

At my parents’ house, it’s easy. I’m an only child, so there was no kids’ table. We all fit at one table there and, as long as there are Sister Schubert rolls and Owen hasn't gotten up too early, holidays go nicely. At my in-laws’ house, it’s more involved. There are three sets of brothers- and sisters-in-law with eight grandkids. That makes for a lively kids’ table, though most of them aren’t kids anymore.

Now we have a house full of tweens, trapped somewhere between kids and teens, who are in holiday limbo because they no longer use the phrase “go potty” but they aren’t old enough to drive themselves home.

During my tween-year family gatherings, the only thing my adult relatives knew to ask me was, “How’s school?” Then they’d go back to discussing taxes or football and I’d hover over the dip bowl.

When my twins were 10-year-olds, they claimed they still preferred the kid’s table because, as Henry said, “I understand what they’re talking about.”

“Yeah,” said Mason. “I don’t have to listen to how Joe fired Betty today on The Bold and the Beautiful.”

Even Walker would agree that’s not all we discuss. Besides, if the kids move to the adult table, we’ll have a new audience for those old stories we rehash about the time David tried to stop the blender blade with his finger. Or Tim’s exquisite display of Boy Scout skills when he saw David cut his face on a fence and yelled, “Run home! Run like the wind!”

Both of them are still making oldest bro Steve pay for the year they had to wait to see what Santa brought until Steve took a shower.

Walker may start taking his plate out to the porch, though, because now we just grill him about college and, of course, girls.

Star Wars cake

Not too much technical detail, but fun to do. Plus, as Owen pointed out, the clone guys on top were like extra presents.

There's no food in your food

I think it was Neil Armstrong who said, “Houston, did y’all pack my Gatorade Xtreme?”
OK, maybe that’s not his most famous quote, but I’m sure Armstrong and his Tang-swilling Apollo crewmates would feel right at home eating out of a typical school lunchbox these days.
It's time for me to get back into the lunchbox mindset, and I'm starting to feel like I’m preparing my brown-baggers for a space voyage every time I pack lunches for school. Nearly everything I put in looks and is named like it’s packaged to endure a three-year journey to Mars.
Take Go-Gurt “portable yogurt,” made by Yoplait. You rip off the end and suck it out of a plastic tube. The Danimals Crush Cup is even worse. No complicated spoon needed, and no crumbs to float away and get stuck in the instrument panel.
The flavor names sound like a nuclear acidophilus reaction is imminent. While mom is content with blueberry or peach yogurt, kids have been hypnotized by commercials to believe they need “watermelon meltdown” and “extreme red rush,” whatever fruit that’s supposed to be.
Fruit Roll-Ups and Fruit-by-the-Foot are favorites with my kids. It’s basically fruit (and sugar) jerky, but the name’s the thing with this product. My picky eater wasn’t interested until he found out I had bought “Tropical Tango Twister,” which may or may not be in the citrus family.
I guess adjectives I grew up with, like “great-tasting grape,” aren’t convincing enough. Food marketed to kids can’t just be food anymore. It has to be extreme and fierce and thermostabilized with lots of other descriptors you’d hear in the halls of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
For a few years now we’ve seen snack foods miniaturized even as our butts and guts have maximized, so that lunchboxes are full of Mini Oreos, Baby Goldfish crackers and, occasionally, baby carrots with itty-bitty ranch dippin’ cups.
By the way, you should know that Pepperidge Farm has “flavor blasted” those innocent little Goldfish.
The metamorphosis of beverages is the most hilarious, though. To improve “the science of hydration,” the guys at Gatorade have taken the same four or five fruit flavors we’ve always had and added “fusion” or an X to the name to make it seem different.
Thanks to the science of marketing, I have to search Mapco’s drink cooler for Cascade Crash or X-Factor flavors on the way to my kids' games.
Of course, as a child I was enthralled with the Sprite Lymon ads. Who didn’t beg their mom to glue a half a lemon to half a lime?
In fact, it’s probably good that my TV-loving generation wasn’t the first to land on the moon. It wouldn’t have sounded as cool to hear, “That’s one small step for man, one nice Hawaiian Punch for mankind.”

