I wasn't really sure what to make for dinner...except that we had a fresh pineapple to use...and time was ticking so I decided to just start a pot of rice cooking and then brainstorm about what to have with the rice while it was cooking.
My three ideas were:
- Something Mexican (we have leftover taco meat in the fridge)
- Stir fry of sorts
- Hawaiian Haystacks
I settled on Hawaiian Haystacks because (a) we hadn't had that in so many years that the kids couldn't even recall what it was and (b) we'd had "Ultimate Salad Bar" earlier in the week and had a lot of leftover toppings that also qualify as Hawaiian Haystacks toppings.
All I had to do was make some chicken gravy and cut up a pineapple...and a bunch of vegetables.
Often the gravy is made from a can of cream of chicken soup, but we don't usually have that stocked in our pantry, so I had made it from scratch, which really is not so difficult except that Phoebe wanted to help. She pulled out every single stool in our house and set them all up in the kitchen, forming an obstacle course of sorts (but allowing her to reach any given counter surface...as well as leaving a few in the middle of the kitchen floor to trip over). Then she demanded that she help and help and help.
"Phoebe," I sighed, wish that Andrew was home to be cooking with her instead of...me...having to do it. "I am not as confident about cooking as Daddy is, so I'm not as confident about allowing you to help. This is a step that Mommy has to do on her own, okay? You can have a turn stirring soon..."
So I browned the onions and I blended the water and flour and I made the base of the gravy and then I added the milk, whisked things together briefly, and handed Phoebe the whisk.
"Finally!" she growl exasperatedly. "I tan tuut!"
*****
I added canned chicken to the gravy because...well...I didn't feel like cooking any chicken myself. And I sliced my finger so bad on the lid of the can. So I called Miriam (who'd been cutting other vegetables) over to supervise Phoebe's stirring while I applied direct pressure (and some liquid bandaid...and a real bandaid...and a latex glove) to my wound before joining them back in the kitchen again.
I started cutting up the pineapple and Phoebe came to stand near me.
"Wow!" she said encouragingly. "You are very dood at tutting up that pineapple."
"Thank you," I said.
"It's 'portant to me that you to know that you're dood at tutting up that pineapple."
"Thank you," I said again.
"You are not very dood at tuuting...or at bating. But you are very dood at tutting up that pineapple."
"Oh. Well...thank you?"
"You're wel-pum!" she chirped.
(She lacks a /k/ at the present, so tuuting is cooking, bating is baking and tutting is cutting. Wel-pum is welcome.)
*****
In the middle of dinner—apropos of nothing—Phoebe threw her arms in the air and said, "Ooooh! Game plan!" (only, of course, she said "dame plan" because—and it's important to me that you know this—she is three years old).
Then she pointed across the table at Miriam and said, "We light someone on fire! We tie them to a tree so they can't run away and then we light them on fire!"
We all stared at her, forks frozen in midair, food just about falling out of our faces.
Miriam—who felt the target of Phoebe's little pointer finger—gasped like a fish out of water.
"What...what...what...why me? Why is she pointing at me?!"
"It has to be someone," Phoebe shrugged.
I'm sure she has heard ideas like this floated in the neighbourhood realm of make-believe. Sometimes their games are a little more violent than I'd like (see: Dragon Academy, see: Gladiator Arena, see: any other number of games I've had to temporarily ban after the kids got so wrapped up in beating each other up that it hardly felt like it qualified as "play" anymore). But other than that I have no idea where she came up with such an idea or why she decided to drop it in the middle of our otherwise perfectly healthy and well-adjusted dinner conversation.
Haha...ooof!
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