It was a busy weekend, with Thanksgiving with multiple families, we have’t been home since Thursday moring. So, I don’t have my act together yet, and Meal Monday is just going to have to wait until next week. I trust that everyone will survive this momentary delay.

Instead, today I’m sharing all of the foods that I feed the kiddo, but would never, ever in a million years touch myself. It’s true that most of these are things that I ate as a kid, and I turned out pretty good, so I’m not too worried about it. Yes, they are highly processed, meats, mil and other animal parts mashed together, full of preservatives and other ingredients that I can’t pronounce and don’t even want to know what they actually are. But you know what, Eli likes them, actually loves them, so in my book they are OK, in smallish quantities. The more that I think about it, this is pretty much the opposite of Meal Monday, since I don’t think that any of these “foods” actually qualify as food.

1. Hot dogs: not the all beef or turkey variety, the miscellaneous animal parts mashed up and glued together with God knows what to resemble plump, sickly colored fingers. Just thinking about it makes me gag a little. I’m actually thinking about switching to the healthier (and I use that term loosely) all beef kind, since Eli eats, on average, 500-600 hot dogs a week.
2. American cheese slices: These aren’t even close to cheese. Believe me, I would know, living in Wisconsin all of my life and having grandparents that owned a cheese store for many years. I know cheese, I love cheese, and I eat it just about every day. And American cheese slices are NOT cheese. They are slippery, sticky, oiling slices of yellow tinted nastiness. And I’m slowly trying to ween Eli off of these, I hate even having to touch them.
3. Fruit snacks. Not the healthy-ish ones made with real fruit juice, the sugar packed, unnaturally brightly colored snacks, shaped like dinos, sharks, and treasure chests. You know, things that you find in nature. Truth be told, I actually LOVE these snacks, probably just as much, if not more, than the kiddo. Between the two of us (sometimes the three of us if Dad-oo is home) we’ll go through 2-3 packs at snack time. And sometimes I’ll sneak on while he’s napping. Or looking the other way.
4. Chicken nuggets: Now, these really aren’t as bad I used to think they are. I haven’t actually looked at the ingredients, but I have tast tested them, and they aren’t too bad. But I still won’t eat them, I just can’t bring myself to do it. Who knows what is bround up in those little golden nuggets. But Eli loves them smothered in ketchup or BBQ sauce. Go figure. At least when I make them at home, they aren’t deep fried in whatever nasty oil they have at most fast-food chains.

A word about Spam. I will never, for the life of me understand Spam. It’s not meat, it’s definitley not a veggie. I’m not sure what it is supposed to be. I’m not even sure that it’s actually supposed to be eaten. But I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever feed it to Eli or any other kid. It just seems like cruel and unusual punishment. Dad-oo swears that he was forced to eat it as a kid (Grandma denies that this ever happened), and will also never eat it. Unless of course he was dared to do it, and money was at stake. Like if he was offered, say, $5.00.

Oh, and this is yet another way that I’ve failed as a wanna be June Cleaver, always making healthy meals from scratch for the kiddo. I wonder what my June Cleaver score is? It’s probably not looking too good.

What foods do you feed your kids that just gross you out? Or what foods did you have to eat as a kid that you will never in your life subject your kids to?

This year, we celebrated Thanksgiving at my youngest sisters lovely home. How she did it, with a 6 week old baby on her breast hip, I’ll never know (thanks Jason for helping out!). But it went off without a hitch, if you don’t count the forgotten squash dish (oops!).

And then, it was this sister’s great idea that the three of us girls should attend to the Black Friday sales at the local outlet mall. This outlet mall, which really isn’t even an outlet mall since half of the stores are just normal old stores, begins the holiday craziness at midnight. So we all stayed up late (late for us anyway) or woke up from a brief nap, bundled up in our winter jackets, hats and mittens and hit the road. With only a 10 minute drive, we thought we would be OK leaving 10 minutes early. That was our first mistake, and the first sign that we are NOT cut out for Black Friday shopping. As we waited at the stop light, with police guiding traffic into the parking lot, I started thinking longingly of the kiddo, bundled up warmly in his bed, or Dad-oo playing WII with his brothers-in-law. But we were determined to take advantage of the amazing sales we expected to find.

Our first stop was old Navy, we browsed through the clothes, trying not to get run over by the millions (and by millions, I mean billions) of people crammed into this small store. We each grabbed a few things and went to find the end of the line, which coiled through the store like a python, reading to strike. After about 20 minutes in line, listening to people bitch and moan, gossip and just plain complain, we started eyeing up our selection. Are these things that we really can’t live without? Nope. Had we traveled more than 20 feet in the last 20 minutes? Nope. Time to bail.

The second, and final stop was at The Children’s Place, where you can get some awesome deals any day of the week, with $0.99 racks full of decent clothes. But this time we were a little smarter. One of us stood in line, while the other two shopped. Then we switched. We beat the system we thought slyly. And then we stood. And chatted. And stood, and found some more things to buy. And stood. And chatted with the women in front of us. And then two of us headed out to another few stores, thinking about how smart we are, the three of us multi-taking shoppers. Half an hour later we returned, to find that we were still only half way through the line. And halfway is being optimistic. So we waited, eyed up our selection and determined that this time, we really did need to make these purchases. I can’t turn down $5 shoes for the kiddo, $4 slippers and adorable footie PJ’s for less than $8. Plus an extra 25% off of the final total. So we waited. Had the exact same conversation with the same strange security guard at least twice, if not three times.  Raided my purse for any toddler emergency snacks that we could steal (two packs of fruit snacks and an granola bar). Waited. Complained of sore backs. And swore over and over that we would never do this again. Or if we do, we need to do some serious training before hand.

All in all, we shopped from midnight to 3:30 AM, and I made two purchases, clothes for the kiddo (totaling $16) and the second half of a b-day gift for my father-in-law. Was the amount of money I saved worth the hours in line (about 2 hours total at The Children’s Place)? Hell no! Never, ever, ever again will we do this. Especially since the kiddo woke up the second we got back, and cried on and off for the next 1.5-2 hours. And since we were all sleeping in the same room at my sisters house, and two other babies were in that house trying to sleep, bot me and Dad-oo spent that time trying to get the kiddo back to sleep. I treasure my sleep and sanity too much to ever do this again. Someone please remind me of this next year, when the amazing sales start tempting my pocket book, and I have selective amnesia about this year’s events.