The New Family Pie Baker

I think I am about to cede my title as the family pie baker to my youngest son. Look what he made in the last week, with only minor consultation from me on how thin to roll out the crusts. (The first one is apple, the second pecan.) Need I add that both were delicious? And with crusts that a professional pastry chef would be proud to serve. Maybe this is what being teenage-boy hungry and no soccer practice to tire him out does.

Pinchos Morunos

Didn't these come out looking good? And they tasted even better.
We discovered pinchos morunos when living in Spain. They are pork kebabs marinaded in spices--I have seen it translated as "Moorish pork kebabs" but the Moors, being Muslim, did not eat pork. I guess it's a uniquely Spanish blending of two cultures. The grumpy butcher near our house used to sell them uncooked. It was my "easy" dinner: pick up some pinchos morunos, broil them and cook up some rice, make a salad and that was it.
My older son picked pinchos morunos to make as his meal over the holidays. He did the whole thing! I only collaborated on checking if the kebabs were done (we broiled them). I really like this recipe from Joyce Goldstein's book, Tapas: Sensational Small Plates from Spain. Here it is as published in the SF Chronicle:

Pinchos Morunos
1/2 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp. pimenton dulce
2 Tbsp. toasted cumin, ground
1 tsp. pimenton picante or cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp. saffron threads, crushed and infused in 2 Tbsp. hot water
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 lbs. boneless pork shoulder or tenderloin, cut in 1-inch cubes (we used loin)
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground pepper
2 Tbsp. minced garlic
Chopped flat leaf parsley
4 Tbsp. lemon juice
Lemon wedges
In a small pan over low heat, warm the dry spices in the olive oil. Transfer to a bowl and cool the mixture completely. Rub mixture on the cubed meat. Toss in salt, pepper, garlic, parsley, and lemon juice. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Soak bamboo skewers in water for 30 minutes.
Preheat broiler or make a charcoal fire. Threat meat on skewers and broil or grill until done, about 4 minutes per side. Serve with lemon wedges.

The Baker Guy

My younger son produced these yesterday, with minimal input from me. He has been wanting to bake these since we got our Christmas tree last week. I think gingerbread people are part of his Christmas ritual, so I'm glad he knows how to bake them now.
I told my boys that this vacation I want some more participation in meal preparation, ideally for them to choose a dish they like and cook it for dinner (with me as helper if they want). To my surprise they agreed with no complaints. The older one said he wants to cook Pinchos Morunos, a favorite from Spain that we recently found a recipe for. It's chunks of pork loin marinated in paprika and spices and broiled. The younger one wanted to know if baking TWO batches of gingerbread people would count as a meal. I said no.

Since I'm Procrastinating, I Might As Well Bake!

I'm supposed to be studying for my Chinese and Second Language Acquisition finals, but I was suddenly seized with a longing to bake bread. I know at least one other person who does this form of procrastination (and she managed to finish a PhD, so it can't be all bad!). My baked good of choice was whole wheat bread, specifically King Arthur Flour's No-Knead 100% Whole Wheat Bread. This is a nice website with lots of recipes; I've made their pizza dough and now this bread. The bread is very very easy to make and the only kneading you do is 3 minutes in the mixer. (I don't have a stand mixer so I used my electric mixer and it really put it to the limit. Next time I will try the food processor with the dough blade.) I love sites like this with user comments, so I can see what worked for other people and what didn't or whether to even bother. Thanks to the comments I let the dough rise a lot longer than recommended. I let it rise for 1 hour at room temperature, then 6 hours in the fridge, then another hour at room temperature. Next time I will try overnight in the fridge, which several bakers said gave it a richer flavor. I had to bake it for a total of 55 minutes, which is 10 minutes longer than recommended (since it was still cool from the fridge).
The flavor: Excellent toasted with cheese, divine toasted with butter and honey. We ate the whole loaf in less than 24 hours. My youngest son--the one who likes to cook--came into my office that night and wanted to bake another loaf right then and there! He doesn't really know about yeast bread and rising, so now's the time to teach him. We were out of white whole wheat flour (this gives the bread a lighter texture than regular whole wheat flour) so I managed to stave him off till later this week. Now I've procrastinated some more by writing my blog. Back to studying.
(Addition, Thursday Dec. 10: My son baked this bread, and we left it overnight in the fridge for about 14 hours and then 1 hour at room temp. before baking. The texture was better this time and the mixing went better with the food processor. We like the molasses sweetener best.)

