"Dinner Doubles"

There are times when you eat some weird stuff for dinner. Not you? Yeah, right.

Lately we have had a really strange schedule. Luke has been working LONG hours. This has made me realize that it is very difficult to cook for one adult and two kids. Especially when those kids don't eat much to begin with. I began this whole thing thinking I would just cook, and Luke could take the leftovers for lunch. But when you are putting in twelve hour days, I guess you don't really want to eat left-over spaghetti at your desk...go figure.

Because of this, I had a lot of leftovers that weren't getting eaten. And there are only so many times you and the kids can eat the same thing for lunch and dinner before there is rebellion in the works. So, I talked with the kids and they came up with a strange request...cereal for dinner. Now, I really had to think about this because it just doesn't seem right. But follow me here; it's fortified with vitamins and they have milk with it. And why is it okay to eat it in the morning, but not at night? If there were something fundamentally wrong with cereal as a meal, you wouldn't serve it anytime, right?

So now we have 'cereal rules'. If we are eating cereal for dinner, and you ate cereal for breakfast or lunch, your dinner cereal must be of a different variety than you ate earlier in the day. Why? I don't know, but it didn't seem right for them to eat the same thing for two meals in one day. Anyway, this has worked well for us. We aren't wasting food because I cooked too much and no one will eat it. And the kids are eating a healthy dinner; okay, maybe not healthy, but it's not like they're eating Little Debbies and Diet Coke, so we'll go with it, thanks.

It just so happens, that on a recent weekend, these dinner rules applied. We had spent the weekend out of town, and upon returning, I spent 24 hours on the couch, nauseated. Needless to say, for Monday dinner, I had skipped the grocery store and I really didn't want to smell anything cooking anyway. So we deployed the cereal dinner plan. Luke was home and just went with it. We enjoyed some lovely Apple Jacks, followed by my personal favorite, Corn Pops. I was making jokes about how Apple Jacks should count as a carb and a fruit, and Corn Pops should count as a carb and a veggie. Afterall, if they can make that V8 juice count as both a fruit and a veggie, why not make cereal have some of those extras?

At this point, I had poured my second bowl of Corn Pops and was sitting down to the table to enjoy them. I especially like them without milk so they don't get soggy. I was scooping up a yummy yellow mouthful, when I saw the bug. It was one of those little flour beetles that like to ruin your Jiffy cornbread mix. But he was in my cereal bowl. Crawling on my cereal. Of which this was my second bowl.

I was well on my way to becoming nauseated for another 24 hours, when Luke offered up some sage advice. At least you saw him before you ate him. Oh, that and now Corn Pops can be counted as a carb and a protein.

Yum.

Moral of the story: Maybe on cereal night the meal police punish you for not eating dinner related food by putting a bug in your bowl. Or maybe not.