Belly up to the feeding trough

If you want to know what the end of the world will look like, go to Golden Corral restaurant around lunchtime on a Sunday.
Sunday is when Golden Corral is most frighteningly apocalyptic because that’s when you’ll see the best mix of diners eating like it’s their last meal: from executives whose wives have warned them they’re not in the mood to cook to country folks who’ve roused themselves from the holler for a trip to “town.”
Usually, I have just two strict criteria for dining out. I want food I have to eat with a fork -- nothing wrapped in paper, please. And I want someone else to bring the food to me. That’s all. I don’t ask for much.
Golden Corral, which says it’s the “largest buffet in Middle Tennessee,” doesn’t meet one requirement since I have to get my own food. But it does have a whole lotta food, which works because we have one child who eats everything, one who takes one bite of everything, and another who eats only the bottom layer of the food pyramid.
Variety often trumps service in our family. When we just want everybody to eat something, we go to Golden Corral. Somehow, though, our family transforms into less civilized creatures the minute we hit the door. The change starts in the lobby, which at peak times resembles the waiting area at the Jim Warren Park driver license renewal office.
At Golden Corral, they like to throw you off by doing everything backwards. Right away you are dehumanized just a bit by being required to pay up front for food you haven’t even seen.
Once inside, you understand why it’s called Golden Corral as you get caught up in the stampede toward the buffet. All that matters is you and your plate, and all bets are off if the guy brings out the fresh tray of ribs.
Feeling obliged to keep up our end of the deal with the area’s biggest buffet, we’ll each pile up at least five half-finished plates on the table because we couldn’t decide what to get. That’s how you end up eating bizarre combinations like ham, potatoes and gravy, macaroni, pizza, chips and queso, cooked cabbage and sautéed mushrooms.
And banana pudding.
With half a frosted brownie.
Once I was heading back to the buffet for more fried chicken when I realized I was walking across the room while still chewing. Kids, adults, Harley riders in leather and grandmas with canes all scurry about like ants on a hill, darting in front of each other to grab the last hush puppy. In the face of such bounty, it’s like we never had manners at all.
The baby? Oh, he’ll be fine. He’s in one of those rolling high chairs. The crowd will drag him back around here in a minute.
Did they bring out any more hush puppies yet?

RIP cheese grits

So Christmas is gone already. I just packed it all up and my husband hauled it up to the attic. Even though I started buying some things in October, it still snuck up on me. But I was determined to complete some holiday rituals even after deadline. I didn't get to make cookie-press cookies until Dec. 27th, and we constructed our gingerbread house on New Year's Day. But we did it.
For future reference, remind me not to try to make ANYTHING that requires standing for hours trying to squeeze ever-hardening icing out of a plastic pastry bag when I've stayed up till the wee hours the night before. At my age, simply staying up late makes me feel hungover. Note to self: Never again.
Another thing I know I won't ever make again is cheese grits. I found out the hard way that Kraft has stopped making the garlic cheese roll that is essential to good cheese grits. The recipe I use is the one my grandmother used, out of Southern Sideboards, the most excellent cookbook published in 1978 by the Junior League of Jackson, Mississippi. I don't know why Blogger won't let me put these pictures in the middle of my post. Anyway, sorry about the microfilm look of the cookbook photo. I'm being lazy today. And I took the garlic cheese photo from a lady's blog whose name excapes me, but I'll find it. It's the only photo of the rare garlic cheese roll I could find.