I just had to add this photo of the BLT sandwich I made from our second loaf of this bread. It was really really good.

The Halloween Report

Around 150 trick-or-treaters.
In the creativity dept., no real stand-outs, but some very cute tiny tots: Princess Jasmine, Super Girl, and Minnie Mouse.
Pulled in our pumpkins around 9 pm, when candy was gone.
This was the first year our youngest didn't go trick-or-treating. He didn't seem to feel too sad about it. He watched a football game with my husband while I gave out the candy. Older one is off with some friends. I don't know if they are trick-or-treating or hanging out at his friend's house playing ping-pong or....what. I guess we'll find out. Or not.

First Flight Lesson

It is very satisfying to be able to give someone something you know they will love. My husband and I had the chance to give our son an introductory flight lesson for his 14th birthday. At least, that's what I called it. My son called it "my first flight lesson." Note what that implies.
Anyway, it was as thrilling as he thought it would be. He had a wonderful flight instructor from Oakland Flyers who was chatty and warm. He and my son did the whole pre-flight check together, while I took photos, then they walked me back to the terminal and they flew over the Bay in a tiny 152 Cessna 2-seater for an hour. My son got to handle the controls (the pilot did, too) and take photos from 2,000 feet up. After many his hours on the Flight Simulator game, my son knew pretty much what all the controls on the dashboard were. In fact, during the pre-flight check, the pilot said, "I'm not so sure you need me." But a revelation to my son was the actual physical feel of the yoke, the wind pulling on the plane, and how much force it took to hold the plane steady. He said his arms were tired after the flight (and I don't think he's ever heard of Henny Youngman). All evening he was reliving the experience, like what the fog looked like from above, what the control towers said to them, and how it was a little choppy coming in for the landing, and what a good job the pilot did bringing it down with a little plunk. My husband and I got several extra hugs that evening, and the statement, "That was the best present I have ever had and I will remember it for the rest of my life."

It's a "Promotion"

Technically when you finish 8th grade, it's not a graduation, but a promotion. Everyone except the principal calls it a graduation, though. Whatever you call it, the ceremony is the same: "Pomp and Circumstance," speeches, handing out diplomas, leis, and lots of picture-taking. My youngest son is now officially finished with middle school. Hallelujah! I can't say I was really much in the mood for looking backward--I think we're all happy to leave middle school behind, my son included. Despite some great experiences--like hangin' with his best friend Sam (see photo above), playing in the band, playing soccer and futsal, and discovering that he is good at math--my son doesn't have much nostalgia for his middle school years.
Most of us don't. I don't actually remember much of middle school--although we called it junior high back then. Some snapshots do linger in my mind: choreographing dance routines in the gym, my perky adorable 7th grade PE teacher, my best friend Kari in 8th grade, the purple and white costumes the cheerleaders wore. My lack of cohesive memories may be due to having gone to 3 different schools in 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. I was eager to go to high school and at least have 3 years at one school.
I hope my own negative feelings about middle school didn't rub off on him too much. Now that we're done with it, I can confess something: I almost couldn't make it through his and his brother's Back-To-School-Nights each September. After sitting through two or three classes I began to feel an overwhelming urge to scribble on the walls with a permanent marker; I sometimes had to duck out of the last few classes. The nearly universal scolding tone of the teachers and something oozing out of those institutional walls unleashed in me a desire to break the rules. I'm kind of amazed he made it through all three years with only a few trips to the counselor's office.
Onward to high school!
(Okay, here's the whole photo. I don't usually post photos of my kids but ... this time I did. The lady in the flowered coat is a totally awesome social studies teacher, Ms. Lucero. Read my shout out to her.)

