#HOLLER BACK! 
Life lessons at McDonalds.

I started this blog with a flurry of French Toast breakfasts in response to my non-eating middle son's trials with Crohn's disease. He is now eating pretty well and says he OD'd on carbs during the French Toast era, so I have backed off the creative carbification for the time being.  Still, I think the complexities of parenting in general bear exploration even when they don't involve food. SO….

It was Memorial Day weekend. The ants were marching 2 by 2 along  the highway (this is how I picture we'd look from an airplane), carrying more than our body weight in provisions for a long weekend with a bit of well-earned sunshine after the winter of  ice and gloom. The weekend passed nicely…warfare among my kids was at a reasonably low ebb. Grateful for the hint of summer to come, we spent the time together, mindful of all the small moments of beauty and calm. (world-class sunsets,  laughter with family, sand in toes, etc.) And then, last night, we piled what remained of our weekend provisions in the car and headed back home.

   My husband and I often talk about world events with our kids. We even try to explain the shades of gray (NOT the 50 shades, people!!!) in the realpolitik world where "Is he a good guy or a bad guy?" can never seem to elicit a clear answer.  My 12 and 13 year old sons find this especially confusing. They still really just want to know which leaders are good and which bad, who is scary and who is safe. As a mother, I WISH I could give them that gift of clarity and simplicity, along with a clear roadmap of how to determine who's on "our" side. But I can't. 

We fight the Taliban. We arm the Taliban.  We end the cold war. We see its chill sauntering right back in the buff, bare-chested form of a saber-rattling crazy person on horseback in Crimea. We do nothing to stop him. After all, he's our ally. When our allies do bad things, we look the other way. What are we teaching the next generation?

I struggle to teach my children that this is called political expediency and that while I don't like it, it is the way things work.  We are clear about right and wrong in our home, but fuzzy about it out in the world:  If there's a bully in the playground: you must stand up to him and protect the victim. But good examples are hard to find on the international stage.  

 "Why don't we just go in to Crimea and make them give it back?" my 12 year old asks. 
"It isn't that simple, honey".  
"But arent we the good guys?" 
"Yes". 
"Then shouldn't we speak up for the Ukrainians?"
"Yes…but it's complicated."


At once illuminated and befuddled by geopolitics,  the boys shift conversation to matters closer to home.   And yes, though I hoped to avoid the subject, we talked about "that guy", the one whose name I will not dignify whose face is all over the media; the one who got rejected by a bunch of girls in high school and decided that was a reason to open fire on innocent, helpless citizens in an American small town this weekend. We discussed "what is it that makes a person snap? How can than kind of sustained pain be better channeled? Could a slightly more polite "no thank you" to the dance have changed the course of events? Or are these deranged and retaliatory mass murderers just irredeemably broken?"
     I wonder how to frame this for two adolescent boys who will, no doubt, face rejection by a girl at some point in their lives. I tell them his kind of crazy is not contagious. I tell them:
"Don't be a bully"
"Don't keep anger pent up.  
"Deal with your feelings when you hurt
, but do so constructively."
"Seek help if you ever feel out of control"
    I make it clear this young man is NOT like them or almost anyone; that the world is NOT the sort of place where they need to live in fear. It is a place where people, in general, observe the rule of law and the rules of etiquette.  I tell them most people are kind enough and good enough. I tell them to be respectful of others and play fair, keep their eyes open for crazy people, and that's the about the best we can do. I hold my breath and pray that what I say is true.

