On Today’s Menu: Taco Surprise

Double Thumbs Down.

That’s what my six-year-old Sarah gave the tacos her school served her for lunch this week.  To say I was proud would be the understatement of the year.  After all, my kid’s desire to buy lunch in the cafeteria has been the source of all of my going-off-to-first-grade anxiety since the moment she recieved her kindergarten diploma three months ago.  And here she was, deciding that the mass-produced, government-regulated meal wasn’t to her liking.  Bravo, little girl, bravo.

Forgive me for wanting to protect her from frozen french fries, sugar-laden strawberry milk and mystery meat.  She is my first born, the baby for whom I hand-mashed avocado and froze into ice cube trays.  Even then I refused to trust processed food for my little one. And when friends and family remark at what a “good eater” Sarah is, I have to believe that my homemade baby food and insistence on serving her the same food her father and I ate had something to do with adventurous nature at the dinner table.

So you can understand my nerves about her going off to eat in the cafeteria. I myself was a “hot lunch” kid growing up in the eighties.  I can still smell the combination of government-grade spaghetti sauce warming in the kitchen and industrial cleaning agents used to disinfect every surface of the cafeteria.  My friends and I would line up against the cold, tile wall in the dimly lit hallway just outside the lunch room, anxiously awaiting the overcooked noodles and Chef Boyardee-like meatballs, while a separate line formed for those kids with tuna sandwiches and peanut butter and fluff tucked safely inside their Wonderwoman and Garfield lunchboxes.

Yes, I was a “hot lunch” kid.  Every Monday, I’d go to school with a five-dollar-bill tucked into the front pocket of my purple corduroy overalls or my stylish Lee jeans.  I’d turn my money into my teacher, Mrs. Mayo, and in return, she’d give me a strip of green tickets, good for five cafeteria lunches. My sisters, brother and I never brought our lunch.  For my parents, buying school lunch was far easier than preparing four brown bagged lunches daily, and now that I’m a parent of three, rushing out the door to work each morning, I get it.  But had they known then what we know now about kids, the poor quality of food in public schools and the rising rate of childhood obesity and Type II diabetes, I doubt they’d make the same decision.

Yes, we know better.  I know better.  Heck, I know for one that my own struggle with weight as a young adult stemmed from a general misunderstanding or lack of knowledge about food and good nutrition.  And that’s why I was so terrified to send my baby out into the world this past week, to make her first decisions about food without me.  It was the first day of school when she came bounding down the stairs, dropped her polka-dot backpack at my feet and declared, “I want to eat in the cafeteria tomorrow.”  I knew the day would come, but still, my heart sank.

We agreed she could try it.  We looked at the school menu and chose one meal that week, and she would buy her lunch in the cafeteria.  Of all her choices, including ham sandwich, yogurt, chicken burger and pizza, she chose tacos.  Not a terrible choice, I thought to myself, secretly hoping they were made with ground turkey and seasoned with cilantro from the school garden.

Sarah’s double thumbs down were perhaps more of a surprise to her to me.

“It was just a hard shell with meat, cheese and salsa,” she complained, I myself not realizing what was missing as I thought back to the Cold Spring School tacos of my childhood.  ”No lettuce!  And, no tomatoes,” she continued, looking like she had been on the unlucky end of a cruel trick.

I breathed a sigh of relief, told her I was sorry she was disappointed, and the next day, sent her off to first grade with an amazing tomato, basil and mozzarella sandwich.  Now this is not the type of sandwich Sarah should get used to, as I’m sure there will be days when sunbutter and crackers might be all the culinary creativity I can muster.  But on that day, when she was realizing for herself what good food she is used to receiving at meal time, I couldn’t help but rub it in, just a little.

I know she’ll keep trying the school food. And I will more than likely encourage this behavior.  After all, it was those first avocados and her willingness to try new things that led her down this path of good eating habits.  And as she learn the difference between good, fresh, healthy food and mediocre, run-of-the-mill processed food,  I know she’ll be okay on her own in the culinary world…

…whether I like it or not!

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