A Big Box Family
Our family started growing in
the late eighties. And by the early
nineties, we were introduced to the big box store, like Costco and Sam’s Club.
At that point we were still a small family with two small children, so we only
occasionally went shopping there. I
honestly was quite appalled that we had to pay a yearly fee just to shop at their
store. Seriously, did they understand
the lunacy of the concept??? But putting
my grumblings aside, I wondered how the cost of the food, plus the cost to join
would still be less than going to our neighborhood grocery store. The first year when I did the math, it was close. And it got better in the years
after.
Enter the Great Growth Spurt of
2002. You may have heard of it. It made national news. Jurney, my second born, decided to start
eating his meals by the pound instead of by the ounce. I had to start peeling potatoes as soon as
lunch ended to make sure there were enough for him to eat at dinner. He was always the last one to be served at
dinner, because if a serving plate passed him, whatever was on the plate would
be gone before the next person could be served.
His mashed potatoes looked like Krakatoa with its cataclysmic potato
eruptions and tsunamis of gravy on (and beyond) his plate. When we had Italian, he would
hollow out a loaf of Italian bread and stuff it with spaghetti and
meatballs.
The worst part of his appetite was that when dinner was over, he would stop at the refrigerator on the way out of the kitchen and grab more food to eat for “dessert.” I would then have a small grace period of
peace to clean up after dinner before he would come in for his first round of snacks
of the evening. He liked carrots… a lot.
He would grab an unopened one-pound bag of baby carrots, pull out a
bottle of ranch dressing, and get himself a cereal bowl for dipping. Upon his return (not to clean up after
himself, but to start round two of snacks) he would bring in the empty bag from
the carrots, his bowl, and a half empty bottle of ranch dressing. Then round two of snacks would begin. It did’t take long before the $25 yearly Costco fee
was justified through my son alone… in the first month. This went on for years. I guess I should mention that he was 6’2” and
165 pounds when he graduated from high school, lest you think he rivaled the portliness
of Fat Albert.
Then, in the fall of 2005, the
thinning of the herd began. When Marry, my eldest, graduated from high school
and went off to college, the food bill didn't drop at all. I may have to mention here that on an average day, she would eat three grains of rice and an apple slice at dinner and then head to the couch to enter into a catatonic state of digestion before she
could function enough to go on with her evening activities.
When it was time for Jurney to
go to college, I was so excited when I was able to buy him an all-you-can-eat
meal ticket. It was the responsibility now
of the college cafeteria to assume the monumental task of filling him up. SUCKERS!!! I felt proud of the fact that he alone was
probably the reason that three extra students were able to find food service
jobs that year.
At this point we were down to
four people at home. This was the year
we discovered that leftovers were a reality, and not just some strange
phenomenon we’d heard about in story books.
We were eating leftovers for two days after a meal was first served… and
getting tired of it. It was a great
“aha” moment when I realized that I no longer had to double all the recipes at
dinnertime. I remember the first time I
didn’t double a recipe. It called for
four chicken breasts and I actually only used four chicken breasts. When the oven timer went off and I took out the
pathetically small 8x8 baking dish, I wondered how in the world
this would fill our family. IT DID! Life changing moment!!!!! We ate, we were
full, and there were no leftovers! Oh happy day! Muff—our third born--wasn’t a bad eater, but
he in no way could rival Jurney. Nobody could. Nobody can to this day. Jurney was an eating legend.
Then Muff went off to
college. We were now down to three
people eating a meal for four. (Did I
mention I HATE leftovers?) It’s not
easy to cut a recipe by 25%. Adding
three quarters of an egg to a recipe just doesn’t work. Luckily, we had a very happy recipient in the
form of a neighbor who often took our fourth serving after the three of us ate. She never complained that she saved us from
eating leftovers. She was grateful. So was I.
Although Muff wasn’t a big
eater, he loved his milk. He loved his
apple juice, and he adored cheese, bread and meat. At this time, we were still buying bags of pepperoni that
were bigger than our cat, four-pound blocks of cheese, and gallons of milk and
apple juice, primarily for him.
That was then, but I’m in the
final four now. I now go to the big box
store having to check expiration dates.
Jurney would have never let us hold on to food to a point where it even
came CLOSE to expiring. Now it’s just us and Bean (our youngest, a daughter). Bean likes her fruit, and her peanut
butter. She is a chicken fiend, and that
girl can rival her brother when it comes to eating carrots (although she eats
them plain, without dip). But it’s not
the same.
Our gallons of milk on a slow
week can go bad before the expiration date. (Bean prefers calcium supplements to
the real thing.) The cheese often gets moldy. Our cheese plane—once our
most-used specialty gadget—now gets used mainly to shave off the moldy spots. The
pretzels and crackers often get stale before they’re finished, and the extra
bottles of salad dressing that I'm forced to buy at the big box stores sometimes expire while still on the pantry shelf. I don't buy pepperoni anymore. The sight
of an untouched bag in the fridge is a painful reminder of how much I miss Muff not being there to eat it, and it’s enough to make me break down sobbing on the kitchen floor. I eat cheese pizza now, no toppings. And I
haven’t purchased a large bottle of apple juice in over a year. I miss too much the constant reminders to Muff that a 24 oz. mug of juice is just too much for
one sitting, or one day for that matter.
These days the Go-gurts are now
yogurts. The Mickey nuggets have
transitioned into chicken fingers and buffalo wings. But they, too, will go by the wayside in a
year from now as Bean and her friends are the only one eating them. In a year
or so I will probably have to go back to buying the one-pound bags of
carrots. There’s just one simple problem
with that; I don’t WANT to go back to the one-pound bag. I want to buy the big bags forever! I want the food to forever be eaten by small,
happy hands in our happy little house. I
miss reminding the kids that a 20-ounce bag of potato chips should take a week
to eat, not a day! I don’t want to buy
the single-serve bags of Cheetos! I
could never do that before, because a single serving bag to the boys was simply
an appetizer to four or five more.
I HATE you big box stores! You don’t want me anymore. You only want families who can eat four
loaves of bread in a week. We can’t do that anymore, but I STILL WANT TO! I HATE YOU next year, please don’t come. I can’t even bear the
thought you!
Wait… What?