   And then, we pull into McDonalds. 
  The line for the drive-through went around the bend. I could have gone straight and hopped the line as the car in front of me did,  cutting off the folks who'd been waiting patiently in line. Like everyone else, I'd been crawling in maddening traffic on the highway and my nerves were shot. But instead, I drove the long way around and got in the queue as you are supposed to do, as signs everywhere direct you to do, and I waited my turn. We waited…a while. My boys began to fight out of boredom and impatience. I was exasperated. Finally we got within sight of the the ordering box. But just as I was rounding the corner towards it, a man drove in from the road you're not supposed to take, and cut me off, nosing in front of me in line. Alright, I thought, if he's blind to the signs or simply arrogant enough to think he is more important than everyone else…fine. I can let one more person delay my time in this place further. I let him in. But then yet another man in a wannabe sports car edged his way in too,  quickly and definitively cutting me off in a clear and irrefutable act of selfishness and aggression. I was angry. But since I am basically pretty polite, I honked briefly to alert him to the fact that he was not in the line, and that he should go around to the back of the line like the rest of us did. I intended to politely, but firmly let him know that I was not going to look the other way when he was doing something bad. Diplomacy. But the mannerless menace ignored this. Instead, he steadfastly pushed ahead, angling his forward incursion to my place in line while pretending he didn't notice me in my giant mom van SUV towering over his Buick wannabe with a horse name to make it sound tough. I ceded no turf, closing in on him, hoping to intimidate him out of being a jerk. He fully cut me off. That's it!! Now I honked hard! This time, I SAT on that horn. He wasn't taking his turn. He wasn't even alternating with other the cutter-offer and those of us legitimately in line. I blasted him a good 5 seconds which is a LOT of horn honking. BRINKSMANSHIP. And that selfish hothead bully jumped right out of his car with a red face and a clenched fist and stormed toward me, all twisted fury and righteous indignation.

"Oh now I've done it. He's going to kill us all.", I thought. Visions of this crazy guy unloading his assault weapons were dancing in my head.....
His face was beet red and seemed like it was just going to burst from rage. He was big and muscular and looked like he spent a lot of time in the gym punching things. 

"Open the window" he ROARED at me.
I ignored this and kept it closed. Great! Right after I tell my kids that this kind of thing doesn't happen, it happens. Another crazed lunatic was waiting to snap and I just gave him his shot. I checked for firearms as he approached.
"You honked at me!" he bellowed, breathing fire, ignoring the fact he had provoked this, going out of his way to break the rules of inter-human behavior and road etiquette, and bully his way into a long line without waiting. THIS was why I honked at him.
I did not back down. 

"Why did you cut me off?" I shouted back.
" I drove all the way around to take the right path. I waited my turn.  WHY DID YOU CUT ME OFF??? DO YOU THINK YOU ARE MORE IMPORTANT?? What happened to common decency? Do you need that hamburger more urgently than my hungry children do?" I screamed every bit as loudly as this menacing 20 something man had shouted at me. "Take the RIGHT path!"

I was terrified. I gulped.
He was stunned. He was pissed He stared me down and I stared right back…He seethed and turned, and left in a huff. In the speed movie that flies through your head in times of acute danger, I thought. 'This can go either way. He could have a knife on him and stab me in front of my children. He could be going to the car for his brand-spankin' new AK47. Great, now I've done it. What if he opens fire?".

   These are insane thoughts to have in a 20 second dustup in a rural McDonalds. But world events and the focus paid on violence in the media have brought these kinds of thoughts to the forefront of our attention to the point that they now don't feel so crazy. These unreal things happen in the real world now. And for all the attention they get, it feels like they happen often. Anticipating my imminent demise, my crestfallen final thought was that my message to my children that they were safe was now a lie. Time stood still.

   But somehow, he went back to his car....and just got in it. He stopped himself. Perhaps he saw the small-framed woman with her two children in the car, and reason kicked in. He walked back to his car in full puffed-up ruffled feathers combat mode, saving face. Since he'd already edged me out, he now pulled up to the ordering box. Ahead of me. 
At that point, all I cared about was seeing that guy pull out of the parking lot ahead of me before he changed his mind again and made my children orphans...so I wrote down his license plate number and watched him move on...closely.

"Hello?!"
In my terror trance, I did not realize that the woman in the food paying window was talking to me.
"Ma'am. The gentleman in the car ahead of you paid for your dinner and sends his most sincere apologies. He said he's so, so sorry and embarrassed about what happened and he hopes you'll accept his apology"

THAT was not what I expected!!

As I watched him get his food at the window ahead of me, worried watchfulness melted into stunned relief. I felt overjoyed. Mark one down for the good guys: he saved me from being a liar to my children. He showed that he was one of the "most people" who are "mostly good" after all. He avoided the nuclear option. He extended an olive branch in the form of a bunch of burgers. NOW I opened the window I wouldn't open to him before and I waved and shouted again....this time "thank you". He waved back several times and then drove off into the sunset. I breathed finally.

Cognitive function returned. I wondered what would my kids take away from this whole thing? "Do the right thing or your fellow humans will set you straight? Stand up to bullies? Mommy is crazy?"

