Introducing, the Slop Dog

Sometimes, memories live in tastes.

A couple years ago, I asked for family members to share with me some of their "iconic" recipes (shoutout to my sister for gathering them all for a very thoughtful Christmas present!). In my paternal grandma's batch was something called "Ham and Cheese Rolls." This did not ring a bell for me, and I found it odd she'd included it with her lemon squares and lasagna.

This past Christmas, I connected the dots.

At one family gathering, my mom was concocting what appeared to be the weirdest amalgamation of ingredients into one huge bowl. I saw chopped ham, mayo, chili sauce, cubed cheese, and hard boiled eggs. It was all mixed together and then put into hot dog buns, wrapped in foil, and baked.

I was like, where did these come from?

My mom said, "Grandma used to make them all the time. She called them ham and cheese rolls, but your dad always called them slop dogs."

The latter seemed very apt. Looking at the now-melted mush of ingredients, I can see why my 6-year-old self didn't go crazy over these things. I mean, hard boiled egg??

I took a bite. And there it was. I knew this taste, vaguely, but there it was. My older sister said my grandma used to make them on New Year's Eve, and I remember them now, their smell and texture. I have a feeling I only tasted them once or twice as a kid, but it's not a taste you forget.

It is unique. It is odd. It is good. Over the course of my time at my mom's for Christmas, I polished off many a slop dog. Try them for your next picnic.

Ingredients

1/2 pound cubed ham
1/2 pound cubed sharp cheese
1/3 cup sliced green onion
2 hard cooked eggs
1/2 cup sliced stuffed olives (we may have skipped these)
3 Tbs mayonnaise
1/2 cup chili sauce

Directions

Combine all ingredients. Pile mixture into split hot dog rolls.

Wrap in foil - Twist ends securely.

Place on grill over medium coals, turning frequently. OR Bake in hot oven 20-30 minutes, 350 degrees.

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Inspired by the prompt, "Share a recipe that everyone in your family loves" in Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop.

Career Day Killed the Veterinary Star

When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. It's likely this imagined career is popular amongst little girls and boys alike. I liked animals; I liked the prospect of working with them every day. I read the Animal Inn series about a girl who helps in a vet's clinic, and though #2 featured the dread putting down of a beloved pet, I loved the books.

But I did not grow up to be a veterinarian. And I remember the moment that dream died a quick and shameful death.

It happened at our 6th grade career day. I don't remember any presentations from that day, other than the one I was most excited to attend--the talk by our family's vet. I felt like this was the moment I would learn all about the glories of becoming a vet.

And maybe he did talk about the good stuff and the rough stuff, but what I heard and grabbed on to was the HARD stuff. Dr. D said in his talk how difficult veterinary school was--to get into and to complete. It would take years, FOREVER, to my young mind. He talked about how few vet schools there were, how competition was fierce, and the best of the best only got in and made it.

I can still feel the deflation as I remember sitting in the folding chairs and listened. It was a sort of crushing heartbreak. This would not be my future after all. I knew it for a certainty, beyond a doubt.

Because, I was sure, I was not the best of the best. I couldn't do it, so there was no use in even going down that road. It would be too hard and I was sure to fail.

The irony here is, at least in my small pond of a small school in a small Michigan town, I was the best of the best, or damn near close to it. I was straight As almost entirely through K-12, and I graduated salutatorian. I excelled at AP courses. I was smart. I was bright.

But I wasn't confident.

And my greatest fear then, as now, was failure.

This streak runs through me, the absolute certainty that I am about to fail, falter, fall short in some fundamental way. Over the years, I've learned to push these voices aside, but it's an active process, and it's exhausting. I've learned that if you don't try ANYTHING, you will not live any sort of life. But it's hard for me, even now.

I've learned to close my eyes and and go, in some cases, enter a sort of free fall--like motherhood, the largest, scariest, most rewarding, most terrifying endeavor of my life. I'm learning to see things not as absolutes, so much. Some things I will fail at--like when I gave my 2 year old a love nip on his shoulder during bedtime routine and he flipped out. But that doesn't mean I'm a failure.

And I've learned to live with failing, learned to see the glory in the trying--like when I wrote my novel and failed to get an agent. There's still time, yes, but there's pride just in having completed those 150,000 words.

I don't know why Dr. D hammered into his young audience how challenging it was to become a vet. Maybe he was sick of having rose-eyed kids imagine his job was simply giving adoring pups a few pats on the head. Maybe he needed to validate himself that day, all his accomplishments and hard work.

And, it's likely with time I would have reached the conclusion that being a vet wasn't for me after all, once I stopped to imagine myself putting a family pet to sleep. I like science, but I'm not precise enough. I don't think I could perform surgery on anything, as I can't even cut a straight line.

But those aren't the reasons I didn't pursue it. Those are mature reasons, the reasons of a woman who knows her strengths and understands that medicine isn't one of them, and that it's okay.

My reason was fear. And that's sometimes hard to live with.

This post was inspired by the writing prompt, 1.) Something you wanted to be when you grew up.

Hail to the Spaghetti

Last week, I shared this tweet: "And then my finicky 2yo ate a plate of spaghetti. In a RESTAURANT. #doublewhammy"

This is the story of that tweet.

The scene was a recipe for disaster. Hubs, Munch, and I were on vacation with Geema and Geepa at Massanutten Resort in the Shenandoah Valley, and we decided to venture into a restaurant instead of eating in, as is always easier with dearest Munch, who doesn't always sit down for meals (*understatement*).

The restaurant was a buffet, heralded in the resort literature for it's "popular pasta bar."

