Bread and Water

Hmmm. I have no good explanation for why some of you see green and some of you see blue. I get green on my desktop, and blue on laptop, yet they are both Dell. It doesn’t seem to be a Mac vs. PC issue, or a browser issue (maybe???) or a green eyes vs blue eyes issue (although that suggestion made me laugh). It’s bizarre, isn’t it? But, since the positive comments outnumbered the negative comments about ten to one, I’m going to leave it as is. (Actually, I’m going to leave it as is because I’m too lazy to dink around with changing it …… )

Now, on to more pressing matters. Like the state of my refrigerator.

The thing you need to know is, we are out of food at our house. Out of food in a yes-I’ll-use-the-heel-of-the-bread-for-toast kind of way. Normally, I go to the grocery store once a month, around the 15th. I make a huge, ginormous, three-carts-full-of-food trek to the commissary, and the pantry is overloaded for a few weeks. But I didn’t go in September because I was just back from the cruise and feeling overwhelmed, plus we had all that meat we had cooked and frozen from when the freezer door was left open, so I figured we were fine for a few weeks. Then I didn’t go on the 1st because I was headed to camp with Kellen, so I just made a quick trip to stock up on milk and bread and toilet paper and cereal, and decided we could manage two more weeks …. It would just require a little creative cooking on my part.

It wasn’t a problem, until yesterday. Yesterday morning we used the last two pieces of bread (yes, the heels) for toast. And I had a huge crockpot full of psuedo-homemade chicken noodle soup** on, so decided I would use my bread maker to make psuedo-homemade bread (because it’s common knowledge you can’t properly eat chicken noodle soup without lots and lots of bread to sop up the juices … no, I have no idea why I have a weight problem.)

So. That gives you the background to my story.

When I got home from taking the kids to piano lessons, Blaine said, “The school called and said Brayden’s lunch account is at zero.”

“That can’t be right,” I replied. “I just put $35 in each of their accounts on the first.”

“Well, that’s what they said.”

“They must have put her money into Kellen or Kendrie’s account by mistake. I’ll go talk to them tomorrow.”

Then I got to thinking …. “Brayden, you know how we told you that once a week you could buy a special lunch from the fast-food vendors? But the rest of the week you have to buy the regular (ie, cheaper) school lunch? Have you bought anything besides fast food? Or have you bought it more than once a week?”

And she said, “Only one time. I bought an extra drink.”

So I turned to Blaine and said, “I’ll go talk to the lunch people tomorrow and ask to see her account. I’m sure they put the money on the wrong account.”

Then Brayden said, sort of hesitantly, “Weeellllll, I *might* have bought some pizza one day. Or maybe two days.”

And I looked at her.

“Oh, *really* ??? And is there anything else I should know about, before I go in there tomorrow and accuse them of messing up their accounting???”

“Well,” she started stammering, “It’s just that everyone else buys a special lunch every day. And I’m the only kid in the entire sixth grade that has to buy a boring plain lunch, and so I bought other stuff like everyone else.”

And basically, she blew through $35 in less than two weeks.

OK, so, not the end of the world, right? I’m sure most kids do this sort of thing when they first get some credit in their possession, and haven’t quite mastered money-management skills. In fact, my nephew did the exact same thing last year when *he* was in sixth grade, and fast food lunches were an option for the first time. So I really wasn’t that upset about it, just resigned to the fact that this is one of life’s little teaching moments, and a good opportunity to educate her about consequence.

“Well, honey, I’m sorry, but if you’ve already spent all the money I put in your lunch account for the month, you’ll have to take your lunch from home the rest of the month. So I suggest you go in there right now and take a look at what you want to make yourself in the morning.”

She replied, hopefully, “Could you go buy me a bunch of Lunchables to take?”

And I sort of laughed as I said, “No, me going to the store and buying you a bunch of stuff to take pretty much defeats the purpose. If you want Lunchables, I'll take you to the store and you can buy them with your own money. Or you can spend your own money at school. Or, you can go through the pantry like a normal person and make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

At which point Blaine so tactfully pointed out …. “Um, we don’t have any bread.”

And I sort of sighed and said, “Fine, then she can make a sandwich with some of the psuedo-homemade bread that will be left-over after dinner. It’ll be a sandwich like Pa Ingalls used to eat, with huge slabs of homemade bread.”

Only …. Well ….. I guess maybe the yeast was outdated or something, because my “light and airy and delicious” loaf of homemade bread was short and squatty and dense as a rock, and had about as much flavor as a rock would have, too.

(sigh)

So last night saw me at our local grocery store, buying bread. And some pretzels. And some Oreos, because my gosh, the girl’s got to take her lunch for two solid weeks, which is a lot by our standards, so I figured a few Oreos wouldn’t hurt.

But I drew the line at Lunchables.

**Recipe for psuedo-homemade chicken noodle soup

Combine in crockpot:

6 oz pkg Wyler’s Mrs. Grass Hearty Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup Mix

1 can Campbell’s double-noodle chicken noodle soup

1 pkg boneless skinless chicken breasts, boiled (baked, whatever) and cut into bite-size pieces

9 cups water

Cover and cook on low heat for 6-8 hours