The grandchildren, incorporating the delicate dance of COVID-19 distancing, have come to visit, bringing with them Marshmallow Fluff, hydrogenated peanut butter, Lucky Charms cereal, Mountain Dew, Ramen noodles and Jell-O. I counter with homemade whole wheat oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (delicious!), orange juice, a huge watermelon and local strawberries.
As these are acquired grandchildren — they’re not mine but my partner’s — I do not remark on their food choices, and two of them (there are 10 in all) eat copious amounts of salad, a proclivity I indulge feverishly. I simply hope they all will survive a childhood of Wonder-like bread, American cheese, Coca-Cola and Cheetos.
Their grandfather, a loving patriarch whom I rescued from just such a diet a mere 18 months ago, relapses entirely in their presence and partakes of hero sandwiches and huge amounts of pizza. But what can you expect from a man whose kitchen sports a large wooden sign reading: “Eat ice cream for daily happiness”?
Don’t get me wrong. I am not a food purist. I can down a family-size bag of salt and vinegar potato chips all by myself. I feel that a container of ice cream — any size — is one portion, and corn dogs and cheap champagne are my idea of culinary heaven. But I try, I really do, to curb these indulgences.
In fact, I sometimes swing too far in the other direction. After purchasing an outsize bag of chia seeds, I began sprinkling them on everything. The first time my partner encountered them he squinted suspiciously at his salad. “I think there’s some sand in my food,” he said. After my short dissertation on the life-giving properties of chia, he reluctantly consumed them. Now, having bought so many, I try to hide them in almost anything, with moderate success.
I’ve also tried to use up the copious amount of steel cut oats I found hiding in a high cupboard, but all of my attempts have not been irresistible. Chocolate chip cookies are very forgiving, but my last attempt at a loaf of yeasted bread, liberally engorged with soaked steel cut oats, elicited this dry remark: “Well, if we can’t eat it, we can use it as a weapon of mass destruction.”
Maybe I make too much of all of this. The grandchildren have a tendency to climb out of an upstairs bedroom window and sit on the roof, like the proverbial fiddler. And the older ones sometimes ride the little ones’ tricycles around and around the outside of the house, ending their trips with death-defying plunges down the steep embankment at the back. I look sideways at my partner, but he just opens up another bag of Doritos for them.
“You are what you eat,” I say, implying they would be calmer if he’d only feed them some celery.
He smiles and reminds me that I can down an entire Baby Watson Cheesecake at one sitting.
So what does that make me?
Joan Jaffe lives in Norwich.