Thank so many of you for the positive feedback to last weeks post . . . Reflections, Realizations & Resolutions. I invited at least one of our kids to read the post (after-the-fact) and did not receive such positive comments. Note to Self: Always anticipate mostly negative and/or painfully honest feedback from offspring. In the event such offspring had a point, I would like to clarify a couple of items from last weeks post as follows: Mr. H is, in fact, Mr. Rich Harris. And . . . the names of offspring in last weeks post should have been identified with a disclaimer such as . . . names and events may have been changed for purposes of this post, and may not accurately reflect the actual names and feelings/sentiments of those being represented. It is interesting that inviting such feedback (from my own offspring/kids) can bring such honesty, yet when asked very direct questions such as, “Who broke my favorite coffee mug?” or, “Who put the peanut butter sandwich in the CD player?” you would think they were learned in Navy Seal level evasion and confidentiality.

I am big on family dinners. Fortunately, I love to cook, and most of our household of eight loves to eat. Unfortunately, one of us is a vegetarian (me). This is typically not an issue. I will draw the line at cutting up whole chickens, and I doubt you’ll ever find me fishing in the lobster tank at the local grocer. I prefer non-organic everything . . . I prefer the chicken breasts as large as I can buy them, tomatoes the size of small non-organic watermelon and the tastiest coffee beans that pesticides and bleaching can produce. More often than not, dinner reviews are positive (aside from the repetitive, “please get your elbows off the table,” and “you may want to consider using that napkin instead of your sister’s placemat.”), and leftovers are rarely an option. Occasionally, however, I will labor over what I think is going to be a fantastic dinner, and it will elicit the same sort of painfully honest response as mentioned above (last weeks post). There is safety in numbers, however. And kids seem to have a secret “alert/protection” code when it comes to identifying foreign food that has the potential to collide with taste buds possibly impacted by too much refined sugar. “Thanks for dinner, Mom . . . did I mention that despite telling you for the past three hours that I am starving, I’m not really hungry anymore?” “How much of this do I have to eat to get dessert?” “No offense Mom, but can we never have this again?” Last night was one such painfully honest dinner/night. How bad can hot ham and cheese sandwiches be with a drizzle of mustard, butter and onion? I even left out the poppy seeds because I wanted to avoid possible references to bird food. Now we do have lots of leftovers, and I cannot help but wonder as I write this how to transform a lot of ham and cheese and rolls into something other than ham and cheese and rolls. Perhaps I’ll leave out the drizzle . . . or, perhaps they need just the right amount of vegetarian drizzle. As Molly (may or may not be an alias) would (and has) said, “Can I be full now?”

Shannon Harris