macaroni and cheese: trumped by yellow dye #5

“What kind of sauce is this?” they asked in unison with scrunched eyebrows, ignoring the bead of sweat that had formed on the nape of my neck from my constant whisking.I turned around to face my two young children, looking aghast, noses upturned (cute noses albeit, but still pointed in the wrong direction to receive much more than a swat from my Vermont Cheddar cheese goo of a whisk).”It’s the wrong color”, they persisted, insisting that I reply to their unanswered question.”It’s homemade” I threw at them like a confident Aborigine hunter throws a boomerang in the dead of a quiet summers’ heat. This one would surely come back to me.”I don’t like it”, the little one said without skipping a beat, deflating my life’s mission of teaching these suburban brats to appreciate good food, i.e., MY food.”Try it,” I urged with authoritarian bravado. I knew I’d need to pull all the stops and get their tiny hands to activate their tiny forks to scoop a bit of MY Mac-and-cheese into their mouths. A little bit of “because I said so” parenting was in need here since, after all, this so-called Mac-and-cheese was not blindingly neon in color, so, obviously, it must be bad.The two accomplices turned and looked at each other in silent conference. Do we struggle with our demented mother or do we eat? their gaze read. Whatever they’d decided to do, they decided to do together, that much I could tell. If they’ve learned anything in their young lives it was this: when mom gets that angry glazed look in her face we’d best stick together. If there is a food product involved, they tended to silently clasp hands to solidify their alliance.Resistor 1 and Resistor 2 quietly turned back to their steaming bowls filled with creamy macaroni and, with the timing of an Olympic synchronized swimming team, reluctantly scooped. Quietly, I exhaled and relaxed my grip on the whisk. I knew I had won. All I needed was this moment for victory. One taste and they’d be mine, for how could my meal, honed to perfection and nurtured to creaminess with love and wholesome ingredients, be overturned by neon yellow dye #5? It was just a matter of getting them this far, and, obviously, my pissed-offness had pushed them down this course. I turned my back to them and smiled. Score: mommy.Until…”…I don’t like this”, Resistor 2 whined.”Yeah, me neither”, Resistor 1 chimed in.And then with that graceful unison (I wasn’t watching them but I knew they held hands):”This stuff is gross…”Now I know they are only nine and six and I should have had plenty of time to grow food elephant skin for a mother of a nine and six- year old. But I hadn’t. I simply couldn’t. Because as much as I know it to be true, I refuse to accept it. Since my oldest discovered at fifteen months that tofu soup was admissible for breakfast in certain countries my children have been nurtured in a constant cloud of vongole and marinated octopus salad and rabbit braised with Calamata olives. It’s just the way it is in my family, so, Macaroni and Cheese should serve no exception.But apparently, it had. I could not compete with the big proud world of Kraft, and as the children pushed their noodles from side to side, they looked at me ambivalently and now remorseful, sensing my hurt.”Mom, can we have more chicken?” one offered as an olive branch to my culinary ego.”Yeah, the chicken mom. The chicken is good. We’ll have more of that,” the other begged (interesting how they work as a team only when it is convenient to them, I noted.)I let go of the whisk and with it any hopes of culinary enlightenment for my children. I turned to them and was faced with their gaze which was as warm as the butterscotch brownies I had planned to bake. “All right,” I relented.Score: kids. And with that, I scooped some chicken onto their plates. It was nothing exciting, just leftover shnitzel from the night before, but they gobbled it up with glee and watching them do so inevitably led me to smile.