   I know they understand a little better now how the world isn't as simply divided into good guys and bad guys as they'd thought. But what else would stay with them? 

"Good people occasionally lose themselves and do things they think better of when cooler heads prevail? 
You take your life in your hands if you stand up to bullies??"
  
How did the world get to a place that unhinged raging rampages seem well within the possible?

Or were they maybe, possibly thinking: "Sometimes when you take the right path and do the right thing, you win?" 

I just don't know. This is one of those things they'll just have to make sense of for themselves. I thought all those things as I handed out the peace offering burgers and fries to my sons, but as we pulled out of that parking lot, I found myself smiling. Sometimes the buff saber-rattling crazy guy on the horse actually does turn around and go home if you make enough of a ruckus.

#hollerback

Picasso's got it goin' ON!

"Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist when we grow up."- Pablo Picasso 
(and he should know!)

When I spoke at my father's funeral, I focused on what he gave me that mattered most.  Among many qualities that I treasured and admired, my father had, until his dying day, a child's delight in the absurd. He was like a comedy detective. Whatever dank coal mine of life presented itself to him, he'd put on his miner's hat and find what was interesting and funny in it, and if there was a toothless guy named "Clem" who worked there who knew where to find the best road kill soufflé in all of Appalachia. As I always say, "Everything in life is funny, and whatever isn't will makes a good story." Dad would have liked that one. In fact, I probably stole it from him. 
   As a parent, I often try to channel my father. My dad understood Pablo Picasso's challenge, and he met it each day. He was a childlike artist his whole life--not in any medium visible to the naked eye, but in the way he approached life. He was a life artist. If he were around today, you'd  say "He wins at life." His artistry was to invent a new life hack each and every day and share it in an impish way with everyone in his orbit. He could squeeze joy from a stone. That was his art.
   It is in this esteemed tradition, that I began the breakfast art…what we'll call my "petit dejeuner" period when I look back on this. (It's French for breakfast, and since the FRENCH toast is the primary medium, well, you get it.)

 SO….what better homage to my Peter Pan of a father, than to be every bit as impish and immature with my own children, and appeal to their basest humor. OK, so this picture is a bit of a Rorschach test. HINT: If you are a potty-mouthed, bathroom humor kinda person, you will be at a distinct advantage in making the ID on this one. If this were "JEOPARDY", the hint would be: "It is two things that are related." Here's another angle to really make the point of a kind of cause and effect relationship between the two items. 

 It is a tush. (See the two lumpy "cheeks" back to back to make the crack?). And the longish rectangles plopped on top of each other in a kind of circular fashion below, those things that look like kindling logs in a campfire? They are the work product of the above tush.

 I know.  I'm sorry.  I realize that this is the second unappetizing reference I have made in this blog about food. But I think I've gotten it out of my system now, and everything else will be incredibly dainty, refined, and highbrow.
     After a bunch of smiley faces and a heart or two, this was the first piece of the eggy baked ephemera that I documented. In my house, with one person who has Crohn's and another with Ulcerative Colitis, bathroom humor is ever-present and a consistent winner.  I wanted to make a splash and the tush ensemble was a triumphant success. My son gave me a beaming, smiling, head shaking, eyerolling tsk, tsk, tsk JUST like the one I used to give my dad. And then he tore into his breakfast…just to try to gross me out right back. It made my childish artist's heart sing. 

The SON the moon and the stars

THE SON THE MOON AND THE STARS

                                                                   THE BACK STORY

In my last blog, by way of introduction, I shared an overview of my "breakfast art", a project that evolved as a creative response to a sick child. My middle son, my Malcolm in the Middle, in addition to dealing with all the younger brother/older brother slings and arrows of life, was diagnosed with Crohn's disease after months of pain and basically not eating . While we battled the demoralizing hardships of the prednisone he was given to first get this under control, I noticed that French Toast was the one thing he seemed to consistently be able to stomach. Now, my boy has a staggering, often stultifying tolerance for culinary repetition. At his peak of flexibility, he had a "go to" menu repertoire of about four dishes- pasta, pizza, hot dogs and burgers. But when he got sick, even these lost their dazzle. I was SO thrilled to find that he would eat the french toast, that I, even more challenged with cooking than he was with eating, decided to go long on the toast.

Now. I'll go one by one through the boy-friendly breakfast art, starting with today's contribution… and its motivation.

