Food Futures

One of my very favorite meals is a really good salad with really good cheese and a really good vinaigrette and really good, crusty bread – and a glass of wine. Recently we were having salad and bread for dinner and I had the realization that I need to enjoy these kind of meals now. When Rush and Tate are 12 and 10, plus accounting for additional children, I have a feeling a salad isn’t going to be enough of a meal. We would probably have to add a few chickens to the menu, or spend $50 on vegetables, cheese, and croutons to make it big enough.

We’re also going to lose the abundance of St. Mark’s chili. Trent and I have been filling our freezer with pints of frozen chili for years, but it already appears that it’s time to move up to quart size. Once Tate starts eating, St. Mark’s chili is going to start getting cost prohibitive. It might end up a once a year treat. Trent seems to think we’ll start making chili ourselves, but it’s going to be really hard to top the St. Mark’s recipe.

I was picturing a future involving lots of potatoes until my brother reminded me that kids are essentially forced to eat whatever you put in front of them. He gave the example of his senior year of high school when he would come home from a varsity soccer game to a dinner of cucumber and tomato salad. My parents did go through a phase where almost every night they ate a mixture of cucumber, tomatoes, green olives, and parmesan cheese, sprinkled with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

There’s really no reason to think about any of this now. One benefit to kids is that they do tend to grow gradually and your life gradually adapts to them. Except of course when they’re born, which is more of a pushed into a cold swimming pool experience.

Tate is a milestone 3 months old today, so let the gradualness begin.