Setting the Record Straight

A comment my mother made recently about my kids never eating Twinkies or Mountain Dew made me think: I come off as a totally insufferable food snob, don't I?

I do. I know it.

Though there is no denying that I spend a lot of time and effort growing, prepping, and cooking the best foods I can, I also can't pretend that that's all we eat, all the time. It's mostly all we eat, but it's also just what I'm most likely to post about. Because the yogurt cake* I made on Wednesday with tiny wild strawberries and a second cutting of rhubarb from the garden is much more interesting than the fact that I bought some kind of Thin Mint ice cream sandwiches at the grocery store yesterday.

When we drive to Blackrock, I do pack carrot sticks and sandwiches made with homemade bread, but I also buy Extra-Crunchy Cheetos at the gas station to eat in the car.

I buy tater tots sometimes, because they're good. (Though not, interestingly, much of a time saver. I can peel and cook potatoes in the time tater tots take in the oven.)

I have on occasion eaten more than one Snickers ice cream bar in a sitting.

I have never purchased raw or organic milk.

We buy ice cream cones at the local ice cream place with some regularity.

I have seen in various places the "80/20 rule" of eating, which means that 80% of your diet should be whole, healthy foods, and the remaining 20% can be, well, the other stuff. We probably are more around 90/10, but I think 80/20 is a pretty good goal.

I have no real reason for explaining all of this, except that I would hate to portray an unrealistic portrait of what is, in the end, a real life behind the small portion that I share here. And real life sometimes includes tater tots.

*The yogurt cake was really good, though. And easy to make if you're not spending stupid amounts of time searching for teeny wild strawberries.