Why Do I Even Try?

One of the things I find cute and feminine about Mormon Utah homemakers is the fancy Sunday dinner. Traditionally it's roast and potatoes along with a salad containing a much larger variety of vegetables than my traditional iceberg lettuce ones, and homemade bread of some sort. And it's always followed by some tasty and made-from-scratch dessert, such as color-coordinated cupcakes on a fancy pedestal. Seriously, how domestic is the woman who makes a meal like that for her adoring hubby and children?

Today I became that woman.

While Bryn napped and Nate and Addison were at the Instacare winning the boy a diagnosis of pink eye and an ear infection, I donned my flowered apron and made - from scratch - a delicious and beautiful lasagna. I even managed to cleverly disguise fresh spinach in it by painstakingly chopping it into microscopic pieces and strategically distributing it throughout. And that's not all. I then conjured up some beautiful, fluffy white rolls, using the recipe my mom and grandma always used.

On the side we had homemade applesauce which I slaved over in a hot and sticky kitchen for days on end this past October, and fresh pineapple.

The long and short of it is: I = awesome.

Nate helped the kids into their seats as I helped their plates and cooled their food. Nate gave a very heartfelt and Sunday dinner-appropriate prayer while I squinted through half-closed eyes and hissed at the children to stop eating before the prayer was done.

We dug in and Nate praised the perfection that it was. The children ate a roll each ravenously, and then came the turning point of the meal. Bryn discovered her pineapple and decided to eat nothing else, ever, for the rest of her life. I begged, I pretended to be an airplane, I pried open clenched jaws, I attempted to explain that "if you eat a minute speck of lasagna, then you can have a twelfth helping of pineapple." I actually did get her to take two tiny bites, but she was done.

Meanwhile, Addison's typical dinner consisting of the milk in his sippy cup had long-since run out and he was bellowing for more. I bellowed back that after he ate his food he could have more milk. Apparently pink eye enhances vision to the level of seeing sub-atomic-sized particles, because he began to comment on the"green things" and how he doesn't like green things. I told an outright fib and said that it was spices that made the sauce not taste like tomatoes, which he REALLY doesn't like. He whined, he squirmed, he stood up, he sat down, he put his knees up to his chin, he "had to go to the bathroom," he welcomed the prospect of going to time out.

After voicing my frustration over our ungrateful children to Nate, I angrily banged the dishes as I cleared them from the table where Addison still sat, unexcused. Then I got a brilliant idea, I'd eat a cupcake in front of him. He knew that if he ate his food, he could have one too. So I made a big deal out of the deliciousness of the cupcake (which was not color-coordinated OR on a pedestal, and came from a box, thankyouverymuch) and savored the first three bites until he started telling me how cupcakes are yucky and he doesn't like sprinkles and then proceeded with the gagging/spitting sounds that I know all too well. So I left and finished eating the cupcake that I was too full and too grumpy to enjoy anyway.

I now see the wisdom in our typical Sunday meals growing up. We did not do the Utah "outdo yourself" type of meal. Don't get me wrong, my mom is a fantastic cook. Where do you think I learned to whip out a homemade lasagna, after all. Sunday is just a beast. It's stressful, everyone's home, and things tend to get a little wild. We had either Dinty Moore beef stew or grits every week. It always bewildered me because my Mom doesn't even like grits. But the rest of us happily scarfed down the grits (or the beef stew, as the case may have been) as she quietly ate a piece of toast and a fried egg.

So perhaps we will have macaroni and cheese and hot dogs every Sunday for the rest of our lives. Or maybe I'll buy some fancy device that chops spinach so small that it actually is invisible. I might just give up on feeding my children vegetables entirely and just let them get scurvy and see how they like that. Either way, I'm now going to go eat Addison's cupcake.