Last night was Methotrexate night…something he dreads each week. He is finally weaned off the Prednisone and this is his main medication to keep his mouth (he has oral Crohn's) and his gut (in addition to the regular kind of Crohn's in the small intestine.) Every Friday, he takes an anti-nausea pill, waits half an hour and then he gives himself a shot that he realllllllly hates. What usually occurs is a lingering nausea/queasiness that stretches over the weekend, along with a headache, but doesn't make him actually throw up. This shot was worse than usual for him for some reason, and he got up 5 minutes later and bye-bye dinner. All of it. Everything he ate the whole day by the looks of it. (I'd like to extend a quick apology to those of you who thought this would just be a yummy food blog..Note to self: try to avoid puking references in food-related blogs.)

Anyway,  he was drained. SO…this morning, I knew this would be a good day to get back to some good old carbohydrate love. 

Since I have had lots of people ask how I make these confections, I will include a step by step "how-to".

THE EXECUTION

1) Make a pile of Challah French Toast at once…a whole challah's worth at once. This is the constraint. It is the amount he will plow through in several days of French toast and it makes an interesting creative challenge. Like twitter's 144 characters…(is that the number?), I limit myself to whatever can be made with the toast this yields, like a little egg bread haiku. Now the non-lazy among you can feel free to make it as you go, but I don't do that…too little time in the mornings, too many pots and pans to clean.)

Here is this morning's yield. 

A few weeks ago, I offered up this baby (below), and told him it was a downpayment on my promise to give him the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars. (For those of you who thought this was some sort of freaky spider, it is THE SUN)

This one was done "freestyle". I took the biggest piece of challah from the center of the loaf and cut out what was the closest approximation to a circle that I could manage. Fearing the mistaken identity with members of the insect or crab family, I tried to cut out the "rays" like individual lightening bolts. When possible, I cut these out of the scraps from the central orb of my sun. Then came two more concentric circles, stacked on top of each other, to try to create the 3D illusion of roundness. Then, more lightening bolts cut out from what remained of those smaller slices. Obviously, timeliness was of primary concern, so the total creation time was about 10 minutes.

So this morning, I decided it would be a good day to go for the second part of that promise. I'd make the moon and the stars. This was much easier, because it mostly allowed me to cheat and use stars from my abundant cookie cutter collection, and I didn't really have to do anything freehand. Only the smiling moon and one profoundly unimpressive star were done without a mold. See if you can guess which one. It looks a little like the talk bubbles from cartoons where words like ZAP and POW are written.

I tried to block out the stars with the most efficient use of the french toast real estate. (See below)

And once, I stuck one star inside another to create a cut out effect.

The moon was my best effort at cutting out a crescent from the largest piece of the toast, and then making a smile, eyebrows, and eyes from the scraps that remained.

Here's the freestyle "star"- POW! 

The tools of the trade and…VOILA!

       *********************************************************

An Introduction

HELLO GENTLE READER,
Welcome to my blog! I am a reporter/writer on an indefinite parenting sabbatical, and this is my current creative outlet -- a page from the maternal arts (culinary division) for the kitchen-challenged: breakfast art.
  My wry, sweet, funny middle son was recently diagnosed with Crohn's disease, and in the months leading up to the diagnosis this fall, he lost a lot of weight he did not have to lose. It hurt too much for him to eat. It hurt me too much to watch him not eat. SO…as they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and I decided that I needed to create some added enhancements to get that boy to the table. I needed to make him laugh. Since french toast was just about the only thing he could reliably choke down with any consistency, I decided that this divine delectation from my own childhood would become my path to the laughs…and to a kind of white trash version of nutrition for my son (bread, butter, egg, milk, cinnamon-- practically health food :)).
Challah bread, the wonderful, squishy, eggy sacred bread of the Sabbath would be my artistic medium, my comic vehicle.
  The first few toasts went undocumented: a smiley face here, a kind of neanderthal man there. And then I decided to start taking pictures. I went lowbrow, appealing to the baser humor of a 13-year-old: I fashioned a tush out of the back to back "mirror" images of two lumpy pieces of challah. And below it, sliced and placed cris-crossed like logs in a fire, the work product of said tush. My son was mortified and delighted. He ate his breakfast just to "gross me out". I was thrilled.

The next day, I did this one, and called it "A Sunset in One Color". He bought it….or at least he ate it with a smile.

