Those who know me will be shocked (sarcasm) to hear I often stress about things which do not warrant stress. It’s a beautiful (heavy sarcasm) trait I assume I was gifted at birth that has only strengthened with time, blossoming as I entered adolescence and adulthood and showing peak glory as I hit my mid-life stride. My forties provide all the stress about all the things.
Most recently, taking center stage in my trivial worry craziness is food. Specifically, wondering what my family will eat. More specifically, wondering what my family will eat for breakfast. I enjoy preparing dinner and our public school has graciously picked up my slack by fixing balanced lunches during the week. That leaves me struggling with the morning meal.
Can you hear the mocking ‘Most important meal of the day!’ voice ringing through your head, too? No? Just me?
Four kids. A spouse who is out the door early each day. Chaos as five people attempt to deal with getting bags and shoes and violin cases and recorders and extra tennis shoes and permission slips together before 7:50 AM. Keeping everyone alive before the bus arrives, refereeing battles over hair brushes, pleading for everyone to scrape the top layer of plaque off their teeth and finding matching socks is hard enough. Finding a suitable breakfast that will keep everyone filled up, avoiding complete sugar crash and fueling their brain is another battle altogether.
Most of the cereals that appeal to my kids are neon in color, feature talking animals in their commercials and bring a heavy promise of sugar coma by 8 AM. Eggs and bacon take too much time. Pancakes are for Saturdays. I ponder, I worry, I begin the dance of making sure my children are nourished and prepped for the day ahead and engaged in their classes and set up to achieve! achieve! achieve! and geared for aceing tests and firing on all cylinders to do their very best while providing something at least partially organic, non GMO, sustainably sourced, hand crafted by tiny elves and dear Lord please help me find a meal that can do all these things that will be easy to prepare and throw on the table by 7:20 AM without slaving over a hot microwave!
Then……..
Amidst my toil over trivial things, my husband asks, with a noticeable smirk, “What did your mother make YOU for breakfast when you were in school?”
The man is being a smart aleck. But he is smart and has made his point.
The answer, my friends……
Milkshakes.
Chocolate milk, you ask? Nope. Full blown, non-organic, riddled with antibiotics, full-fat white milk poured into a blender and topped with chemical laden malt powder, tablespoon by heaping tablespoon. Topped with scoop after scoop of full fat, creamy, delicious vanilla ice cream which should have been called ice product or ice dream or ice stuff because it came in a huge plastic gallon vat and ranged in color from gleaming, scary white to ivory to yellow depending on what was on sale at the local IGA that particular week and most likely was. not. actual. ice. cream.
The blender would whir for 10-15 seconds and I’d be left with 20 ounces of thick, delicious, brain-nourishing, gut bubbling wonder.
Before you call Child Protective Services on my mother, let me note she didn’t typically make my milkshakes. So she’s off the hook. She didn’t make mine because she was normally busy making one for herself as she headed out to her own school to teach. If I caught her in time she’d make a double batch. If not, I poured my own ingredients in the blender and considered myself an extremely responsible, highly resourcesful, borderline chef pre-teen.
Not to mention incredibly bone dense.
In hindsight, it wasn’t a horrible breakfast. Calcium, minerals, vitamins, fat, whatever weird things malt powder provides. All in all, it could have been worse. I think…….
Bottom line, I was fed and made it through to lunch most days. Looking back, the hangry state that seemed to occur during 10 AM French class was likely due to insanely high and then absurdly low blood sugar. Not to worry because one single solitary dollar bought me whatever World’s Best Chocolate fundraiser bar was being sold from whichever band/volleyball/yearbook/choir classmate happened to be selling them at the time. Problem solved and blood sugars soaring until lunch.
Given this incredible parenting advice I just gifted you (For free. You’re welcome.) I msut now add a disclaimer to this little story. I was NOT a National Merit Scholar, nor Valedictorian. Or even Salutorian for that matter. Keep scrolling through top ten percent, twenty percent and downward and you’ll find me nestled somewhere in the middle of the pack. However, I DID graduate high school and that counts for something in my book. At this point in parenting, high school graduation is my pie in the sky, crazy pipe dream. Fifth grade, fourth grade, and first grade are tough in their own right so finishing senior year is looking pretttttttty good right now.
In fact, I might just be satisfied with eighth grade graduation at this point.
So, if you’re on the struggle bus for nourishing meals and you’re stressing about organic versus questionable sourcing, just remember there’s a lady whose mother willingly let her consume milkshakes for breakfast. Every. Day. Aside from a nearly crippling addiction to World’s Finest Chocolate bars and the inability to not stress over everything, she’s doing a-okay.
So, go dust off your blender, order a vat of Carnation Malt from Amazon and splurge on some ice cream. The scarier white the better.