Family Time

..."When a family eats together, they make contact with each other. When contact is made, many messages are sent to each family member. Love, caring and support are communicated. This leads to a build up of a trusting family. This in turn communicates respect for the family unit and places importance on the relevance of family. And what follows is the increase of self-esteem in the family." (Focus on the Family)....

There is a member of my family who is a bit of an ontrol-cay eak-fray. It's sort of her defining feature, which is why I may have to lapse into my rusty Latin whenever I make reference to it: She's a freaking ath-may ofessor-pray, and if she knows I have a blog, she's obviously got the brains to find it, you'd think. Anyway, everyday she visits the Kraft Canada site, a reference place set up for those two-income families that have no time to do anything and are going nuts. All you have to do is name three ingredients you have in your cupboard, and presto, it digs up a recipe you can make for dinner. I went there once, but was feeling snarky so typed in:

1. Glass of Chianti
2. Fava beans
3. Human liver

"Sorry, we were unable to find a recipe with those items," the screen read after a totally sweet and endearing search. (Has any one person or thing EVER worked so hard to try and help me before, despite being so little deserving of aid?) (Answer: NO.)

I guess what I want you to glean from the above story is that we're not really the Plan-Our- Meals-Ahead-of-Time kind of people around here. So this morning, I was rather pleasantly surprised to see that Mr. IQ had actually thought about breakfast before he'd gone to bed last night and made a big pan of overnight French toast. High Intensity was beside herself with joy. Her breakfast diet consists almost exclusively of porridge, and I am VERY stingy with the brown sugar. Thus she lives in a state of almost constant sugar deprivation. The knowledge that she was going to have French toast for breakfast had her almost swooning with excitement.

Oh, it was such a nice and thoughtful idea. But choosing a hearty peasant bread fortified with the bold taste of caraway seeds and dill, and delicately blending it with sugar, eggs and a soupcon of vanilla was, most unfortunately, just not going to work. Not that I knew that when I eagerly took my first bite. Oh boy! French toast! Oh boy! Oh boy. Oh.... oh... oh, my holy good lord. It tasted bad. It tasted oh so terribly, horribly, unbelievably bad.

Now, Mr. IQ has a good sense of humour. He really does. Something in his eyes, however, told me that this was one of those mornings where his old humourous self had been replaced by someone who was not in the mood to have his caraway/dill-flavoured French toast criticized and rejected by anyone. This meant I was going to have to lie. I was going to have to lie to save his dignity. I was going to have to lie to save my life.

"Oh ma goo'neth," I said brightly, "thith ith weally goo'!'" I found talking and simultaneously not allowing the bolus of food to touch my taste buds again rather difficult, so I tried making a happy "wow-this- is-so-delicious" noise instead. Unfortunately, my "mmmmmm" came out sounding like a dying man's moan. There was no choice but to swallow. Ugh. There were at least twenty more bites to go. What was I going to do? Luckily, Baby Fangs was crawling around under the table, and I managed to get some of the larger pieces off my plate and into her unprotesting little mouth without him really noticing.

High Intensity, meanwhile, was totally freaking out. (She hasn't learned to read faces yet, a trait she's just going to have to learn if she hopes to stay alive around here.) "UGHGHGH!! THIS IS TERRIBLE!! I HATE THIS !! NOW I'M GOING TO STARVE TO DEATH!!!" she screamed. The disappointment was more than she could take. She collapsed over the table like she had been shot in the stomach. Then she burst into tears.

Like I said, Mr. IQ is usually a big, good-natured bear, but, um, not this morning. Howling with rage, he grabbed what was remaining in the pan, ran into the kitchen, and dumped the entire contents into the garbage. "I can't believe how ungrateful you all are!!" he shouted, "I'm never making breakfast again!!" He did not return to the dining room, and instead stomped off to take a shower. Note: He didn't eat more than one bite of his French toast either. I looked around the room, and broke out into a relieved sweat. With him gone, we would not have to pretend to eat any more of it. Quietly, I cleaned up the remains, and made... oatmeal. High Intensity ate hers in front of the TV watching Elmo, still whimpering a little. Mr. IQ sulkily ate his in front of the computer and I ate mine in the living room. Baby Fangs didn't have any. Instead, she found a secluded, dark corner and in her typically sweet, uncomplaining manner, silently spewed large chunks of caraway/dill French toast on to the floor and stared quizzically at the regurgitated remains.

I don't think Focus on the Family would be very pleased with us.