My poor children love boxes. They love climbing in them, hiding in them, cutting them up and gluing them piece by piece back into stuffed animal houses or aircraft carriers, but most of all they love making food from them.
Growing up with a back-to-basics mom, I did too, but it rarely ever happened. I loved going to my friends house simply because they had boxes macaroni and cheese, Top Ramen, and instant oatmeal. I, on the other hand, felt like I got the shaft when my mom presented my family table with baked cheese and macaroni, homemade chicken noodle soup with thick whole wheat noodles and garden veggies, and of course, Oatmeal. And not that yummy dried strawberry stuff you dumped water in. We ate Wilford Brimley Oatmeal - with raisins and a hint of raw sugar. We got brown sugar only if we got up and snuck it ourselves.
Yesterday was my son's birthday party at school. Following in my mother's footsteps I have always baked cupcakes the night before with the child who is having the birthday and frosted them in whatever manner the child requested. For my 8-year-old son this year he wanted blue and red cupcakes with sprinkles. Yummy! There goes my diet! So, the next day I packed up the mass of blue and pink cupcakes in a tin foil covered pan and hauled them into the school.
Being the polite children I know my son's classmates to be, many of the students rushed up to me with pink and blue frosted lips and told me just how amazing the cupcakes were. Frankly, I thought they were just fishing for a second piece of cake. So, when the teacher leaned over to me and said, "Wow, that is a real compliment," I was puzzled.
"Why do you say that?" I asked.
"Because they don't really like cupcakes."
Okay, if I wasn't puzzled before, I certainly was now. My kids would eat a cupcake that had been tipped upside down on the pavement outside.
"Why wouldn't they like cupcakes," I asked. "Every kid likes cupcakes."
"Well," she smiled, looking at the fluffy frosting I swirled into a pink mountain peak on the top of one of the cakes. "Are these homemade?"
"No," I quickly said, feeling slightly embarrassed at the memory of what my mother would have made. "They are out of a box."
"Honey," the teacher laughed sweetly. "That is homemade."
I quickly recovered myself and realized what she was referring to.
"Most of the moms," she said. "Bring the ones from the store. Some of the kids aren't big fans of those."
"Oh," I smiled. "Yeah, I guess they are homemade."
But secretly in my mind, I was thinking, Man when I was little, I would have killed to have my mom bring the ones that were made in the bakery at the store.
