They can't eat grilled cheese every night

I haven't written about Christmas because my camera's batteries are currently in the Hullabaloo game which is currently living with the family I am babysitting for every day, and for some reason I can't imagine writing a post about the holidays without including holiday photos. But for the sake of this post I need to mention one story.

While we were at my parents Charlie and I tried to cook dinner for them one night. We made beef burgundy in the crock pot, and it was a total disaster. First of all, I'm not a very good cook and I don't know how to trim the excess fat off a hunk of meat. So the meal was fatty - fat enough so that all of the fat congealed on my mom's plate before she ever started eating. But that wasn't really the disaster.

When Charlie and I were serving up the plates, we saw a small rectangle of plastic floating in the broth. It had a symbol on it. I considered throwing it away and not mentioning it, but instead I showed it to everyone in bewilderment.

We all became detectives. My dad got out his magnifying class so we could better see the symbol (which appeared to be a hand getting sprinkled with water. I know - weird). My dad got on Google. My mom looked up the phone number for Krogers, handed the phone to Charlie, and peered over my dad's shoulder, out-google-ing him. I sat at the table with the magnifying glass, watched the fat congeal on my mom's plate, and gave everyone advice. I told Charlie to talk to the produce guy and the meat guy. I told my dad how to open a link in a new tab. I agreed with my mom that we could just stir-fry some vegetables and eat them with the mashed potatoes. I complained that I was hungry.

After much guessing and google-searching we learned that it was an anti-theft device that is usually imbedded in the absorbent pad that is under the meat, on the styrofoam try. Funny, I thought. There was no absorbent pad in this package of meat. Three of us decide not to eat the beef. My dad forges ahead, says it tastes great.

Later we're cleaning up and my mom is emptying the crock pot when she finds the absorbent pad, black now, and stringy, and nasty, soaking in the broth. See, in my effort to not have to actually touch the meat, I just slid it from the package in to the crock pot, packaging and all. And my dad ate it.

Anyway, so now you know, I'm not a very careful cook. Which means that the dinners that Charlie and I cooked these last two weeks are something to brag about, just because they happened. I mean, they were edible and didn't contain one speck of styrofoam. They smelled good and contained ingredients that the kids like. We thought it would be a great time to start insisting that the boys eat what we eat. No more cooking a kid's meal and an adult meal. One meal. One.

We didn't think it would happen over night. I thought they might eat a "side" portion of what we were eating. I thought they'd try a bite, and then another and another.

Instead, neither of them tried any bite of anything we cooked. We made mac-n-cheese, beef stew, vegetable and pasta soup, butternut squash gnocchi, chicken casserole, bavarian stew, and curly coconut pasta. All home made. They ate none of it.

Twice we told Jett that he had to try one bite, just one bite, or he couldn't watch any TV after dinner. Tonight all he had to try was one small bite of one baked apple. An apple that was on it's way to becoming applesauce, which he loves. No way. He chose no TV, and he didn't even complain.

Tomorrow night we are having home-made pea soup. The remote is up for grabs.