When I was a little girl my parent's bought their first home: a gorgeous, rambling, Victorian, fixer-upper. I loved, loved, loved, that house. I have fantastic memories of playing hiding seek with my siblings, which was quite a challenge with all the nooks and crannies that house held. I remember sliding across wooden floors, basking in a sunshine filled room (there were literally two walls of windows), and eating in the breakfast nook off the kitchen. I also remember opening the pantry on any given occasion to small bugs colonizing our dry goods. My parent's referred to them as
weebles. I'm unclear on their scientific name. I remember eating more than one bowl of cereal half way before
realizing there were
weebles drowning in my bowl.
Ahhh, childhood.
Needless to say I was more than a little chagrined last night when I had slaved over from scratch beef
stroganoff over whole grain brown rice, only to discover there were more black flecks than usual in the rice. Never mind I reasoned, I did use the pepper grinder. Until I saw legs, yes, I am pretty sure those are legs. By this time my apparent scrutiny of my
stroganoff had brought the
curiosity out in the rest of the family. "What are you doing , Mom?" my son asked as he shoveled his second helping of
stroganoff in his mouth. (I had only begun to eat, as the movie The Christmas Story so truthfully proclaims "my mother hasn't had a hot meal in years".) Then my very squeamish husband began to ask questions while at the same time reassuring everyone it was just the flecks in the rice. Until our son loudly proclaimed, "It's got legs! It's not rice. It's got legs!" At this point my darling husband got up to insect, excuse the
Freudian slip, I mean inspect the bag of very expensive uncooked organic all natural rice. At first nothing, until he dumped the entire bag on the
counter top. "Um, everybody stop eating," he said calmly. "Is it bugs?" I inquired. "Yeah, it's definitely bugs. They're still moving around in here."
So we all scrapped our plates, put on our coats, and headed for taco night at our favorite
Mexican restaurant. "You know this only serves to confirm my aversion to cooking," I calmly informed my husband. "Yeah, I know. Thanks for all the meals."