food traditions

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Ants on a Log

Once in a while, my kid goes through an “ants on a log” kick. In our house, “ants on a log” refers to a banana slathered with peanut butter and liberally sprinkled with chocolate chips.

I am willing to overlook the sugar in the chocolate chips in favor the protein and fat in the peanut butter and whatever nutrients a banana has; all I’m coming up with is potassium. (A deficiency in potassium, so I’ve heard all my life from potentially questionable sources, is the reason I sometimes get leg cramps. Let me tell you, I would rather wake up screaming in pain than eat a banana. My husband may feel differently, but so far he’s never smashed a banana into my shriek hole, so I think we’re okay.)

The hardest part of making my version of ants on a log is getting the peanut butter to adhere to the banana. That’s the main reason I switched from cutting the banana lengthwise down the center (which is also difficult; bananas tend to snap around their waistline) to cutting them into disks. Much easier to dollop peanut butter than to spread it, when you’re dealing with a sticky paste and a slippery fruit surface.

It’s also difficult to determine how many chocolate chips is The Right Amount. My daughter and I have wildly differing views on chocolate chip quantity. I would like to say that one chip per disk is enough; Carla would disagree. Did you know that there are approximately 2.5 million ants per human on the earth? That fact makes it sound like a couple million ants are born every time a human appears in a delivery room, but you get the idea. Anyway, my daughter would appreciate that kind of ant-to-human ratio for her ants on a log. Whether we’re talking about insects or chocolate chips, that’s way too many ants.

When I was a kid, “ants on a log” was a horrific combination of celery, peanut butter, and raisins. I do like celery, but I don’t like peanut butter and I abhor raisins, nearly as much as I abhor bananas. Also, if I stop to think about it for more than two seconds, it’s pretty gross to offer children “ants on a log” as a snack. Who wants to eat a log, whether or not it has delicious ants crawling all over it? I mean, xylophages, but as far as I know humans are not xylophagous.

Other important ants-on-a-log questions: What in nature is the peanut butter supposed to represent in this scenario? Who decided this would be a great name for a snack? Whether or not it’s appealing or depicts nature in an accurate way, it’s sure managed to insert itself into American culture.

Now I’m curious about my non-American friends, and whether ants on a log is a thing in your neck of the woods. If not, is there a similar snack food? And, if so, what is it called?

If I’m eating celery – and I do enjoy a celery snack – I’m eating it with ranch dressing or cottage cheese. NOT peanut butter. My mom likes to make “rabbit food” every afternoon around three, which is some combination of celery, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber, and bell peppers with a little ranch on the side. I don’t know that rabbits eat celery in the wild, but I do delight in envisioning myself as a little bunny nibbling my way through a garden, rather than as a middle-aged human using sliced veggies as a conveyance for absurd quantities of ranch dressing.

While I enjoy the rabbit food, and have tried with middling success to incorporate it into my own home routine, I have fond memories of an altogether different pre-dinner snack when I was growing up. My mother would melt cubes of Velveeta together with some salsa until it was a creamy, spicy puddle, and then we’d use tortilla chips to scrape up every last molten morsel. She called this “chips and dip.” Occasionally since reaching adulthood, I have tried to recreate this snack. I have found that Velveeta is its creamy, delicious best in my memory.

Some snacks are so delicious that they transcend time. Some even appear, fully formed, in the mind of a child without her mother ever mentioning them to her. Specifically, my teenage obsession with microwaved pepperoni. There was nothing like crispy pepperoni, still sizzling in a sheen of its own fat, dipped into yellow mustard. My own child discovered this delicacy on her own – sans mustard – and only my husband’s dismay at a microwave and kitchen smelling like fried pepperoni keeps her from eating this snack on the regular.

She does, once in a while, crisp up some pepperoni and add it to her scrambled eggs. In which case, I overlook all the concerning aspects of delicious, delicious pepperoni and focus only on the high protein goodness of scrambled eggs and the joy of a child who can make herself food.