First Place

When my oldest son was five or six, he used to take Acrosports near Kezar Stadium. His favorite thing to do after the class was go across the street and run a lap around the track. I think he liked this part even more than the gymnastics class. It was important that I watched him the whole time he ran, and he liked it when I cheered for him when he made it to the finish line. I remember watching his short legs pumping as he receded from me, getting smaller and smaller. It was strange and unsettling to see the little speck that was him moving way across the track when he was farthest from me, because in fact that was about the farthest he had ever been from me, by himself. But I knew he would stick to the track and round the curve to return to me, coming in first place every time. He never told me what was going through his head as he ran, but I imagined that it was a vision of crowds cheering "Go, go!"
Fast forward to ten years later. My son is competing in the All-City high school track meet at Kezar Stadium. He has the fastest frosh-soph times going into two races. He wins them both, easily. At least, he makes it look easy. But I know those grueling training runs of five and ten miles, sprints up Kirkham steps, and interval training all spring weren't easy, because when he came home from them he would grunt, drop his backpack and fall on the couch, only to wake up when dinner was ready. I missed the last race of the meet, the 4x400 relay. He was the anchor for the frosh-soph team, and I heard how they were in 2nd place after the third leg, but he pulled ahead and while the whole track team chanted his name, ran to first place. Not many of our dreams get realized so concretely, in the very spot where we first dreamed them.
He did come back to me after winning the race, and let me take his picture with his medal. He was happy about winning but didn't make his ultimate goal, to beat the meet record. He has already decided what his goal is for next year, when he runs varsity: make it to the state finals. That's what you do after you realize a dream: dream up the next dream. And go off to hang out with your friends.

A 5-Pound Bundle of Joy

Meet the newest member of our family, baby Ireland. My 8th grader's teacher assigned everyone in the class a 5-pound bag of flour to haul around for a week and treat like a baby. You 've probably heard of this assignment, designed to give teenagers a glimpse of what having a real baby would be like. Before I knew it, I was making Ireland a sling and asking my son how baby Ireland slept last night. It was kind of spooky how easy it was to slip into the role of Grandma. My son took on fatherhood with grace. He made a little diaper for Ireland out of construction paper and a plastic bag, and wouldn't even leave the baby alone downstairs while he did his homework. On the ride home from school on Monday, he and his friend made sure Ireland had a seatbelt around him. In math class, the kids put all the flour babies on a table together for a "playdate," and they worked out a complicated genealogy for the babies among their friends. Later in the week, they were going to have to wake up at 3-hour intervals and email the teacher to verify their "feedings."

But today, my son came home without baby Ireland. His science teacher had called off the project. Apparently some mean boys got hold of the babies and destroyed 8 of them, creating a big mess in the hallway with the 40 pounds of flour. They were caught, fortunately, and had to clean it all up. My son was disappointed, but resigned, almost as if he found the boys' behavior inevitable. There has been an epidemic of egging incidents at schools so I guess he wasn't surprised. I find the idea of boys destroying the babies disturbing and discouraging, but I treated it lightly with him. For him, it was a game anyway, and he took away from it what he was supposed to: if you're not mature enough to take care of a 5-pound bag of flour, you're not mature enough to take care of a baby.

Unique New York

I took a lot of photos on our one week trip to New York, but this is one of my favorites, in the East Village. The weather was wintry--cold, windy and wet--but the trees were blossoming and there were daffodils and tulips in all the little pocket parks. My sons had never been there (okay, the older one had when he was 18 months old) so the trip was really for me and my mom and her husband to show them the city. If you've spent time in New York, you have your favorite things about it that you want to show someone else. But ultimately the greatest experience in New York is to discover it for yourself. Thus the highlight of my sons' trip was the afternoon when they took off on their own with their Metrocards, cell phones and maps. I'm still not sure exactly what they did, but I know it involved criss-crossing subway rides, a walk through Central Park, running into one of their teachers in Grand Central Station, and buying knock-off sunglasses from a street vendor. The rest of their afternoon remains private to them, but I like to think that some time in the future they will get to show someone else something they discovered that day.

We were supposed to stay in a penthouse apartment in Chinatown but through some unfortunate events at the last minute we ended up in the West 50s off 10th Avenue. The new place was much less luxurious than where we were supposed to stay--and half the price--but we took advantage of our location to explore 9th Avenue, which has a ridiculous number of good restaurants for extremely modest prices. I actually spent less on meals than I had expected! Also we turned out to be a few minutes' walking distance from the U.S.S. Intrepid (which was high on my younger son's list of sight-seeing attractions), Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center, and Times Square. So, as my younger son would say, "It's all good."

I had time to think about some of my own experiences living in New York more than 20 years ago, especially since I insisted we visit my college. It doesn't really feel like "mine" anymore, and yet I was surprised at how much I remembered about navigating the city and the subway. New York has changed, but the things that make it unique really haven't changed that much.

