Caterpillars À la Carte

by Tua Laine

 

My husband-to-be seduced me with instant minestrone. I was a high-flying banker, used to famous hotels and fine dining. Cooking was like typing, I used to say–a skill a woman did better without. My husband was a jet-setting executive, yet happy to fix me soup on lazy Sunday afternoons. Sometimes he added special ingredients, like elbow pasta, into the mix. I was very impressed.

I know exactly when I slipped:  on our first wedding anniversary, at 9:30 pm. My husband was making celebratory minestrone while I wiped baby food off the kitchen floor and walls. Our firstborn was crying because I’d stopped him from eating the solid food of his choice–caterpillars and grass–and offered him gray-pink goo (chicken, Heinz claimed) from a baby food jar instead. Though tempted to let the baby choose his meals like most experts recommended, I drew the line at finger foods that wiggled. He spat out anything that didn’t. It looked like he wouldn’t be weaned any time soon.

“Hush,” husband said to the bawling baby and, miraculously, he did.

I turned around to see a spoonful of minestrone approach a wide-open little mouth. Great, I thought. Visions of the soup isle at the grocer’s danced in my head. Problem solved. Baby weaned.

On second thought, I realized one can’t grow a kid on MSG, preservatives and Yellow number 275.

“Put that spoon down,” I said.

The baby let out a disappointed shriek.

“I could always make soup from scratch,” I said. Babies howling with hunger are notorious for inducing temporary insanity.

“Home-made soup,” husband sighed with a far-away look in his eyes.

I called my mom for a recipe, made vegetable soup. Husband and son had thirds, licked their plates clean. I called Mom for more recipes, bought a cookbook. It’s only for a little while, I told myself, a year or two at most.

By the time I considered our son ready for instant soups, our daughter was into caterpillars and grass while spitting out anything that came in baby food jars.

When both kids entered preschool, I celebrated by ordering pizza. On the second Thursday, our firstborn poked at his pie at dinner.

“Miss Green gave me carrot sticks today,” he said.

“Wow,” I said. “She must’ve spent hours scraping carrots for everyone.”

“Not everyone. Just me.”

I pricked my ears.  Maybe I should add a banana to the leftover pizza in the kids’ lunchboxes.

“Why?”

“She asked what I ate for breakfast and I said pizza. Then she asked what I ate for dinner, and I said pizza. Then she asked what we ate Sunday.”

“Yes, yes,” I said. “Pizza.” 

“Then she asked if Mommy was out of town.”

“Oh,” I said, frowning at husband who tried to hide a chuckle with a cough.  

“Then she said ‘poor baby’ and gave me her carrot sticks.”

“You never eat carrot sticks at home!”

“Miss Green’s are good,” son said, and daughter nodded.

“You too?” I asked.

“She gave me grapes yesterday,” she said and stuck her tongue out at her brother.

Pita bread, hummus, European cucumber, pomegranates, I wrote on my shopping list that night. Oranges for hand-squeezed orange juice. I’d show Miss Green carrot sticks.

 

The kids were in elementary school when I tried to escape the kitchen next. 

“If this is dinner, what did we have for lunch?” my daughter asked the fifth night at Mickey D’s.  She drew a sad face on her hamburger with mustard, gave it ketchup hair.  

“This is drunch—dinner cum lunch,” I said. “Extremely fashionable in Paris.”

“Miss Brown says children need three warm meals a day,” my daughter informed me. “Chew food.”

“So?” I said. “The hamburger was warm when you got it. The PB&J sandwich at lunch was cold but the PopTart this morning hot. That makes three warm meals, on the average. A very useful concept for you two to learn, a-v-e-r-….”

“Miss Brown gave us a sheet,” daughter said, “To write down everything we eat next week. I have to eat from all food groups to get an A. And bring a dish to school on Friday.”

“Too bad,” husband said a little too fast. “We can’t let her fail first grade, can we?”

“Make Sicilian tuna sauce,” son said.

“No—chicken with green olives!” daughter shouted.

Other customers turned to look. The experts were right.  Should have let the kids forage when they were little. I’d spoiled the family rotten.

 “A dish to take to Miss Brown, huh?” I said. “ How ‘bout an old favorite of yours? Chenilles aux Herbes.  Plenty of fresh protein and vitamin C. Very chewy.”

“Oh-kay,” my daughter said a little uncertainly.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the ingredients: It was too late in the fall for caterpillars.