If ants are going to make a log more delicious, let’s add some ants.

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Diabetic-Friendly Thanksgiving Side Dishes and Dinners This Week

It is somehow the week before Thanksgiving and I am trying to tamp down my panic through denial and distraction.

One distraction is that I keep thinking about what diabetic-friendly side dishes I can offer for the family member who is pre-diabetic. We make the same things every year, because everyone has their Favorite Thing they don’t want to give up: dressing (my husband’s favorite), mashed potatoes (my favorite, and honestly the only thing I want to eat on Thanksgiving), sweet potatoes with marshmallows (Carla’s favorite), and turkey (the source of the gravy). We have tried adding a salad in the past, because honestly I like salad much more than anything else on the Thanksgiving menu, but no one eats it and salads do require a significant amount of work. (Plus, my plan is make butternut squash soup and a big salad for dinner the night after Thanksgiving, and those who like leftovers can eat those too. I don’t want to make a big salad two days in a row, is what I’m saying.)

The idea of adding another side dish to the rotation is awful, but I want every family member to have something to eat – and something enjoyable to eat, at that. So I think it would be highly worthwhile to find another dish that my pre-diabetic family member can enjoy without worry. (Before you suggest that I simply ask this person for suggestions, know that I have considered this idea! But this person is notorious for not wanting to be a bother, and I am SURE would simply say, “Oh, I don’t need anything extra! Don’t make a fuss!” and then would eat only turkey on Thanksgiving Day.) 

There are complications, of course. Ideally, this mystery dish would be something I could prep, at least in part, before Thanksgiving. And, ideally, more than one person would eat this additional side. If it were Brussels sprouts, for instance, I think only three of us would eat them. My mother-in-law loves creamed spinach, and I am 100% sure she would make it for us… but again, only three people would eat it. Maybe that’s enough people. 

(Also, just to clarify – my guests are all from out of town and will be staying with us. So there is no way to ask them to prepare a dish and bring it with them. All the food will be prepared here in my house. Mainly by me, because I am a control freak.)

In my perusal of internet options, here are a handful that sounded workable (although I honestly don’t know how truly diabetes-friendly they are):

  • Balsamic Oven Roasted Carrots: I hate cooked carrots with the fire of a thousand suns, but maybe other people would like them?
  • Steamed Broccoli with Lemon: This is a standard side dish in my house, and it’s easy, and if I steam it in my steamer basket I can use the microwave and don’t need to find another spot in the already-crowded ovens. (Yes, we have two ovens this year, although it is debatable whether one of them heats fully.)
  • Holiday Rice Salad: This sounds hearty and different, and I could make it ahead. (Perhaps without the golden raisins; raisins are my sworn enemy.)
  • Sauteed Green Beans with Garlic: This sounds easy and yummy… but the only thing more hotly in demand than the oven on Thanksgiving is the stovetop, so I don’t know if this is really doable.
  • Lemon-Herb Asparagus with Pine Nuts: I think it was Kae who said she is ordering the entire Thanksgiving meal this year, and I am 100% behind that. It doesn’t work for our family, because my husband likes a very specific stuffing, and I like a very specific mashed potatoes, and Carla likes a very specific sweet potatoes… we are difficult, is what I’m saying. But I am getting our turkey from Whole Foods, and they have ready-made sides like this asparagus dish… maybe it would be good?
  • Green Bean Salad with Toasted Almonds and Feta: Hmmm. This requires cooking on the stovetop, so it may be a no-go. But it sounds yummy. 
  • Low Carb Cauliflower Stuffing: I really, vehemently dislike regular dressing (soggy bread? no thank you), so this sounds preferable. (We would still have regular dressing.) I bet I could prep all the veggies in advance, ask my mother-in-law to put everything together the day of, and maybe there would be space in one of the ovens??? 
  • Rosemary Roasted Root Vegetables: This sounds delicious, but it would require a LOT of chopping and peeling. Probably doable mostly in advance, though. And maybe with two ovens, I could manage this. I would skip the beets and maybe the potatoes. Maybe carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, and butternut squash? I wonder if I could throw some cauliflower in there too?

Do you have any low-carb or diabetes-friendly sides you swear by?

Okay, even though my mind is already in the thick planning for next week (HOW is Thanksgiving NEXT WEEK), we have to eat this week too. (Why?) So let’s think of some easy meals to make.

Dinners for the Week of November 13-19

What are you eating for dinner this week?

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here. 

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Dinners This Week Plus Potato Salad Nostalgia Plus School Fretting

Well, yesterday’s sunshine has been washed away by an hours-long thunderstorm that woke me at 6:00 am and seems to have settled right over my house for the duration. It is very dark and wet with intermittent startling bursts of lightning and the grumpy follow-up of growling thunder and I am trying Very Hard to tamp down my School Is Actually Starting Anxiety. So I am retreating into happy memories – forcibly, this time – and still dreamily eating my way through my childhood summers. The food nostalgia is real strong, folks. 

Let’s talk about food! 

Today, for Labor Day, we are having ribs (it will be very fun and soggy to grill them if the downpour continues) and lemony potato salad.

(As an aside, potato salad is one of my Family Tradition Foods. We had it several times a year when I was growing up: New Year’s Day, Super Bowl Sunday, Fourth of July, Labor Day. My mom makes the BEST potato salad – it’s got a mustard base so it’s a nice sunny yellow, and it’s speckled with little bits of pickles and celery and red peppers and also – hork – hard boiled egg. My mom performs some sort of magical chopping technique on the egg so that it becomes dust and I barely even notice it. The potato salad is amazing and when I go to visit her, she makes a big batch of it and I eat it for breakfast. There is NOTHING that beats my mom’s cold potato salad for breakfast, you have to trust me. But even though she hand-wrote a copy of the recipe for me, I cannot make it so that it tastes the way her potato salad tastes. There must be something special she does, or maybe she doesn’t measure the ingredients as exactly as the recipe implies, or maybe she includes some sort of special ingredient like – hork – love. Whatever it is, I cannot replicate the flavor. So I have found my own potato salad recipe that I love but which tastes NOTHING like my mom’s. So even though it is Tradition to eat potato salad on Labor Day, it doesn’t really feel like tradition, because we’re not eating the traditional potato salad. Have I used the words tradition and potato salad often enough to create semantic satiation?) 

(My family is still sort of floundering to find our own Family Tradition Foods. Even for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we haven’t really settled on specific meals that are so good we want to eat them every year forever and ever amen. And that’s okay! I think variety is wonderful! But I also have such fond food-related memories of holidays growing up. The foods we ate at specific times throughout the year took on such significance – and eating something like my mom’s potato salad can bring so much warmth and happiness flooding back that I would love to create the same kind of thing for Carla. Of course, there’s the added hiccup that Carla doesn’t EAT anything, so…)

(Family Tradition Foods must be a thing for other families, too, yes? Do you have any that you remember with fondness? Or horkitude, I suppose – I’d be interested to know about the Special Food your dad made every September First that only he liked to eat, or, like, the hot dish Aunt Violetta used to bring to every family barbecue that you all pretended to love, but would dump behind the shrubbery at the earliest opportunity, or whatever.)

Back to the Labor Day holiday pigging: my husband made these AMAZING brownie crinkle cookies for dessert. We may have eaten some yesterday already. You know. To make sure they weren’t poisonous, and weren’t going to ruin the holiday or anything. They are so fudgy and delicious. You should make them immediately. 

Here’s what else is on this week’s menu. Spoiler alert: it’s full of comfort food.

Dinners for the Week of September 7-13

As I have already mentioned, several times, Carla is starting in-person school this week. She goes to a very small private school that has expended significant money and thought into how to make in-person school work safely for all involved. We feel hopeful and grateful and that this is the best decision we can make for our family at this time… but I am still nervous. Any and all distractions, especially but not limited to food-related memories or your dinner plans for this week, would be MOST welcome and appreciated.