À la carte
Mom and I are developing a new meal schedule these days. She’s not hungry in the mornings. Especially since the supermarket stopped selling real-butter croissants that crisp up the way she likes them.
They claim they’re the same croissants as always, but the limp doughy things left out in the cupboard overnight would disagree. I’ve tried for months to crisp them up the way she likes them, low temperature in the toaster oven for 45 minutes or more, but no. They never reach their previous glorious level that she enjoyed so much, the crumbs scattering down her chin and chest with every crunch.
She starts with a glass of orange juice, as I imagine millions of people do.
And after her orange juice, Mom has a coffee. She likes maple-flavoured mixed with regular, so I’ve figured out how to make a single cup, just for her, in the coffee maker. She takes it with a small draft of homo milk, not cream, not 2%, it must be homo, and then I have to nuke it for 25 seconds to get it to her specified hotness.
Okay, after explaining all that, I’m exhausted. No wonder I don’t encourage her to eat more breakfast. I’d like to get out of the kitchen sometime before nine.
Anyway, I usually eat breakfast mid to late morning. I like eggs, or bacon, or some combination of them, with cheese or onions or ham or sausage.
And Mom always calls into the kitchen from the Lazy Girl chair, “What are you cooking?”
When I explain, she says, “Mmm...” like she’s starving, which she probably is with nothing but carbs from the OJ in her stomach.
So, I scoop off a little piece of my omelet, or tong a few slices of bacon onto a plate for her, and I share my breakfast. She smiles like the cat who ate the canary.
She has started calling it her brunch.
Honestly, it’s more convenient for me now that she’s moving to my eating schedule.
But what’s for lunch?
My sister, who’s on lunch detail, will try to tempt Mom with some tuna salad or a ham sandwich and Mom declines. “I’m too full from brunch. Maybe just a salad?”
And then my poor sister has to make a salad in the middle of trying to get lunch for herself.
Salads are hard work—cold water rinsing, leaf spinning, chopping, and then hunting down the right salad dressing. No sir. I do not like making salads.
Thankfully, Mom hasn’t discovered a recipe for breakfast salad in an issue of the LCBO’s Food & Drink magazine, which she scours monthly.
I was digging around in the freezer the other day, trying to find a loaf of bread to break off a slice for Mom’s toast. (She can’t eat bacon without toast, apparently.)
And lo and behold, I found a package of mini shortcake shells left over from strawberry season last June. I took two of the sponge cakes out of the pack and let them thaw on the counter. We happened to have fresh berries from Florida in the fridge, so I chopped some up and sprinkled sugar over them to melt.
In no time, the sugar and berries had done their syrupy trick, so, I spooned them onto the shells, and got out the whipping cream.
As I gave Mom her brunch of bacon and toast, I asked her if she would like a strawberry shortcake for lunch.
“We have strawberry shortcake?!” she cried, as thrilled and excited as a pet dog spying a desiccated liver treat.
At lunch time, she happily ate her strawberry shortcake and scraped up every speck of whipping cream from the tiny bowl.
After a couple of days of this, she decided she likes this new meal schedule. Mid-morning brunch, dessert at lunchtime, and regular dinner at dinner time.
Although, what she eats for dinner is becoming as kooky as the other meals.
She decided she doesn’t like chewy meat. Her feeble shaky hands don’t allow her to cut, or to lift peas on a fork to her mouth. She only wants finger foods, namely French-fries.
Honestly, her appetite is like a teenager’s these days. After ninety-some years of sensible, homecooked, basic eating, she has thrown caution to the wind and wants to live on oatmeal cookies and in-season apples.
Sometimes she complains to the visiting nurses that she doesn’t have much of an appetite these days, and they instantly go into advice-giving mode. One asked me last week if I wanted a dietitian to visit.
Then another nurse asked Mom, “Are you drinking and eating?”
“I don’t drink anymore,” Mom replied.
The nurse looked worried and glanced at me.
I turned to my mother, exasperated. “She means are you drinking enough water.”
Mom laughed. “I thought she meant wine.”
For some reason, she’s gone off her lifelong love of wine at happy hour. Now, she’s content with a small glass of cider or cranberry juice mixed with ginger ale.
I think we may be spoiling her. Where’s that How to Parent Your Old Parent book?
Welcome new subscribers!
Each week I send out a little piece of writing. Sometimes it’s a personal essay and other times it’s a piece of fiction. I hope you enjoy reading my scribblings. If the post prompts you to share something with me, by all means, hit reply to this email or leave a comment wherever you read this story. I’d love to hear from you.
For lighthearted reading grab a paperback copy of my novel Odd Mom Out click here.
For a paperback copy of Head on Backwards, Chest Full of Sand, click here. And don’t forget to leave a rating or review. Your reviews and ratings help other readers find the book.
Appreciate my writing? Please click below to leave a tip in the Tip Jar!
Visit my website to discover more of my books.
MORE FREE STUFF IF YOU’RE NOT DONE CLICKING!
Click here for a free eBook copy of An Empty Nest: A Summer of Stories.
My mom is 90 and although she grew up during the war and ate nothing, or what was available, now she is a meat and potatoes kinda gal. She's a 90 lb woman who says, "com'on, more potatoes and don't you have gravy, butter and sour cream to go with that...hold that green stuff." She doesn't drink water or juice but she makes her own wine and enjoys that. Lately when she sees me eat my veggies, she says, "I'm old enough I can eat what I want"...and she does. When I go for a long walk or a hike, she says, "I'm old enough, I don't have to do that." She says that 90 is a time when she doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want to. Part of me resists her theories but most of me celebrates with her. She had a tough life and doing what she wanted was never an option...she still feels the need to agree with those around her and not speak her mind (except with her kids) and so if she can get that freedom by eating crackers for dinner and frequenting the local diner, or by being a couch potato, then all the more power to her. She also says, "the worst that could happen is it could kill me...and at 90, I'd rather do that than eat carrots." Go Mom!!!
Love Dessert for lunch. And the precision you have to use for making your mom's breakfast. Love in action, with homo milk only. : )