Favorite Food Swap

I recently participated in a Favorite Food Swap hosted by Laural and Elaine. The premise is that you get hooked up with someone in the U.S. who's in a different region than you. You send them some of your favorite foods and they send you some of theirs. Even better is if you send them something you can only get in your area!

I got my Food Package from Elaine a couple days before Christmas. If you visit her blog (link above), you'll see that she provided a picture of all the items she received from me. Uh, as for me, I didn't think of that before I devoured the awesome locally-made peanut brittle she sent. Oops.

She also sent me a box of two chocolate and caramel-covered pecans. I'm pretty sure they had a proper name, but seeing as though I ate those the night I got them, the box is no longer around. And thank god there were only two because I seriously loved them and would've eaten all of them, no matter how many there were, in one sitting.

She also sent me "K-Ann's Strawberry Jam," which, surprisingly, is the only thing I haven't wolfed down yet. It won't last long, though, once it's opened. It's pretty obvious that I have no self-control.

Thank you, Laural and Elaine, for hosting this fabulous event. You have made a valuable contribution to my holiday weight gain. : )

Food Fight!

I've been bad, I know. I haven't posted for a while. At least I'm not as bad as my husband who hasn't posted in over a month.

So I witnessed an honest-to-god, real-life FOOD FIGHT! Just like in the movies! It was unreal. My fourth graders have lunch at a time when the lunch room is filled with 5th and 6th graders. As we leave, 7th graders come in. However, on this particular day, I kept my kids at lunch late because we arrived late and they didn't have time to finish their lunch. Despite the bad feeling I had about staying 5 minutes late, we stayed. Yes, I literally had an intuitive feeling that we should not stay, but damnit, I'm 9 months pregnant and hungry!

From where I sit in the lunchroom, I have a wide vantage point. I can pretty much see everybody. It started with a 7th grader throwing an orange. Then another kid throwing an orange. Then hamburgers started flying. Then chocolate milks. Then whole trays of food were going all over the place. We're talking over 100 students in this room, in this mess.

My class was pretty much out of the way (as we're all the way at the front of the room) so we weren't in the food fight, but we witnessed the whole thing. My poor little 4th graders either ran out of the room or took cover under the table. I pretty much just sat their, mouth agape, and watched the chaos unfold. Crazy, but the whole thing lasted under 30 seconds...there's only so much food you can throw, right? Good thing it wasn't spaghetti day. ( ;

Flamin' Hot Breakfast

When I see what some of the kids at my school eat for breakfast, it totally grosses me out, and not because I'm pregnant, but because...well, you'll see.

I will admit that when I was a kid, I did not eat the most nutritional of breakfasts. I usually had caffe-latte (a.k.a. cafe au lait) (give my parents a break - we're 100% Italian) with Froot Loops and Chips Ahoy cookies. NOT your breakfast of champions. (God, it was good, though. I wish I could still eat like that!).

At least it was breakfast food, though. It's not like I was eating a piece of chicken or a plate of spaghetti at 7:30 a.m.

Many kids nowadays eat the weirdest things for breakfast. The most popular food: Flamin' Hot Cheetos. If you walk around outside my school on any random day, I guarantee you will see at least 10 people eating Flamin' Hots before 9:00 a.m. I've observed this for several years now at 2 different schools. When I spoke to a friend about it, he informed me that he heard something on NPR about it. I googled it and, lo and behold, found the link to the segment: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5394069. Apparently, this is a nationwide problem! "They" think that the spiciness of the product stimulates endorphins to be released, thus creating a buzz from the food. Great. Get all buzzed up on Flamin' Hots then come to my reading class. Those 2 mix well.

The non-breakfast food for breakfast is not limited to cheetos, though. At 8:00 this morning, I was opening my window (because my room is 8,000 degrees, but that's another story) and happened to look down to see a kid eating a huge-ass slice of pepperoni pizza! Where the hell did he get that at 8:00 a.m.? I know there's a breakfast truck like a block away, but pizza? wtf?

I know the school's breakfast and lunch is nothing fantastic, but, hey, it's free for most of the kids AND it's breakfast foods like waffles, doughnuts, pancakes, or cereal...y'know, breakfast food.

You Get What You Ask For

Today I walked into the lunchroom to eat lunch with my kids, like I always do. A few of my kids were already seated as they brought their own lunches. The rest were in the lunch line waiting to be served prison, er, school food.

I sat down in my usual spot next to one of the girls. She was busy smashing up her ziplock bag of pringles with her juice box.

Me: What are you doing?

Her: Smashing my chips into tiny little pieces.


Duh. I asked an obvious question and got an obvious answer.

She ate the rest of her lunch while reading a book. Meanwhile, the now-crushed Pringles were still sitting there in the bag. I couldn't take it anymore:

Me: Why did you crush your chips with your juice box?

Her: So there would seem like there was more of them! Can I go get a spoon?


Yes, she then ate the crushed chips with a spoon. ( :

The Evolution of Fruit Roll-Ups

If you are around my age (early 30s), you remember when Fruit Roll-Ups were invented. I'd like to guess it was around 1982-1984. If you're like me, you remember that Fruit Roll-Ups came in limited colors/flavors (red, orange, purple) and were square or rectangular and came, well, rolled-up in cellophane. If you're like me, you have not had a Rruit Roll-Up in 20+ years.

Well, times and Fruit Roll-Ups have changed! They now come in 10 flavors, crazy colors and patterns (including tiger stripes and tie-dye), and funny character shapes that you can peel off. To make it even CRAZIER, some are even printed with "tongue tattoos!" The Fruit Roll-Up has pictures on which you press your tongue, and the picture transfers onto your tongue! Then you stick your tongue out at all your friends and they exclaim, "Ohhhh, Spongebob!" It makes lunchtime great fun.

There are also "stackable" Fruit Roll-Ups, but the concept was lost on me. Why would you want to stack your food? Why not just eat it? Oh, yeah, I remember. Because you're 9 and stacking your food and putting pictures on your tongue before actually eating the food is great fun!
My students couldn't believe that "back in the day" (this is the term used when referring to any teacher's childhood), we only had, like, 3 options when it came to Fruit Roll-Ups. "That's too bad," they tell me. I can't get myself to eat a Fruit Roll-Up (ewww), so I don't know what I'm missing.