our family diet

When I married Mr. Fantastic, I was basically a vegetarian. I say basically because I would eat wild-caught fish, and organic milk and eggs. But if it walked on land and was shot up with hormones, given antibiotics, or fed its own kin, I was out.

I only shopped at Whole Foods and I cooked everything we ate from scratch, so it would be made from real, whole foods and not chemical laden processed junk.

To explain this to my very southern new father-in-law we just pointed to California on the map and let him think I was a high-maintenance fruitcake.

But the first time I “turned up pregnant” as a friend of mine says, I needed to up my protein intake. So back to the good American carnivore diet I went. I did buy my meat at Whole Foods, though, to keep from dying inside.

The moment I first looked in the deep blue eyes of that new baby boy, I knew, I would never feed him processed food, or McDonalds, or anything that could corrupt his purely perfect self.

Boy 1 never tasted chocolate until the age of two, but after he fed six week old Boy 2 Sour Cream and Onion Pringles on my mother-in-law’s sofa, I guess I sort of gave up. Three babies in two years made me really tired and Goldfish, Frosted Flakes, and Oreos slowly entered my house.

I do still have a food conscience. I sauté spinach and slip it into the spaghetti sauce, smile when children scream at the mere sight of broccoli on their dinner plate, and consistently ask, “Have you had any fruit or vegetables today?”

But I buy Trix cereal because Boy 3 never knows what to eat for breakfast, despite my multiple offerings: raisin toast, Eggos, breakfast tacos, Cheerios, Raisin Bran, Pop Tarts, or yogurt. But he promised he would eat Trix, and since I practically did the Running Man right there in HEB when he said he would eat it, I guess he has won the breakfast wars of 2013.

You can judge me now for having Pop Tarts and Eggos and Trix in my house. I don’t mind. I justify it by telling myself that I’m preparing them for college, when their existence will depend on their ability to process preservatives and caffeine in large doses.

And really, I admit, this is one of those “choose your battles” moments in motherhood for me. We have no video games in our house, but we have sugar-shocked cereal. You win some, you lose some, and life goes on.

It is probably a bit hypocritical that we consume only organic meat and dairy along with locally grown veggies at dinner and then finish everything off with Oreos. Or maybe it’s balanced in a weird way.

Maybe we are just doing our best to be only be a little bit peculiar to the rest of the world, and then trust that God has our backs with the rest. Or maybe I’m still just a fruitcake from California. I don’t know. The jury’s still out.

Either way, crispy, sweet Frosted Flakes in cold, delicious organic milk tasted fabulous this morning, so I’m choosing to believe it’s all good. Because it was very, very good. Who knows? Tomorrow I may eat Trix.