Trip to San Jose

My youngest son was recommended by his band teacher for an honor band at a conference for music educators. So off we went to San Jose for a day and a half. He played music for seven hours on Friday, while I wandered around the city and brought him food at intervals. I made two trips to Bijan bakery, which I had read about online, and savored every buttery crumb of my pastry and foamy drop of my cappuccino each time. The photo above is the new San Jose city hall. There are a lot of new buildings, pedestrian walkways, and public art in San Jose. I never knew the two 1968 Olympic athletes below were from SJ State.
On Saturday my son rehearsed some more, and then played a concert Saturday afternoon. The concert was stunning and the parents and the gathered music teachers gave the student musicians a standing ovation. When my son came back to our hotel on Friday night, he was humming the themes from the pieces they played, and kept describing his favorite moments in the Mahler excerpt. He told me he had never played in an ensemble where everyone was that good. The day after we came home, he had downloaded the entire Mahler symphony that the excerpt was from onto his mp3 player. I think the best thing about the whole experience for my son was that he discovered Mahler.
For me the best part was planning what I was going to do in San Jose for a whole day by myself. I had no one else to accommodate (except meeting my son for lunch). There's not a lot to see in San Jose, but after researching the options, I chose the Hakone Gardens and the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, both places devoted to aesthetic and spiritual contemplation.
The Hakone Gardens were completely empty at 10 am on a Friday, nothing was in bloom except one tiny pink blossom on a plum tree. The scene was wintry and austere; there's a word in Japanese to describe this quality but I don't remember what it is. It's not a big garden, but it exerts a powerful effect. It is a place that demands slowing down, looking closely, listening, smelling.
The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum took me back thousands of years in the planetarium show about the links between astrology, astronomy, and the Mithraic religion. The collection of Egyptian artifacts in the museum is surprisingly rich, presented with a slightly more spiritual focus than a traditional museum: how people worshiped, what they believed, how the concept of the divine and of beauty evolved through different periods. I loved the items from the Amarna period of Ahknaten.
At night my son and I went to the outdoor spa at the hotel. As I leaned back into the heated water, I looked up and saw the constellations I had just seen on the planetarium ceiling: Orion, Taurus, Perseus. They are no longer central to our lives; we hardly notice them now. But I was glad to look up and be able to see them that night. And after he read the info about San Jose that our hotel room provided, my son told me why I was able to see those constellations: the city of San Jose is one of the first cities to use yellow sodium street lights to cut down on light pollution (in part because of the nearby Lick Observatory).
By the time we left on Saturday, I was beginning to get a little fond of San Jose.

Favorite Quote

This is what my eighth-grader wrote on one of his high school applications that asked for a favorite quote:
"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
French pilot/explorer/author

It's one of the most famous quotes from The Little Prince, which I'm pretty sure he's never read. So I went and asked him how he found it. He had read about Saint-Exupéry in a book about real-life harrowing adventures, and the pilot part caught his attention (since he's really into aviation). So he Googled Saint-Exupéry and found out more about him, and found the quote.

Reading this, and his application essay, I found out a bit more of what goes on inside his head. There's a lot going on in there, and I only know a smaller and smaller piece of it. And I get the feeling that's just how he likes it. Maybe that's one of the reasons he chose this quote.

Big Day at the Founders' Cup

I admit I was resentful about it: a soccer tournament, in Morgan Hill, Saturday AND Sunday, two weeks before Christmas, after their season was already over? But we went along with it. We had to leave the house at 7:30 am this morning, and weather was predicted to be in the 30s. We got there an hour early and stood around sleepily until it was time for them to play. The Scorpions (my younger son's soccer team) played their game, and they played really really well, even missing three key players. And they won! Yes, it was very very cold, but I wore my down jacket. We had a 3-1/2 hour break until the second game, so my husband and I and our son had a delicious, peaceful and restorative lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant, then we hit the premium outlets in Gilroy and bought pants, shoes, belts, and some secret items. We saw quite a few people we recognized from the soccer complex at the outlets. Back to the fields for the second game, which the Scorps also played really really well. They worked really hard, had some brilliant plays, took chances, got knocked down, and knocked some other players down. They won again! It was very exciting. Even though they still have one more game to play on Sunday, this means they go on to the quarter finals, next weekend. Oh.

