Sugar Daddy

Xanthe was so happy today. She told me, "ALL the cereal in the pantry is good!" Well, that's because Daddy went to the store. I generally stay away from cereal with the word "frosted" in the title. (Did you know Frosted Mini Wheats have sugar AND high fructose corn syrup in them? And Raisin Bran Crunch has 20 grams of sugar per serving?) My kids are fine with plain Cheerios and Bran Flakes, topped with wheat germ, flax seeds and frozen blueberries. They love my concoctions...until Super Daddy comes home with Frosted Flakes. How come I never get to be the hero?

I blame it on my childhood. My parents were strictly Grape Nuts and Cheerios people. I remember wanting Count Chocula so badly! Once I got a box of Boo Berry and kept it in my room, savoring a few pieces of it every day. I guess I could have poured sugar on my plain cereal, but I didn't know it was an option. I lived in a house where, if you craved a sugary treat, you took a piece of unsweetened baking chocolate and used it as a hammer to hopefully break chunks off of the hard brown sugar in the not-very-airtight box. Then you could mix the sugar and bittersweet chocolate and make it somewhat palatable. On hot days, we broke into the frozen orange juice concentrate and ate it out of the can. Another "treat" was what my brothers and I called a "Peanut Butter Spoon." It's like a sucker, except it's a big blob of peanut butter. On a spoon. Not Skippy, though. It was the natural peanut butter, the kind that separates and has to be refrigerated, so it was always cold AND dripping with oil. Try that on whole wheat bread.

Whenever I took a home lunch to school, my jaw was sore after. I remember my Holly Hobby lunch box containing one of those thick, dry sandwiches, a whole giant carrot and a thermos of orange juice. Some kids had Twinkies and Ding Dongs, and the Holy Grail of junk food: Wonder Bread! I would have killed for bologna on white. Everyone knows I only survived those years because Michelle gave me her potato chips at lunch every day!

I don't want to deprive my kids of the joys of sugar, so I let Scott bring home the junk once in a while. My dad got to play the hero too. Every so often, he would bring home five candy bars, one for each person in the family. The best kid got to choose first and I always hoped for a Three Musketeers. So I carry my mom's whole grain, sugarless torch and try to keep my kids somewhat healthy, while Scott does what dads do and makes life a treat. I call it balance.