A Grain of Rice
Throughout the course of any particular day I am given to ponder. I do it often, sometimes to excess neglecting chores or forgetting to complete simple requested tasks. People might call it daydreaming. Others may call it attention-deficit. Still others might say that I'm manifesting some latent inner turmoil with my inability to accept things as they are, caught between a drive to change the world I see around me and just accepting things as they are . And of course there are those who would just call me lazy. What do I think? Well, I just told you--I ponder. Sometimes things just need to be thunk.
Last Sunday evening, as I was cleaning up the kitchen after the evening feast--I pondered. Feast may be an overstatement here. I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea. It was leftover stir fry from our recent trip to a Japanese steakhouse. It was the kids' first exposure and they could not have been more excited. The art of food being prepared in front of them--with flair--was engrossing. Zia had a few issues with the fire display but other than that they all seemed to have a blast. Zoë almost caught the flying egg in her mouth and everyone got a real kick when the cook at the table next to us bounced a shrimp tail off of my head. Good times!
So I'm cleaning, sweeping up rice from just about every square inch of surface space in our kitchen--there was even rice in the living room and some had made it's way to the basement. It looked like a newly married couple had paused for their church exiting photo op in our kitchen an there had been a sale on Mahatma just prior to their arrival. Seriously, we could have filled a small grain elevator with the rice I swept up. How in holy hell could these children have proclaimed themselves full when this much food lay wasted on the floor?
But that's not what I pondered. No, sir. As I swept, I thought. As a newborn is transitioned from bottle to cereal what are their first solids?.....Rice.
RICE.
That's it. And what do these wide eyed and eager children do with their first tastes of solids (rice)? Right. They puke it up all over me and the kitchen floor. And I clean it up.
One of the first do it easy at home to appease your kid's extremely short attention span--because your kid is completely over any and every toy you may have purchased-- is the noise maker.
Rice in a can. And what happens after two minutes of playing with their newly created wonderful shaky noise maker? Right. The tape is pulled from can and rice is scattered all over the kitchen floor. And I clean it up.
I serve rice to my kids often. In casseroles, with gravy, to be used with vegetable burritos, in jambalaya, in gumbo. The list goes on. And after every meal, the kids mysteriously proclaim themselves full. I survey the carnage of a rice strewn kitchen and I clean it up.
We use rice in our food, in our music, in our games, in our artwork. It was the first food my kids ever ate and at least weekly for the past seven and one half years rice has been a staple food item on our grocery list. I've got to ask myself, why? It would seem that an inordinate amount of my time is devoted not to preparing and consuming this miraculously fluffy grain, but cleaning it up and throwing it away. The maddening cycle has got to end.
At lest until my little primates learn to use a fork!
Just in case anyone forgot, Thursday was new issue day at Quirkee.com. This was my submission for this week. But just because I reposted here doesn't mean you're off the hook. Go check out some of the other great things at Quirkee. You'll be glad you did.
Last Sunday evening, as I was cleaning up the kitchen after the evening feast--I pondered. Feast may be an overstatement here. I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea. It was leftover stir fry from our recent trip to a Japanese steakhouse. It was the kids' first exposure and they could not have been more excited. The art of food being prepared in front of them--with flair--was engrossing. Zia had a few issues with the fire display but other than that they all seemed to have a blast. Zoë almost caught the flying egg in her mouth and everyone got a real kick when the cook at the table next to us bounced a shrimp tail off of my head. Good times!
So I'm cleaning, sweeping up rice from just about every square inch of surface space in our kitchen--there was even rice in the living room and some had made it's way to the basement. It looked like a newly married couple had paused for their church exiting photo op in our kitchen an there had been a sale on Mahatma just prior to their arrival. Seriously, we could have filled a small grain elevator with the rice I swept up. How in holy hell could these children have proclaimed themselves full when this much food lay wasted on the floor?
But that's not what I pondered. No, sir. As I swept, I thought. As a newborn is transitioned from bottle to cereal what are their first solids?.....Rice.
RICE.
That's it. And what do these wide eyed and eager children do with their first tastes of solids (rice)? Right. They puke it up all over me and the kitchen floor. And I clean it up.
One of the first do it easy at home to appease your kid's extremely short attention span--because your kid is completely over any and every toy you may have purchased-- is the noise maker.
Rice in a can. And what happens after two minutes of playing with their newly created wonderful shaky noise maker? Right. The tape is pulled from can and rice is scattered all over the kitchen floor. And I clean it up.
I serve rice to my kids often. In casseroles, with gravy, to be used with vegetable burritos, in jambalaya, in gumbo. The list goes on. And after every meal, the kids mysteriously proclaim themselves full. I survey the carnage of a rice strewn kitchen and I clean it up.
We use rice in our food, in our music, in our games, in our artwork. It was the first food my kids ever ate and at least weekly for the past seven and one half years rice has been a staple food item on our grocery list. I've got to ask myself, why? It would seem that an inordinate amount of my time is devoted not to preparing and consuming this miraculously fluffy grain, but cleaning it up and throwing it away. The maddening cycle has got to end.
At lest until my little primates learn to use a fork!
Just in case anyone forgot, Thursday was new issue day at Quirkee.com. This was my submission for this week. But just because I reposted here doesn't mean you're off the hook. Go check out some of the other great things at Quirkee. You'll be glad you did.
Posted by Zoe's Dad at Friday, July 25, 2008 11:15 PM and is filed under Food,eating utensils,sweep the kitchen,Japanese Steakhouse,Rice 
Yeah, but if you eliminate rice from your menu, your choices will be severely limited, no? You may just have to endure the cleanup, or else make the kids do it! Good luck with that. LOL.
My kids do not seem to be as bothered by the mess.
Dear Lord, do I relate. In fact, I experienced exactly what you describe just this evening when I served rice with the fajitas. Those little grains were stuck the the kids' elbows, trailing off the edge of the table, the booster seats, the chairs, and collecting on the floor. They trailed across the house.
I think I need to get familiar more with "sticky rice." I mean, is it possible that some Asian cultures serve this stuff all the time to their kids and have discovered a way to prevent the mess? After all, many of these children are eating the stuff with chopsticks! From the looks of things, my kids probably can't do as well as they can even with a spoon in hand.
Sticky rice, hmm..... You may be on to something. I feel certain, though, that my crew can find a way to make a mess of it.
This being the primary reason we don't eat rice very often. My primates have the same problem... no forks
I've even tried spoons. No luck!
Well, I've never thought that much about rice before. But you are so right, about all of it. I'm just thankful that the dog likes it too!
Yeah, I'm sure Rusty, our dog, would like it, too if given the chance. He's an outside dog though.
I deal with spilled rice the same way I do with every edibleish mess. Release the hounds. They're living vacuums.
My wife has this thing about inside pets. Well, other than the kids.
Agreed with Whit... I was going to say; you need a dog.
Rice (or any food for that matter) never lasts more than a second on the floor around here...
You could call her Swiffer.
There for a while the twins would come back after a meal and eat the scraps off the floor, kind of like little monkeys. Then I thought I probably shouldn't let them do that.
Rice is like the evil Cheerios. You don't eat any for weeks and every day you manager to sweep another off your floor.
Maybe your children just eat via osmosis?
I've often wondered how they ingest enough solids to form poop. But they do. Boy do they!
I LOVE rice, my kids have no use for it. It kills me.