It also was located inside the big ol waterpark that we weren't taking Munch to because he wants to ride the tallest slide and swim in the deepest water and stand under the biggest bucket. It's just not the scene for him (or mommy) at this point in his life.

The buffet overlooked the entire park from pretty much anywhere you sat. Distraction was not an option.

We were disappointed to find that the food looked, in a word, disgusting. And this is coming from me, the girl who loves fast food and recently told her sister how she thinks with fondness and longing of the elementary school cafeteria pizza and chicken pattys. I'm not a high-brow food person, I love "trash" food, and this buffet was inedible.

So, as Munch squirmed to look out at the water park and said, "Kids!" and "Down there!" my mood quickly downgraded from hungry and hopeful that Munch would sit calmly to quite pissy and queasy. I wanted to leave, but Hubs said it was too late, we'd ordered drinks, we'd tried the watery mashed potatoes. We were committed.

As I walked back from another look at the buffet with Munch drooped sullenly in my arms, he spied food at another table and suddenly said, "Lolos" (translation: noodles). Someone was eating spaghetti. I said, "You want lolos?" and he nodded.

With no hope and nothing else to do, I took Munch to the "popular pasta bar," which consisted of two types of noodles, pale shrimp, and a few veggies, and ordered him up some spaghetti with red sauce. We watched as the "cook" made up the pasta on the hot plate, then I carried the large oval plate back to the table, figuring that I'd be the one eating the noodles.

Munch sat in his booster seat next to the window overlooking the water park and let me feed him a noodle. Seeing as how he's never eaten spaghetti for me, I held my breath, pretended this was no big deal, and fed him one noodle at a time. He looked at me and said, "Big one." As in LOAD THAT FORK, WOMAN. And soon he was shoveling the noodles into his own mouth!

He ate two-thirds of that plate, quietly watching as the big water bucket filled and dumped over and over. None of the rest of us ate much, but it was Munch's best meal of the trip, and for that, I thank the Blue Ridge Buffet.

This post was written in response to Mama Kat's writing prompt: 2.) Find a tweet you shared last week and elaborate.

Balloons: The Bane of my Existence

 

My 2 year old son has many obsessions, ranging from watching “Big Block Singsong” to pushing every button imaginable to checking if the light outside our house is on each night. The biggest obsession he has going, though, is balloons, which he inexplicably still calls “booms.”

 

(Full disclosure, obsessions are in Munch’s DNA: I will listen to one song seven times straight. Hubs will play a video game level 2 million times until he beats it. Munch, I fear, is doomed in this regard.)

 

I believe my husband and I instilled the boom obsession because when he was born, we got a Mylar “It’s a Boy!” balloon and tied it to the rocking chair where I often nursed him. Tiny infant Munch would watch that balloon sway back and forth, back and forth. This balloon lasted for months, it was the best balloon I’ve ever seen.

 

When he got old enough to realize that he could hold and interact with balloons, a little after his first birthday, he flipped out when he had one. I mean crazy screaming, mostly because he couldn’t reach the string when it went to the ceiling or because he wanted to clutch it to his chest and it would float off, as booms will. So, from about the time he was 12 to 18 months old, balloons were banned from our household. Balloons seen in public caused tears and screams and rants and raves and swift changes of route. Avoidance at all costs.

 

The things we love most are indeed the things that drive us the most crazy, eh?

 

When Munch turned 2, he sort of had outgrown his complete psycho problem with balloons. We realized it after he threw up on the car on the way to Wegman’s and we continued with our shopping, believing it to be car sickness (it was the flu, turns out), and he got a green balloon and a yellow balloon and was the most joyful boy in the world. At home, he let the balloons hang out on the ceiling and he played with them, but didn’t meltdown when it was time to say “Night-night, booms.”

 

Just as he outgrew his stroller obsession, it seemed Munch was “over” his balloon obsession. Now, balloons were just beloved. He can see them, notice them, and let them be. Yes, in the checkout lines at grocery stores, he cries. (I’d like to pop every single one of the dozens of balloons we have to pass on our exodus.)  But, he mostly forgets them as soon as we’re out the door.

 

We’ve even started buying him a balloon every other week to have at home, and he’s been oh so happy about it. I thought all was well.

 

And then, daycare got the brilliant idea to attach shiny gold star balloons to its signs, apparently in an attempt to attract new patrons.

 

For some reason, Munch fixated on these balloons. He asked for the “yellow booms” every day. Once, as soon as his eyes popped open at 7am, he looked at me and said, “Yellow booms” and when I said, “They’re at school,” he immediately burst into tears.

 

On walks, he would direct our steps past school, just so he could look at and subsequently cry about the yellow booms. He would say, “I touch it. It’s my boom.”

 

This went on for weeks, WEEKS, as school added more and more booms to their signs. To add insult to injury, they were STARS, Munch’s favorite shape. As each day brought more boom-induced meltdowns, I started to believe school hung the balloons JUST to spite us, JUST to torture us, JUST for fun at our expense. 2-year-old tantrums will do that to a person.

 

Admittedly, Hubs and I considered popping the balloons under cover of darkness.

 

But, I wouldn’t have wanted school to believe they were vandalized, so they stayed.

 

And, one day, as balloons are wont to do, they deflated and then were gone. And Munch pointed out where they were and said, “Yellow booms?” And accepted my answer, “Balloons are bye-bye.”

 

I pray they don’t get replaced.

 

This post is written in response to Mama Kat’s writing prompt, #3: Write a post that incorporates the word: balloon.