Kid Amnesiac

Despite living in a foodie heaven for eight years, I’m hopelessly disinterested in food. I have my standards and favorites, but I’m about as far as you can get from being a gourmand. It took my layoff to finally get me cooking every night, and while I’m enjoying it, it’s much more about nutrition for me than haut cuisine. In fact, name any cuisine in the world, and I’m guaranteed to prefer the peasant and/or street version to the fancy stuff.

The rest of my family is, to varying degrees, the same way. My oldest brother Steve probably takes it the furthest: he avoids all sauces and condiments, hates spending money to dine out, and can—no joke—happily make a meal out of cereal or Sun Chips. If it fills the hole in his belly and is low in saturated fat, that’s good enough for him.

Matt’s family, on the other hand, cares. I can’t see any of them making a dinner of popcorn or Sun Chips barring depression, illness, or desperation. They’d either consider it nutritionally suspect or devoid of all the fun you are supposed to get from sitting down to a good meal.

It’s probably too soon to know where Simon falls on this continuum, but he gave me  a pretty good idea last week when he told me what he was going to dream about.

“I’m going to dream about eating purple ice cream (acai berry frozen dessert from Ce Fiore) . And M&Ms (potty-training staple). And fruit bars. And chicken nuggets. And grapes. And fish crackers. And slices of cheese. And opameal (sic). And juicy pears. [winsome breath] And crunchy apples …. And lemonade. And chocolate milk. And orange juice …. “

The litany only ended when he became cross with me for laughing at him. He’s very sensitive about being laughed at and equally suspicious of the “laughing with you” explanation. Pride has kicked in with a vengeance.

I went to bed myself that night wondering who on earth dreams of food? And then it dawned on me that just the week before Jim (aka Papaw) told us all about a dream in which he judged a pie-eating competition. I can assure you that no member of my immediate family has ever or will ever have such a dream. I’m thinking that Simon may have something more than popcorn and undressed salads in his future.