Best Intentions

I'll admit it.  My evenings get away from me sometimes.

I watched this Jamie Oliver give the most amazing talk on my computer at work.  I was waiting for an assignment and my daughter happened to be with me (snow day) eating her breakfast of eggs from the cafeteria.  I watched it and was inspired.   In my mind's eye, I see fresh veggies, protein, homemade healthy food.

"Rose," I said, "You guys need to eat healthier food."  I was ready.  "And you're going to help me make veggies and get your brother and sisters to eat them, right?"  Because where she goes, they follow.  At least where it comes to suspicious greens.

"Yeah!" she says.

So we find this recipe by one of my favorite bloggers, and we have a plan to go home and dig out the acorn squash that's been sitting in my pantry for six months.

Don't worry.  Squash last forever it seems.  Can't even throw it out.

It haunts me.

So we get home eight hours later and all the kids are up and refreshed from their naps... and I'm tired.

 "Anybody want to watch Shawn the Sheep?" I ask.

"Mommy, I don't think I want to help with the vegetable then."

That's okay.  We don't have anything to have the darned squash with anyway.  What we do have is a mountain of (leftover) oven fries.  Oven fries it is, with eggs, (leftover) bacon, toast -- breakfast for dinner. How many eggs can a four-year-old eat in one day and not keel over?

And it took Rose two hours to eat three tiny wedges of oven fries.  They are, after all, practically a vegetable.  A lot of help she's gonna be.

Oh, well.  We'll try again tomorrow.