A DAD’S EYE VIEW Humor by Rick Epstein
The Rules of Brat-Ola Cuisine I
don’t care for fancy restaurants, but my wife, Betsy, loves them. An occasional night out, away from the kids, gives her the illusion that her life is a lot more pleasant than it really is, and I’m for that. On one of those outings, as we dawdled over dessert, she gazed into my eyes and said, “Dear, it’s wonderful eating dinner with somebody who doesn’t throw food on the floor.” “ Thanks!” I said, glad of the recognition. But it would be small of me not to note that our food thrower, 18-month-old Baby Wendy, happens to be our best eater. Omnivorous means “eats all,” and she really does. It doesn’t even have to be food. Meat, potatoes, rice, beans, crayons (any color), and “green leafies” (including oak and maple) all find their way into her chubby face. Our older kids, Marie, age 8, and Sally, 5, started out as excellent eaters, but every couple of months something else falls off each girl’s dwindling menu of tolerated foods. It was a sad time when tomato sauce was renounced by Marie and Sally within two days of each other. Now the older girls are each down to three entrees. Not the same three, of course, but they do have one selection in common – spaghetti with white cheese sauce (known in our home as “brat-ola sauce” in honor of those who demand it). Some of Marie’s self-imposed restrictions are ethical. “I wish there was no such thing as meat,” she told me one day. “Then all the animals would be friendly, and you could snuggle with a tiger or a bear just like a stuffed animal.” But whatever the case, the animal kingdom can’t make much of a claim against either child since the tiny amounts of meat they eat wouldn’t require much more than minor surgery. And the girls are no threat at all to the vegetable kingdom. Although both kids are picky, they differ in approach. Marie bargains
hard to determine how little she can eat and still qualify for dessert. However, Sally tries to discredit the food as being “sour” or “rotten,” so she won’t have to eat it. This upsets my wife, who sees food as her love gift to the family. Me? I’m just a prison cook doling out grub to hungerstriking inmates. I’ve seen what happens when you care too much. Last year, a 6-year-old visiting our house wouldn’t eat lunch. We had the right kind of bread (whole-wheat), but the wrong kind of peanut butter (chunky) and the wrong kind of jelly (grape). Her father, after taking inventory of our other provisions, knelt beside her chair and, putting forth a lawyerly line of reasoning, tried to guide her into a selection: “...OK, we’ve established that you like this kind of bread, and yesterday I saw you eating ham...” But his child, sensing where he was going, began shaking her head no without even waiting to hear his summation. My unpersuasive friend had overlooked three principles of brat-ola cuisine: 1. A liking for bread and a liking for ham have no bearing whatever on ham sandwiches. 2. A liking for any particular kind of food is a fleeting and personal thing and should not be inferred no matter how compelling the evidence. 3. The accidental eating of ham on one particular occasion can’t be taken as a promise to eat ham day after day until the end of time. Basic logic is a crude tool for this kind of work. You might as well try to cut the crusts off a sandwich with a lawnmower. On Wednesday evenings, my wife sneaks away to a paying job, so I make dinner -- always spaghetti. The baby can be counted on to eat whatever she doesn’t fling across the room. And the two bigger girls will often choke some of it down after the brat-ola sauce has been applied. Last week, I’d exerted myself to keep them away from any appetite-spoiling snacks and had high hopes for the spaghetti. As I sat down, something white caught my eye. “Why is there ice on your plate?” I asked Sally. “I’m going to eat it!” she said, picking up one of the two cubes and biting at it with her savage little milk teeth. This looked promising! Whether Sally was just experimenting or actually adding something to the list of the acceptable, either action violated a rule of picky eating. And if it could happen with ice, maybe it could happen with peas. But, watching Sally scoot the melting cubes around on her plate and flick drops of water at her sisters, I wised up: She was either playing with her food or had brought toys to the table. In either case, she was totally true to the brat-ola code. Silly me. Rick can be reached at rickepstein@yahoo.com. O R E G O N F A M I LY. C O M • A U G U S T 2 0 2 0
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