Puckering Children

Some of you will recognize this Moberg family routine: Last night we ate homemade pizza, so this morning we (well, Suzanna, Abigail, and I) ate cold leftover pizza for breakfast (refresh your memory). Susan had toast instead, and Hillary had a bowl of Kellogg's Barbie cereal, which, when I first saw it in our cereal cupboard, I criticized as appearing to be nothing more than a box of sugar. Hillary came to see me in the office this morning after finishing her cereal and reported on what she had eaten. Apparently, however, she wanted to assure me that, contrary to my suspicions, the Barbie cereal is not nothing more than sugar, sugar, sugar, so she offered this: "The little hearts [heart-shaped chunks of sugar in the sugary cereal] didn't have any sugar in them, though. They kinda tasted like vinegar."

Oh, really? I knew that she was grasping for anything non-sugar to which to compare the cereal so that I wouldn't think she had just consumed 300 times the amount of sucrose recommended for one serving, but "vinegar"? I just couldn't let it go. "Let's go tell Mommy," I said, and off we went to the kitchen.

Susan was as amused as I was by Hillary's choice of comparison for the sugary hearts in the Barbie cereal and was prepared to end the conversation by explaining why "vinegar" is not likely to be the flavor that Kellogg's chose for the sugary hearts in the sugary Barbie cereal. I quickly put the kibosh on that, though, and suggested instead that Hillary might like to sample vinegar to see if the flavor is the same as the sugary, sugary, sweet hearts in the cereal. Hillary was game. Susan exchanged looks with me, bit her cheek, had to look away, and got out a spoon.

Anyone who knows me is not surprised by this, and anyone who knows our kids will not be surprised to learn that Abigail and Suzanna immediately lined up, too, to sample a spoonful of vinegar straight from the bottle. There they were, three little pajama-ed blondies with their morning hair falling out of their French braids, queued up in the kitchen, waiting unsuspectingly for their mother to dole out a teaspoon of white vinegar to top off their breakfast. Each in turn swallowed the spoonful, looked off thoughtfully while waiting for the flavor to spread out over her tongue, and then squinted her eyes and puckered her mouth and jerked her head back as the tang of the liquid registered with her taste buds. "Nope," Hillary responded, that wasn't exactly the same flavor as the Barbie cereal hearts.

But wait--there's more! For you see, Faithful Reader, Susan is an excellent cook who serves foods from a wide variety of recipes and who relies upon a well stocked pantry to produce such an array of dishes. Do you see where I'm going with this? Yes, white vinegar is not the only kind of vinegar in our kitchen. "Do you think the Barbie hearts might taste like some other kind of vinegar?" I wondered. Well, it's certainly worth a try. The girls agreed. Susan continued to bite her cheek.

Like a hostess of a television cooking show or a peddler of kitchen wares at a booth at the state fair, Susan removed bottle after bottle of flavored vinegars from the cupboard and, doling out spoonfuls of each liquid, explained what recipes she would typically make with it before dumping a portion into the open mouth of each child. We watched the taste/ponder/shudder routine continue with balsamic vinegar, seasoned rice vinegar, raspberry vinegar, apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar, and white wine vinegar. I never thought there'd come a day when I'd wish Susan had even more kinds of vinegar in the kitchen, but that day arrived today.

(For the curious: Hillary's ultimate conclusion was that the hearts in Barbie cereal do not, in fact, taste like vinegar. She learned an important lesson today in applying the scientific method to test a hypothesis . . . and in not being coy about the sugar that she consumes!)

P.S. Suzanna's response after one spoonful: "My tonsils are having a freak show."

P.P.S. Abigail's response after the first spoonful but before the rest: "After I taste these vinegars, I might want to taste some water, too."