What follows, in the order they somewhat randomly uploaded, are the breakfast treats presented to my son over the next several weeks during the Polar Vortex era this winter. I am profoundly tech-challenged…so these are not in the order I made them. Above-- the efforts of a non-time-challenged snow day breakfast: the 7th wonder of the world-- the Taj Mahal. I printed out a picture of the gorgeous temple in Agra, India and tried to replicate the foreshortened angle, the cedars lining the road leading up to it, and the columns/turrets on both sides.

Other days were much lazier. Inspired by the "wonders of the world" theme on a day where I was scrambling to get the kids off to school, I went for the pyramids in Egypt.

Another day, supreme laziness and a fondness for landmarks combined with  deepest reverence yielded The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center…with the northern tower number one, the radio tower on the left.

I have always liked art and architecture with text- phrases like those by artist Jenny Holtzer or the names of "the greats" in various fields, like Plato, Euripedes, etc. atop a library.

Here, in a cross between "waste not want not" and homage to the arts, is my rather impressionist Guggenheim museum, made from the edges of the bread from another design.

This one is a nod to my son's favorite sport- America's pastime: Baseball. 

Eventually, I began to feel a little guilt about all those carbs, and his tummy became a bit better able to tolerate a slight variety of foods…so I expanded the medium beyond bread.

But not for long: As we labored under the deep freeze of the Polar Vortex, and farrrrrr too many school-free snow days.  Igloo 2.0 came soon thereafter.

Here, with the clip art sketch that was its inspiration.

Couldn't decide if it should have a chimney.

Tried to create a deeper doorway to the igloo with multiple layers of toast on the arched entrance. And then…for one of my own personal natural wonders, a downpayment on a promise to give him the Sun the Moon, and the Stars: the sun for my son. 

I started posting these French toast treats on my Facebook page, and got great reactions from my friends…some of them quite funny. Sarah R. said this looked a bit like a spidery sea creature…but when I explained my limited talent and lame-ish efforts to compensate for this with "lightening bolt-y rays", and concentric circles of French toast to create the orb effect, she bought the whole "Sun" thing, alien arachnid factor notwithstanding.

I began taking requests and suggestions. My friend Julie was really into the "Wonders of the World/landmarks" thing, and she threw down the gauntlet: "Do Stonehenge". I demurred…"I am not ready for a 3D tableau". 

    Back to fruit…"The Wink"

 In honor of the Olympics, and the mini-reenactment of the Russia vs. US miracle on unfriendly (Sochi) ice, "Hockey player with chipped tooth"

 And then "Hockey player with a black eye and a chipped tooth"

 And finally, when we packed up the kids and went to visit Julie and her family in Florida, I was ready to take on Stonehenge as my first collaborative effort. We clicked on a great image of Stonehenge, and then did a mockup on the counter pre-cooking, just to lay it all out and make sure we had all the bits and pieces just where we needed them. On this day, we traded in challah for ciabatta because the latter's flat shape and firm crust lent itself much better to recreating the shapes of the vertical, rectangular stones.

 To avoid the soggy factor, we decided to forego the French toast squish for the cinnamon toast crunch. Julie supplied the viking in a  total plunge into historical and scale inaccuracy. We really did try to put all the stones in the right places.

 The parthenon…an early effort.

 A witch, as interpreted by my son.

 And finally, the French Eiffel tower in French toast.

A bunch of friends have, generously, suggested that I get a gallery to do an exhibition of this edible art, or that I do a book out of it. Architect and college friend Shari M. has critiqued the structural soundness of the architectural monuments. Others, like high school friends Patti H. and Sean M., have peer pressured/encouraged/brow beaten me into starting this
blog, with Sean even kind enough to offer up a tutorial for the tech-challenged on how to do this. He had some great ideas for names for the blog, but in the end, it was former TV colleague Paul M. who came up with the title. (thanks guys!)
The title is TOAST OF THE TOWN, but that URL was not available, so…please look for this in the PLURAL as http://toastsofthetown.blogspot.com/2014/02/an-introduction.html  THAT's MANY TOASTS, not just one…toastSofthetown.blogspot.com.

My son's weight and appetite are back and so is his regular laughter, so I may just back off on the carbs for a while. But I'm sure I'll still have a thing or two to share…on a wide range of topics. Come back and check it out!
Sharon D.