Youth soccer is insane, my husband and I decided long ago. Mostly because of the parents. And yet there are some endearing things about it, like the kids, and even, sometimes, the parents. At a tournament like this (not a select or elite level, but strictly recreational, class 4) the families are not just from one ethnicity or one socio-economic group. There are teams from all over Northern California. We played Hayward and Napa, and tomorrow is Manteca. A parent from Modesto gave us some tips on what our players should and shouldn't have for lunch. At the end of our second game, one of the Napa parents came over to ask who were the parents of player #17. I hesitated a moment (was she going to complain his flying elbows?), but it turned out she was grateful that he paused on the field to check on her son, who was down. She appreciated his concern. Player #17's parents weren't there, but we made sure the compliment got passed on.

Happiness is...

...getting your favorite number on your new soccer jersey.

What Boredom Brings One To

One of my sons (the trumpet playing one) took apart all three of his trumpets and gave them all a bath in the bathtub. He assures me that this is the proper way to clean one's trumpets.
The other son (the chicken tikka masala making son) wanted to cook chicken tikka masala, but since we didn't have the ingredients, he made homemade vanilla ice cream and homemade chocolate cookies, and put them together as homemade chocolate ice cream sandwich cookies.

Just another day in the midst of the Unstructured Summer Experiment.

The Middle School Band

This year I'm the band parent for our middle school band. We have lots of band families--nearly 200 of them--who work the carwash and the bake sales and send in checks and chaperone the field trips. They are great, and constantly surprise me with their generosity. But I'm the one who sends out all the emails, writes the fundraising letters, and coordinates with the band teacher. To be honest, it's more work than I thought it would be. But then it's something I support unequivocally. I have no mixed feelings about it. The band is great! Participating in band has been a huge part of both my sons' experience in middle school. And the band teacher gives 150 percent every day to his students, and often more.
On Friday, the band teacher took the advanced band, all 55 of them, down on a charter bus to a high school in San Mateo to play in the CMEA festival. There ended up just being three adults chaperoning: me, a woman whose son wasn't even in the advanced band but just wanted to help, and a stepmother of one of the band members who toted along her two-month-old baby in a snuggly. See what I mean about the generosity?
At the festival, the band played for judges who rated them and then gave them a mini-workshop on improving their performance of the pieces they had just played. The students were a little cowed walking through an unfamilar high school, and stared enviously at the swimming pool in the center of the suburban campus (as did I!). But once they started warming up they were their usual focused, distracted, wise-cracking, serious, giggling selves--in short, that whole mix of contradictions that middle schoolers are. The only mishap was the student who discovered he had brought the broken baritone horn and couldn't play. Their performance for the judges was crisp and energized, and they earned a unanimous superior rating. We were all proud.
I watched them get off the bus back at our school at the end of the day. They are all shapes and sizes, some midway through their growth spurts, some eagerly awaiting them. Long hair, short hair, short and pudgy, tall and awkward, sagging, too-short pants--it's all there. Mostly the girls are poised and seem several years ahead of the boys in maturity. (The important word here is "seem.") But each of them already looked a bit more mature than they had in the morning, getting on the bus. They looked like they had accomplished something and it felt pretty good.

Paper Hearts

My older son and I had a rocky evening recently. From my perspective, he was being uncommunicative and rude, answering my questions in the least number of syllables possible and giving every verbal and nonverbal sign that he thought my questions were stupid. From his perspective, I was nagging him and treating him like I thought he was incapable of taking care of himself. Typical teenager-mom thing. The last straw was when I had the audacity to suggest that he eat his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich 45 minutes before his event at the track meet. He growled some reply, and I stomped off into the office, and my husband had to come in and remind me who was the adult here. Not my best moment. But other than his compliments on my cooking (which I do like and which definitely works to keep me turning out the meatloaf and fried chicken and cherry pies) and him consuming every scrap of food that I prepare him, I'm not getting a lot of appreciation.
Then today I was cleaning out a box in the garage and found an envelope addressed to me from his old nursery school. I dumped it out on the ping-pong table and a pile of colored paper hearts poured out. They all said "To Mom From _____." Actually quite a few said "To Mom and Dad" but the great bulk of them were to me. My own heart caught for a moment. I was showered with valentines "To Mom", "To Mom", "To Mom" that I had forgotten in the ensuing 12 years. These hearts did not represent one day's worth of work. These were days' and days', perhaps weeks', worth of cutting and writing. They were an expression of love and a practice of his new skills, over and over again. And in fact, that's how my son does things. All out, one hundred percent, over and over until he has mastered whatever it is and exhausted that particular vein of inspiration. And then on to the next thing. I was really happy to see those hearts. They remind me that even when he's fighting with me, he's saying he loves me and practicing skills at the same time. Practicing breaking away, asserting his independence from me. It's a skill that takes a lot of practice.

