Mac 'n' Cheese in a Box

 “The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.”
― Aristotle

I was at the store and I called home to ask the kids what they wanted to eat.  Without hesitation, they longingly asked for "mac 'n' cheese in a box." Ugh!  But that's what they wanted and it was Saturday night, so I filled my cart with fluorescent-orange sodium.  It's not like our family eats healthy every minute, but I do shoot for lots of fruits and vegetables.  So it was almost embarrassing as I stood in the check-out line with my cart full of "foods."  That orange powder probably started life in a nuclear plant.

I kept telling myself that this is what the kids wanted, and that they were going to be so happy!  But it got me thinking on a larger scale about what kids want vs. what's good for them.  Not just in culinary terms, but generally, kids don't really know what's out there beyond a boxed-food lifestyle and Nick Jr.  Of course they're going to gravitate toward that path of least resistance because, until you teach them, they don't know where they're going.  Children are wonderful at living in the moment.  Cheap and easy in all its forms is great right now as far as kids can tell, but I can see where we're going, and cheap and easy is not the way to get there.

We need complexity, quality, sustainability and effort, and I'm not jut talking about food.  When requests for life's mac 'n' cheese come up, in the form of "Do I have to" and "Can't I just...", I want to offer something more nourishing than the lowest common denominator.  We are not about just getting by.  We're about developing the discernment to know what's better and what's best.  Parents essentially teach their kids what to desire, and I want them to crave good things.

As always, I'm talking about the ideal here, not the reality.  We have nine episodes of My Babysitter's a Vampire on our DVR.  My point is, bite by bite, we can appreciate great things.  Anybody can enjoy mac 'n' cheese, but if it tastes the same to you as an expensive aged cheddar, you're clearly missing out on some nuance.

The question is, what do I want my kids to understand and to desire?  Line upon line, precept on precept, one non-fluorescent bite at a time, we have to seek after the good stuff.  It's not easy or cheap, but look at what is.  My kids liked their boxed macaroni.  They were happy.  As they grow, they might still crave the salty, creamy, uncomplicated deliciousness of their childhood, but I hope they'll be able to discern it from something even better.