What I Came Home To

I'm sure that is the burning question on everyone's mind: What kind of culinary chaos did Heather come home to after five months?

Let me say...frankly...it wasn't so bad.  I was expecting worse.  I was expecting my shelves to be exploding with Hamburger Helper and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, etc. etc.  However, I appeared to have rubbed off on my husband somewhat - hurrah!

All of the pictures below need a context.  Here it is:  I have three children: one in high school, one in middle school, and one in elementary.  The high schooler and middle schooler are in cross country and soccer.  The elementary kid is soccer only.  Then, my boys are in Cub/Boy Scouts while my daughter (the middle schooler) is on Student Council.  Suffice it to say that fall is a very busy time for our family and there is a lot of taxiing that goes on...of which Brent has been shouldering the sole burden of since April.

So...can you really blame the guy for what you're about to see?  I think not either.

Like entrails spilling out of a sliced abdomen, bags of potato chips tumble out of an open bag.  Chips are quick, versatile, and a pile of salty deliciousness.  I get it.  Anytime I feel like eating a bag of air, potato chips are the first thing I go for.  There is a loaf of wheat bread on the counter and a package of Oscar Meyer bologna in the meat drawer...and I suspect these items, and these chips will be gone in three days.  Nothing goes with processed lunchmeat and enriched "wheat" bread like Lay's Classic bags of air.

You know, I can't really complain about this.  Yes, these quick micro dinners are saturated with fat and sodium and have the nutritional content of a cardboard pizza box...but, they also foster independence.  If the kid can work a microwave, that is.  And what?  There's four, maybe five, boxes here?  That's one meal, maybe two.  Gone in two days.

Far and away, this is the biggest disappointment.  Upon interrogation regarding the sundae syrup, my husband said "we had ice cream once or twice".  To which I wish I would have said, oh, you topped that ice cream with melted magenta crayons?  Yuk, yuk, and more yuk.  I don't trust packaging that is this unnatural color.  Also, HyVee?  Nice try at duplicity on your bottle of strawberry spread...a picture of some nice succulent REAL strawberries might just trick someone else into thinking your spread is made with *real* strawberries.

But you gotta get up pretty early in the morning to pull one over on me.  Or...maybe I'm just that cynical.  Yeah, that's probably it.

Here's the awful thing...that syrup is so transmogrified that it has a shelf life of, like, twenty years.  We eat ice cream so infrequently, and subsequently, that syrup will last long enough to end up as a heirloom of the family.  Thus, I would not be surprised if this bottle ends up in the trash soon.

So, final report:  there is some damage control to be done here...but not a whole terrible lot.  I expect to be purged by the end of this weekend. Hurrah!