The cookbook is so awesome because it notes who submitted each recipe the proper way, by her married name. My cheese grits recipe, actually called Cheese Grits Souffle, was submitted by Mrs. Louis E. Ridgway, Jr. and calls for one roll each of Kraft garlic cheese and Kraft Nippy cheese. Nippy cheese went by the wayside years ago, but both used to be staples in the refrigerated section between the real cheese and the canned biscuits (which my other grandmother calls "womp" biscuits because of the sound they make when you womp the can on the edge of the counter to open it.)
As a weird child, one of my favorite harbingers of Christmas was the sight of the little green-labeled roll of garlic cheese in the fridge.
Believe me, I am not the only one who's pissed about this. Southern ladies around the Internet are ranting on all kinds of online forums. Women in Pass Christian, Mississippi, in particular are up in arms.
With them on the job, Kraft should at least trot out the garlic cheese during the holidays, kind of like peppermint ice cream.

Road weary

If you’re reading this on Monday, chances are it’s because you drove the entire state of Alabama and back to visit all the relatives for Thanksgiving.
With the holidays comes the insurmountable quest to visit every family member on the tree so no one’s feelings get hurt. Of course, this is as simple as finding the electric knife when the turkey’s ready.
Still, the urge to achieve family holiday harmony resurfaces annually like It’s a Wonderful Life. We want to please all the grandparents because once you become your own family, you realize how much goes into making the holidays happy.
This stress is why adult children lament that the holidays don’t have the same magic they did when they were little. Well, of course not. Right about the time you get married and get in on the holiday logistical planning, you realize why your mom always got that Thanksgiving headache and your dad’s eyes glazed over during dinner.
That childhood naiveté is part of the holiday magic. Remember when you were in college and your mom still signed your name with theirs on gift cards? In your postgraduate days when you and your siblings got together at your folks’ to eat and play board games into the wee hours on Thanksgiving night, your only care was whether you’re going to play Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit next. That’s grown-up holiday magic.
Now it’s a struggle to feel that magic when you’re trying to cram all the wrapped gifts into the car-top carrier, or when the crowd at the Louisville Cracker Barrel looks like…the crowd at the Franklin Cracker Barrel.
Your disillusionment begins when you have The First Grandchild. Suddenly you are responsible not only for your child’s holiday happiness but for that of your parents as well because you are bringing the most important gift of all: the baby.
Up till now it never occurred to you that your parents might have feelings, that they might not love eating at Waffle House on Christmas morning while you enjoy French toast at your in-laws’ place.
But marriage, divorce, in-laws and exes all claim a piece of your pumpkin pie, so the family tries to devise a system that won’t sacrifice anyone’s sanity.
For years, my family had what we considered the foolproof “home and away” plan. If Thanksgiving was at the three brothers’ parents’ house, it was called “home,” and that Christmas would be at the wives’ parents’ houses, or “away.” The following year, we’d switch.
When we were first married, Labor Day picnic conversations usually started with, “So, are we ‘home’ or ‘away’ for Thanksgiving this year?”
However, all it takes to destroy the system’s delicate balance is for one of the grown kids to opt out by moving across the country or having two or three more babies. If your family is facing this season without a plan, I hope you all won’t be sitting around the fire singing that new holiday classic:
“Over the river and through the woods to the therapist’s couch we go….”

The retail experience ain't what it used to be

I only shop when I NEED something. Recently I've asked to try on shoes at major department stores only to have them tell me my feet aren't petite enough. No, just kidding. On two separate occasions, when the sales clerks brought out the shoes, they were obviously worn. I'm talking creases on the upper and visible debris stuck in the soles! Too tacky. Don't they check this stuff? At Kroger I bought a Lean Cuisine Sesame Chicken entree that had one chicken bite in it instead of the usual five. The worst, though, is when I bought a coffeemaker at Best Buy, brought it home and found dried coffee in the bottom of the carafe. When I told the girl in charge of returns, she expressed immediate concern and dismay and was like, "OK."

I'd bet $50 it got restocked later that day.

I will always compliment good service, often in writing. And if something's not up to par, even snack foods without the requisite amount of cream filling, I will let the appropriate people know about it.