The Hug

Today I was dropping my son off at middle school and I saw a boy who had gone to the same elementary school as my son. He was hanging out in front of school, along with a bunch of other kids. Every time I see this boy--and it's only two or three times a year, now--he comes over with a big smile and says hi and gives me a big hug. Today was no exception. It's not because I'm friends with his parents, since I don't know his parents. He is not of the same ethnic or cultural background that I am, which doesn't matter except that it could have been a reason for him to feel distant from me. It's not because he and my son were really good friends; they were in a few classes together, but that's all. Maybe it's because I volunteered in the classroom and the library a lot at the elementary school, so he got used to seeing me around. But this is a seventh grader I'm talking about. I mean, my own son doesn't like it when I acknowledge him at school now. But this boy is good-natured, with a sense of humor and a lot of friends. I guess I'm one of them. That hug carried me through the morning on a happy cloud.

(The photo is a red-breasted nuthatch about to eat a french fry at Alpine Meadows. I can't think what it has to do with this post.)

Eight Things Meme

Susan tagged me for this meme. Thanks, Susan! You continue to be an inspiration to me. I have the choice of using her prompts or creating my own. I feel more random today...so these prompts are my own.
1. Today...has not gone as I expected it would go, so far. I had planned to take one car in to the garage but this morning the other car wouldn't start. So it got to go to the garage instead, and luckily my carpool partner got the kids to school. I had planned to go work out at the gym but I had a headache after getting back from dealing with the car so instead I had a big slice of homemade chocolate cake and a cup of decaf vanilla chai tea. Sometimes you just have to change your plans.
2. Yesterday...I worked to make a fancy dinner for my husband's birthday. The only think he told me he wanted was a plate of Serrano ham, which we had as our appetizer. I made lamb chops, polenta, asparagus with olive oil, and the chocolate cake. He loved it. But even better than that, I think, was that he got to watch part of the Barcelona-Celtic soccer game with the boys on TV before dinner. And that Barça won.
3. In the future...I would like to take more risks. Not try to plan everything out. Keep trying new things and accept what comes that I didn't expect. Do the same with my sons.
4. I notice...that there are tiny green threads in my raised bed. I have to restrain myself from popping out there every few hours to see if they are any bigger. At the same time, a seed from this blog seems to have sprouted. Someone I know liked my writing here and asked me to do some editing for them. What a great feeling!
5. I remember...when I was a teenager I resented any confidence my mom wrangled out of me because I felt she would just try to use it to get more information and I wanted to keep everything about me secret, at least from her. Now I know she just wanted to be close to me.
6. I wish...I could find a way to be close to my teenager without intruding on his private space.
7. I don't want...all the birds to get my radishes and chervil before they are an inch high! There are little inch-deep holes in my raised bed that look like someone pushed a stick into the earth--or, rather, a beak. So I put up the bird netting over the anti-cat sticks. What's next? Snails?
8. I want...to be productive , not frenzied. To be loving, not prying. To protect and nuture, not destroy. It's easy to crush fragile seedlings before they've even grown their second set of leaves.

I tag Gail, Marmee, Violeta, and Caroline. You can use my prompts, or Susan's, or your own!

3,000 Calories A Day

Yesterday my older son called me after school to see if he could bring some friends over. Sure, I said. I like it that he and his friends want to hang out at our house. It was lucky that I had gone to the grocery store yesterday because this is what they ate (including breakfast the next day):
1/2 a loaf of bread
The remaining 1/4 of the ginger cake
1 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts
2-1/2 lb. beef roast
1 large green salad
1 lb. of pasta
2 pts. of ice cream
multiple pieces of fruit
4 bowls of cereal
1 gallon of milk
"I think they would have eaten more roast beef," my husband whispered to me at dinner.

In the boys' biology class, they did an exercise where they monitored their caloric intake and used some kind of projection formula to see what they would weigh in a certain number of years. According to the formula, E. (the tallest, and perhaps the slimmist, of the bunch) would weigh something like 300 pounds when was was 40.