It's Independence Day Somewhere

Apparently, yesterday was France's independence day.

I don't know how I could have missed that!

Actually, I couldn't miss it, because I'm married to Paul.

And if there's any country out there with any independence day, Paul is the man to celebrate it!

When I got home from work last night, I found roasted pork and carrots waiting patiently for me in a foil tent. I found lentils, crepes, and bacon-cooked greens. Also a dish of green beans.

"Wow!" burst out of me before I even knew what I would follow that with.

I didn't know how to serve and eat all of these things. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that crepes were a dessert, but, well, they were sitting by the lentils, and, well, I've seen a lot of creative cooking in my house--mint in peas, peanut butter on meat, chili powder in chocolate. And, well, I grew up in a meat-potatoes-and-vegetable household.

But my daughter saved me from the full weight of my ignorance by pointing out YET ANOTHER dish on the south counter of prepared homemade raspberry sauce. "And you sprinkle powdered sugar on the top."

It was clear that Paul had been very, very busy. And, no doubt, had a great deal of fun. Why be bored cooking dinner when you can center it on a theme?

As we sat down to our feast, the baby declared the roasted carrots to look "ferocious yucky!" I already knew them to probably be the best part of the meal, because I had already sampled one. Okay, two.

"Oh, no!" I said. "These are going to be the best carrots you've ever had in your life."

He thought back over four years and was not impressed.

"Was Daddy playing Julia Child all day?" I asked, smiling.

"Who's Julia Child?" a middle child asked.

"She was a cook," an older middle child said snootily.

"She wrote 'The Art of French Cooking,'" I said.

"What's the art of French cooking--is that the meat? I don't like French."

Older child: "It's a cookbook!"

"Is that the cookbook Daddy used to make this food?" someone asked.

"No. Daddy doesn't use a cookbook," an older child snooted. "Just recipes."

"Daddy called and told me to heat some green beans to go with our meal, but I didn't add the savory, like he told me to," our daughter confessed.

I looked at the table. There were greens. There were beans (lentils). And then there were green beans. Paul had been very thorough. I told her I liked it when Daddy added savory. I think she had been thinking of the time when he had tried to add celery salt to all of our cabbagy veggies so the kids would eat them and I'd had to tell him those very same kids were plotting to hide the celery salt.

There was so much food I knew we couldn't eat it all, but I did encourage everyone to try a little of everything. It worked, partly because of the looming promise of the crepes! With raspberry sauce!

It worked on everyone but the youngest. He looked suspiciously at the crepes as he does regularly with all new foods. (We usually just refer to any meat on his plate as "chicken" to get him to not balk.) I got him to finally try his crepe by pointing out that it was like a pancake. The same line had worked earlier in the week on the Spaetzle we'd had with our Brats and Rotkohl. I had pried one paper-punch-hole-sized noodle into his mouth, but once he could look at them as teensy tiny pancakes, he'd eaten a plateful.

After showing our daughter how to cook the crepes, Paul had left for work. It was too bad he wasn't there to enjoy the meal and the comments with us. But he laughed hard at "ferocious yucky" later.

I didn't know how to serve the crepes. Never had one. Never seen it done. But, hey! A plate with a crepe, raspberry sauce, and powdered sugar on it cannot go wrong, right?

And my baby declared himself a "dessertarian"--something with which I think we can all identify.