{"id":757,"date":"2017-02-24T16:52:38","date_gmt":"2017-02-24T22:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/?p=757"},"modified":"2019-06-07T15:41:19","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T15:41:19","slug":"the-undisputed-hoover-of-plate-cleaners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/the-undisputed-hoover-of-plate-cleaners\/","title":{"rendered":"The Undisputed Hoover of Plate Cleaners"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Children change so quickly, don\u2019t they?\u00a0 It\u2019s an amazing thing to watch.\u00a0 And, of course, it\u2019s so much easier to discern these charming progress points when they aren\u2019t your immediate progeny.\u00a0 Kind of like watching a new house going up as you drive by occasionally:\u00a0 Oh, Look!\u00a0 The chimney is up!\u00a0 Gosh, that was fast!\u00a0 While the poor owners are staring at each brick being added, wondering if moving day will ever come.<\/p>\n

As she approaches her fourth birthday, our Sis has had a big year.\u00a0 She learned to sing \u201cWhere is Thumbkin?,\u201d complete with hand motions, and developed an interest in kitchen activity and cooking.\u00a0 She carries on a fairly complex conversation with enthusiasm and is gaining on her life\u2019s aim to keep up with her older brother.\u00a0 She grew more than an inch.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s one thing about Sis that remains a steady fixture in our lives, rooted as deeply as her unwavering insistence that it matters not if you wear your shoes on the wrong feet.<\/p>\n

Sis is an Eating Machine.\u00a0 A Ravenous Ravager of (almost) all things eminently edible.\u00a0 She is the top-rated Hoover of plate cleaners.\u00a0 In our family, there are no other contenders.\"lj-muffin-date-tbd\"<\/p>\n

This rather striking quality tends to surprise those who aren\u2019t around her regularly.\u00a0 They first notice the crystal blue eyes, long blonde curls, or precocious exuberance. \u00a0But join her at table, and it\u2019s hard to stop the eyes from popping.\u00a0 You may feel like a balletomane who sneaks into the dressing room to discover the prima ballerina stuffing her face with Twinkies.<\/p>\n

But let me get at that Twinkies thing immediately, before I get in trouble here.\u00a0 The really remarkable thing about many of her menu preferences is their healthy nature.\u00a0 She never asks for junk food at my house.\u00a0 When this volume trend began to escalate a year or so ago<\/a>, the first shocker was cooked carrots.\u00a0 I mean, who knew?\u00a0 When I was her age, I wouldn\u2019t eat them on a bribe.\u00a0 Last time I served carrots with pot roast on a cold winter day, Sis ate her portion, her brother\u2019s, a small heap of seconds from the pot, and was still pining when her father bridged the shortage by forking over his, too.<\/p>\n

Fruit is another favorite, and oranges currently rank quite high.\u00a0 On her last visit, Sis risked life and limb to get close to a bowl of the alluring, bright orbs, clambering up from a stool, to a chair, to a box on the chair, before I could leap to secure her on perch.\u00a0 Alas, she still couldn\u2019t reach, so was forced to ask, politely but pointedly, if she could please have one with expedited delivery. \u00a0I cut it in half, and by the time I reached to peel the second half, the first sections had vanished.<\/p>\n

\"lj-kombucha-2-17\"

Sis loves kombucha, which many of us would have to be paid to drink.<\/p><\/div>\n

The next morning, we moved on to surprising success with the larger citrus cousin, grapefruit.\u00a0 Watching me spooning out the pink sections, Sis requested a taste test.\u00a0 I cut her a very small portion and hesitated before handing it over.\u00a0 This is much more tart than an orange, I warned.\u00a0 Try this small piece first.\u00a0 It\u2019s OK if you don\u2019t like it.\u00a0 (Note to self:\u00a0 wasted breath.)\u00a0 \u201cI love that!\u201d\u00a0 Sis exclaimed, adding her personal anthem: \u201cCould I have some more?\u201d<\/p>\n

What creates such an appetite, I have pondered occasionally, in between efforts to stock the larder before the children arrive and scrambling to proffer seconds and thirds during meals. An extended growth spurt, I suppose.\u00a0 One does wonder if takes extra calories to fund a campaign of regular screaming\u2014whether in exuberance, or just a forceful bid to be heard, one never knows.\u00a0 (This is yet another phase we seem to be stuck in.)\u00a0 Sis is blessed with good health and no weight concerns, thank goodness, and her parents work hard to select and offer quality food to the children. They certainly converted me to the notion that children will learn from example and context when it comes to healthy food.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, my favorite evidence of the Hoover plate-cleaning action occurred at Christmas dinner just a few weeks back.\u00a0 We have a family tradition of serving homemade applesauce with the holiday meal.\u00a0 Our family product is a thick, somewhat tart variety that we make with the best apples when they ripen every June, then we hoard it in the freezer for special occasions.\u00a0\"mom-stirring-applesauce-june-2016\"<\/p>\n

What fun to see the children excited to get their portion, which I served in tiny, delicate, gold-rimmed bowls passed down from my great-grandmother.\u00a0 No doubt the original owner of the bowls turned in her grave if she noticed Sis about a minute later with her bowl upended near her face, so she could lick it clean.\u00a0 Hey! I remonstrated weakly, stifling an empathetic guffaw.\u00a0 Use your spoon, please!<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the spoon won\u2019t get it all, and it\u2019s so good,\u201d she replied, pausing just long enough to answer.\u00a0 What\u2019s a grandmother to do?\u00a0 I wish I had a picture of that little episode.\u00a0 It would be fun to taunt her with when she is older, when it comes time, if we are lucky, to teach her to make the applesauce herself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Children change so quickly, don\u2019t they?\u00a0 It\u2019s an amazing thing to watch.\u00a0 And, of course, it\u2019s so much easier to discern these charming progress points when they aren\u2019t your immediate progeny.\u00a0 Kind of like watching a new house going up as you drive by occasionally:\u00a0 Oh, Look!\u00a0 The chimney is up!\u00a0 Gosh, that was fast!\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grandkids","category-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}