My mom was a health food nut before it was cool, which
meant, as the third child, I was an unwilling participant in eating healthy
from birth.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m very thankful for this fact
now, but there were times when I considered it extremely unfair that my friends
got Froot Loops for breakfast and I was eating Grape Nuts with wheat germ
sprinkled on top. I am not making that up.
She wasn’t a crazy militant “organic” nut; she just made
sure that the things we ate were made with actual food products. We were not
subjected to carob chips and we didn’t sacrifice our backyard and compost our
own dung to attempt a “sustainable” gardening lifestyle. We shopped at the
regular grocery store, but you could be damn sure we weren’t buying any soda or
Pop Tarts. The bread was whole wheat and the juices were 100% juice.
Now that I’m a parent, I totally understand where she was
coming from, and I’m grateful for how she fed us. My boys are not as grateful,
but they will be some day, if they ever have kids of their own. They see their
friends drinking neon-blue Gatorade and complain to me about my rules –
specifically my food and drink color rule – if you can find me anything that
grows in nature that is that same color, and then you can prove to me that they
used that food to create the color, then you can have it. If they used sodium
hydrochloric dimethyl acetate to make that color, you’re out of luck, kid.
Call me crazy, but I don’t think drinks should glow in the
dark. I really believe that a lot of our health and allergy problems in this
country can be attributed to processed foods, lab-enhanced sugars, and food
dyes. Just read the label on a diet soda and think long and hard about whether
aspartic acid and phenylalanine seem like things you really need to add to your
body.
If someone approached you and said, “Hold still while I drip
some aspartic acid and phenylalanine onto your skin,” you would punch them in
the throat. But the Coca-Cola company and our incredibly trustworthy government
say it’s cool to drink it, so we pour it down our throats. Not the best idea,
in my opinion, but I digress.
All things considered, my two sisters and I really didn’t
know any better growing up, and we were perfectly content. That is, until the
fateful morning when frozen concentrated orange juice shined a light on our
mom’s dietary hijinks.
One morning my oldest sister, Jill, took it upon herself to
make the orange juice for the first time. Our mom always bought the frozen
concentrated juice in the cardboard cans with the metal lids that were removed
by pulling on the white plastic sealing ring. Those cans were always a losing
proposition, because when the juice was still frozen solid, there was no way to
get a good grip on the icy plastic seal, but if you let it thaw enough to be
able to open it, you were guaranteed to spill some when the lid came off and
the flimsy cardboard container buckled under the pressure of your grip. Good
times.
So after cleaning up the spill, Jill proceeded to read the
instructions on the can, and made the OJ. Minutes later, my middle sister,
Heidi, and I were drinking the results.
“This is the best orange juice I’ve ever had! What did you
put in this? It’s amazing!”
“Why does this taste so good? You added a bunch of sugar,
didn’t you?”
"No," replied Jill, smiling. "I just didn't
put the yeast in it."
You see, my mom used to add nutritional yeast to the orange
juice. If you are unfamiliar, nutritional yeast is a vile, dirt-like substance
that has the consistency of dandruff and tastes like hay. My entire life, up to
that point, my mom had me convinced that orange juice was supposed to be gritty
and have little brown flakes floating on top of it.
My sister opened Pandora's frozen concentrated orange juice
container that morning, and it was the beginning of the end of my dietary
naïveté. I fear that I accidentally did the same thing with my boys yesterday
morning.
Most mornings, I make them a fruit smoothie. They all love
them, and it's really the only proven method to get a piece of fruit into them
with any regularity. The standard smoothie recipe is one apple, one banana,
some milk, the secret ingredient – Hershey’s chocolate syrup – you heard me,
peaches, strawberries, blueberries, and cherries (without the pits), and a
handful of spinach.
The smoothie turns out to be a pretty gross-looking color of
off-brown, but it’s delicious. Like I said, the boys love them. At least, they
used to.
Yesterday, my brain was obviously malfunctioning, and I
forgot to put the spinach in.
As I poured the smoothies into the cups, the back part of my
brain was casually remarking, “Hmm, this smoothie seems much more reddish-pink
than normal. I guess I put in a lot of strawberries this morning, or something.”
I am an idiot.
Son Number One took a sip and immediately asked me what was
in it. I said the usual. He asked for the ingredient list. I told him. He said,
“So, you put everything in it except the spinach?”
Dammit.
“This smoothie is amazing, Dad! Can we have it like this
every day?”
For years, my wife and I have been a united front, reciting
the same old line - “You can’t taste the spinach.”
Well, apparently you can.
And I’ll bet you can’t guess what happened this morning, can
you?
Yep, this morning they all begged for yesterday’s amazing
smoothie without the vile green weed. Sorry fellas, spinach is back in. “That
was your imagination because of the color. You can’t taste the spinach!”
I’m not going to let up on the healthy eating, but they’re
right. That spinach-less smoothie was pretty damn good!
They should just be happy I’m not adding nutritional yeast
to the recipe.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen
