By: Sarah Bloom, Lifestyle Writer
My son Hunter loves to take chocolate sandwich cookies and put them into a glass, cover them with milk, mush them all up and drink it like a shake. I watched him make his favorite snack the other night and couldn’t help but remember the many times I watched my brother do the same thing except instead of cookies he used chocolate chips. He actually got a few of my best girlfriends to start eating this unusual treat after they had tried a sample while staying overnight with me.
Sometimes it amazes me what children and adults will and will not eat or better yet the strange concoctions that they come up with. Hands down my brother will always be the strangest eater I have ever met. You would be hard pressed to find another person who likes taco sauce, mayonnaise and salt and pepper sandwiches. When we were young he used to gross me out every time he decided it was time for a snack. He was undoubtedly born with an iron stomach.
I suppose I had a few of my own weird recipes, but none as drastic as my brother. One of our all time favorite sweet snacks was what we referred to as homemade pixie sticks. We would wait until mom brought home a tub of the kool-aid mix that already has the sugar added to it and then wait till she wasn’t looking. Grabbing a sandwich bag we would quickly dip two or three heaping tablespoons of the tangy powder into our baggie, twist it tightly so it was all shoved into one corner, and then grab a straight pin and poke a few holes in it. We thought we were so clever making our own lollipops until mom would discover how much of the kool-aid we had wasted. That is probably why she rarely bought the pre-sugared kind and stuck with the individual packets. I actually tried to mix one with sugar and eat it like the pre-sweetened powder, but believe me it is not the same.
One of my favorite oddball snacks was peanut butter and pickles on toasted white bread. When I was in the second grade we lived with my Granny while my daddy was building our new house. For some reason she never had any sweet stuff around. No cookies, no candies, no cake…nothing. So I grew very fond of making my peanut butter and pickle sandwiches because at least I got a small amount of sweetness from the peanut butter. Where the pickles fit in that mix I’m not sure, but the sweet and salty mix was just plain good.
My boys vary greatly in their individual likes and dislikes when it comes to food. Well, let me amend that statement just a bit…three of my boys vary greatly when it comes to their food choices, my oldest son Hunter will eat anything that sits still long enough. I have literally seen him out eat two grown men, hands down. His twin, Levi, is my pickiest eater and my skimpiest eater. My eight year old, Luke, will not eat any kind of nut unless it is pulverized into peanut butter and he hates corn with a passion. The child could single out a kernel of corn in an entire pot of vegetable soup, but he loves popcorn…go figure. My baby is a fairly decent eater. Out of all of my boys he has been the only one who has really loved fruits and vegetables at an early age. Grapes and strawberries are his favorites, but we found out Sunday that beets make him gag.
I have always been told that opposites attract and my husband and I are a perfect example. There have probably never been two more opposite people than us. We differ in everything from the temperature in the house to how clean we keep our vehicles to who we vote for on Election Day. Our food choices are no exception. For example, he says I make him sick by eating the fat on the bacon slices. When we get to eat breakfast out at a restaurant he will meticulously pick every piece of fat off his bacon slices and lay them aside. It grosses him out because I will grab them and eat them. When I tell him he is weird for wasting the best part of the bacon he always comes back with, “Well, I’m sorry if I wasn’t raised on squirrel and rabbit and whatever creature crossed the yard.” To which I simply smile at him sweetly, call him a wimp, and crunch my bacon fat a little louder.
God made us each different and individual for a purpose. After all, they say variety is the spice of life no matter what kind of dish you are sprinkling it on! Have a blessed week everyone and remember, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” 2 Corinthians 5:7.