picky eater

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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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Dinners This Week, Semi-Annual Breakfast Fret

Well hello there, we have apparently reached the time of year when I have small freak-out about breakfast. Join me, won’t you?

The issue, in a nutshell, is that I continue to need quick weekday breakfast options for my child. Ideally, they would be portable and at least semi-nutritious. This is Quite Challenging, because a lot of breakfast foods do not appeal to my kid. I am and have always been a Very Picky Eater, so I get it; it’s not always a matter of “just eat it because it’s good for you.” Sometimes the preferable option to a food you don’t like is simply not eating. As a Very Picky Eater, I understand. As a Tends-Toward-Fretful Mother, I want my child to fuel her body before school.

The bacon and egg sandwiches I mentioned here are fine, but they are not an everyday desire. The French toast muffins I mentioned in the same post were fine, but I think Carla got sick of them. However, muffins do seem to be a well-received mechanism for delivering calories and (modest) nourishment to my child, so I think I’m going to make some apple cinnamon muffins and some pumpkin cream cheese muffins in the hopes that they do the trick.

Speaking of calories and nourishment, I haven’t done a great job of planning meals this year. I am, however, less great at winging it. So let’s get back to meal planning, at least for today.

Dinners for the Week of March 2-8

  • Slow Cooker Korean BBQ Chicken: I am in need of some slow cooker meals this week, and this sounds yummy. I’m using breasts instead of drumsticks, and I’ll shred the chicken and use it to make some rice bowls.
  • Lemony Garlic Butter Shrimp Orzo: My husband and daughter got me a new cookbook for my birthday, and I love it. It has many, many recipes I would love to make and eat, including this one. My husband doesn’t normally care that much for shrimp, but he said he’d be happy to try any recipe from the book and I’m taking him at his word.
  • Ramen: My daughter is into ramen lately, and I like ramen well enough. My favorite way to make it is with shrimp and edamame, but my husband would prefer chicken. Hopefully we’ll have leftover Korean BBQ chicken he can add to it.
  • Chicken Paprikas: This meal doesn’t necessarily scream “spring is on the way,” but it’s tasty, simple to make, and usually produces enough leftovers for another meal.

What are you making for dinner this week?

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Cat Report, Sports Snacks, Dinners This Week

I am assuming that you want an update on the cat, who, when last we spoke, was at the vet getting neutered. 

He is fine. A little depressed, in my estimation, and possibly a little bit embarrassed and/or miffed by the state of his testicles, but fine. Also, if you’d rather not read several tedious paragraphs about my cat’s post-surgical experience, I urge you to skip right on down to the list of dinners below.

I am FINE.

The recovery period after the neutering procedure is supposedly two weeks. The instruction sheet the vet sent home with me says that under no circumstances are we allowed to remove the cone they sent home with us. (The vet doesn’t call it a cone; they call it an Elizabethan collar, and it cost $20, by the way. For $20, I would think that it wouldn’t rotate so that the Velcro/opaque segment of the cone is directly in front of his sight line, but apparently I’m wrong.) With the cone on, the cat cannot eat well or drink water easily, he cannot clean himself, he keeps running into things, his balance is off so he can’t successful jump onto something even as short as a step, he cannot rest his head comfortably, his neck is constantly itchy, and he adopts various mournful positions that make him look very pitiful indeed. His fur is greasy and he lies around a lot more than is typical. I do not see how this is sustainable for two weeks. 

So: We have been removing the cone as frequently as possible and simply supervising the cat so he doesn’t lick anything. He does wear the cone – excuse me, Elizabethan collar – at night, when he sleeps in a bathroom we’ve converted into a temporary cat cave. 

Image from OldWorldPetPortraits.com where you can buy a print of this fabulous painting or many other works of pet-themed art, and at a 20% discount with email signup.

The vet and the internet insisted that I buy special litter for him, post-surgery. It’s pellets made up of newspaper and it’s probably much better in many ways than the litter we’ve been using since we got him, but he refuses to use it. He has taken to meowing at us when he has to go to the bathroom, and one of us has to escort him to his regular litter box. (The litter box is in a part of the basement we don’t want him in when he’s not in a cone; too many niches for him to hide in and commence furtive licking.) 

One of the other admonitions in the vet’s instructions is to keep him calm. For two weeks. He’s actually been pretty good, so far. We have a shoe box he likes to play in, and he’s been batting springs and fuzzy worms around inside the box, and that seems to occupy him pretty well without requiring a ton of athletic movement. Carla made him a special water toy that we learned about online but he wasn’t super into it. Maybe we’ll have to try it again. He’s also spending a lot of time in the sunroom or at the window in my office, monitoring the bug and squirrel activity outside.

Okay, okay. Here is a photo of him in his Elizabethan collar. Please don’t tell him I shared this with the entire internet. 

Revisiting all his life choices, trying to figure out which one led him here.

Okay! Enough about the cat! Let’s discuss my other favorite topic: FOOD.

Now. It is September, and school is back in session, and I need to get back into the dinner planning groove. Let’s see: we’re visiting friends for dinner tonight. Carla is trying a new sport this fall, and she has games every week. That means I need at least one meal each week that produces enough leftovers for us to eat after her game. We’ve been pretty consistently doing at least one night of Search the House for Your Own Meal, and one night of takeout. So that leaves me with three meals to make. 

Oh – that reminds me: I keep trying to figure out snacks I can send to school with Carla that she can eat before sports practice or before a game. The snacks can’t have nuts, and I would prefer that they have some nourishment in them, rather than just calories. I’m not opposed to “just calories,” and in fact have been sending her with Cheez-Its and cheese ballsand granola bites and fruit snacks because she will eat those things… but I would love ideas for things that have other benefits besides calories. I’m not sure those things exist, though, especially nut-free things that do not require refrigeration. I am happy to BAKE things, as well. And, even though my “she will eat this” expectations are low for most new/nourishing foods, I am willing to TRY things, even if Carla ends up refusing to eat them. If you have any ideas, let me have ’em. 

Okay, back to the dinners. 

Dinners for the Week of September 1-7

  • Greek Salad with Grilled Chicken: My parents return to our part of the country this week, and I want to have them over for dinner and to meet the kitten. Greek salad has kind of become my go-to for guests – it’s so easy to prep in advance, and it’s so tasty. 
  • Beef Birria: You know what else I have in the freezer? Beef birria! And we have enough for at least two meals. I plan to make the tacos in the oven (as in this recipe) rather than on the stove. And then maybe I’ll turn the ingredients into enchiladas (a la these chicken enchiladas) the second night.

What are you eating this first week in September?