Scratch off

All the talk about area school systems with such money problems that they want to lay off coaches and teachers, can't run school buses, can't get new textbooks and can't build enough schools made me wonder about all the Tennessee lottery money that was supposed to go to education. Then I remembered a column I wrote a few years ago about trying to buy my first lottery tickets. "Like to hear it? Here it go..."

It’s sometimes called an idiot tax, but figuring out how to buy a Tennessee Lottery ticket made me feel pretty stupid.
I mean, each time I thought about going into Mapco to buy one just for a lark, I’d get intimidated by some construction worker who reeled off his selections like an auctioneer: “I’ll take four Cash Threes, a Lotto 5, four Powerball quick picks and a pack of Winstons.”
Somehow a guy who hasn’t got sense enough to turn off his truck’s engine while filling the gas tank knows what to choose from the dizzying array of lottery tickets displayed next to the “energy pills” and beef jerky.
Under the guise of research, I’ve visited many local convenience stores, though somehow I always came away with more Hostess Ding Dongs than lottery tickets. Hey, we all have our guilty pleasures.
I finally figured out that there are instant games and online games. But the decisions I had to make were staggering. Do I scratch something or pick numbers? Should I choose my own numbers or let the computer pick them for me? Does Hostess really consider one pack of Ding Dongs to be two servings?
The Cash 4 game alone has 13 different ways to pick your numbers. It’d be easier to stand in the Wal-Mart line behind the woman who’s pushing two carts and hollering at four kids.
I never thought of Williamson County as a lottery hotbed, though officials say we rank 15th out of 95 Tennessee counties in ticket sales.
So why not join the fun?, I asked myself. I know, I know, there are those who believe the lottery is gambling and that gambling is a sin. But so are pride and faultfinding, and anyway, that’s a whole other column.
So I lined up behind the rest of the sinners who had chosen to throw away their entertainment dollars, and I told the jovial Mapco clerk I wanted one Powerball quick pick and four Lotto 5 numbers.
She gestured to the back of the store, where I had to get a separate form to bubble in my own numbers. That display had a sign pointing out that the Moores Lane Mapco had had a $25,000 winner, which I decided would come in handy when the twins leave for college at the same time.
You can guess how this story ends. The two most pitiful aspects of my lottery ticket experience are that my husband had to wake me up at 10:34 to see the Lotto 5 numbers on TV, and that I actually expected to win something.
I didn’t think I’d get the $75 gazillion Powerball prize, but the lottery Web site has enough pictures of folks who have won a couple grand that I thought I’d at least get some new den furniture with my “investment.”
Either that or a year’s supply of Ding Dongs.

Birthday Fun

We celebrated my baby's 5th birthday this weekend with a Candyland cake that I copied from a picture in Taste of Home magazine. We all had so much fun decorating it that I wanted to post a photo of the results.

The perfectionist in me would have made the surface more green like the game board, with green frosting, but the boys all said it's perfect, and each had his own favorite section. I love the Lollipop Forest, made with Dum-Dums, and the twins like Lord Licorice's Lair because they love Twizzlers. It was fun and easy to do, as long as you have a big-enough sheet cake pan!

My French pedicure's crooked

Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com recently wrote about “first-world conversations,” as in something you would never hear someone say in a third-world country. Her examples:
“This I-phone is too heavy.”
“Someone was using my favorite treadmill this morning, so I was forced to use the stationary bike.”
“This refrigerator isn’t big enough. Let’s buy a bigger one and put this one in the garage.”
You know, the kinds of complaints you hear around here ALL THE TIME.
I’m always walking up on people ragging on the cleaning lady or telling horror stories about contractors. ANY contractors. If you’re getting any elective work done to your house or pool, consider yourself fortunate.
Oh, I can’t finish this right now. This Hostess Ding Dong doesn’t have enough cream filling, and it’s really getting on my nerves.