food

Summer Vacation, Day 81: Trevor’s Malt

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

We picked Betsy up at the airport this morning, then took the older boys to tai chi, and finally, to lunch at Annie’s Parlor in Dinkytown. Had burgers and fries, of course, except Emma, who had chicken fingers, and Trevor, who ordered a corn-dog. Once we had eaten more than our daily allowance of calories, we ordered two ginormous malts for the table to share. Hot fudge and wild blueberry. So good.

Trevvy wound up with blueberry and insisted upon using his straw, not the spoon. As a result, as he put it, “This ice cream is going down reawwy slow!”

Brendan finished his hot fudge and asked if there was blueberry left. There wasn’t – but I suggested that he might help Trevor finish his. Trevor, however, was showing no signs of letting up – until he decided he needed to use the restroom. I went with him.

When we returned to the table, Trevor took one look at his malt cup and said, “Hey! Who drank some of my malt?”

No one thought he’d notice. Everyone laughed.

Now, Trevor considers Bren his best buddy, and Emma is closest to him in age, so he has made it known that Gabe is his “last favorite.” He scowled, turned his squinty gaze to Gabriel and asked, “Gabe! Why did you drink my malt?”

“I didn’t!” said Gabe, and Brendan roared with laughter. “No, Trevvy – I did it!” he said.

Trevor looked at Bren, then a smile broke across his face. “Is it okay that Brendan had some?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Trevvy.

Gabe decided to test him further. “Actually, Trevor, it was me!”

The look of anger was instant and unmistakable on Trevor’s face. His buddy Brendan was fine, but not Gabe. Never Gabe. We all laughed again, and Brendan reiterated that he had, in fact, been the culprit.

* * * * *

Trevor finished with what Bren had left him, and he used his straw the entire time. We warned him he wouldn’t be able to get the blueberries out of the bottom of the glass, but he proved us wrong.

We all watched as a great gob of blue traveled slowly up the straw to half-way and stop. “See, Trevvy?” I started to say, but he was focused, his cheek drawing deeply inward.

Suddenly the berry burst loose, upward into his mouth, exploding into a delicious grin.

Summer Vacation, Day 58: Emma at Work

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Today was Rose’s day at work with Dad. Sure sign of a great day pending: I start the car just as Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Over the Rainbow/Wonderful World” medley comes on the radio. Nice.

She spent the day making multicolored paper snowflakes and drawings for the women in my office. We had lunch at Annie’s Parlor in Dinkytown with our good friend Haircut Cate. Emma loves Annie’s fries and chocolate-mint malts, with chunks of the fancy brown and green chocolate mints your sometimes find on your pillow in hotels – so good!

Throughout the day, Emma out-SlugBugged me two to one – she had six to my three before she finally fell asleep on the way home. All in all, a lovely day with our girl …

Summer Vacation, Day 32: Big Breakfast!

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

We all try to pitch in with a meal and drinks and stuff when we descend on Jodi’s folks’ house, so this morning we made breakfast: chocolate-chip-banana pancakes (with a splash of vanilla), eggs (scrambled and “cowboy” – what the young’ns call “over-easy”), bacon and orange juice.

I think there were seventeen mouths to feed; I cooked roughly a dozen and a half eggs, two pounds of bacon and nearly a gallon of pancake batter; and Jodi poured a gallon of oranges juice and multiple glasses of milk, to boot. We ran short on bacon; I cut up and browned a leftover bratwurst, and someone ate a cold chicken leg.

Left-overs? Three pancakes. All in all, we gauged it pretty well.

Meditation on the Unity of All Things

/ J. Thorp / 4 Comments

So we’re eating dinner as a family, a rice, broccoli and cheddar concoction with beef. Quite tasty – even the kids seemed to enjoy it! Jodi and I were taking turns asking the kids what they liked best. Gabe is a broccoli hound, so of course, he said the green stuff.

“Gabe,” I said, “do you like rice, too?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Cheese?”

“Yeah.”

“What about dirt and sunshine?”

Gabe twisted his face into a question mark. “Huh?”

“Isn’t that what broccoli is? Broccoli takes nutrients from dirt and energy from the sun to grow – so aren’t you eating dirt and sunshine?”

Gabe grinned. “Yeah!”

I turned to Brendan. “And it’s that way with all plants. So if cows eat plants, isn’t beef dirt and sunshine, too?”

“Yup!” said Brendan.

“And if we eat broccoli and beef, aren’t we also dirt and sunshine?”

And then I stopped. I was acting silly, of course. But then I looked at Bren and Gabe laughing together. And at Trevor, smiling back at me.

Dirt and sunshine.

And the next morning, I watched Emma walking to the bus in her girlie clothes and grubby shoes …

And me. And you, even.

What are any of us except dirt and sunshine?