Noah officially got his acceptance letter to Loyola today. The one is Chicago. Where it’s cold.

Tonight at supper, he said: “Mom, I wish I could wake up every morning and eat your cooking. You don’t know how good a cook you are.”

And the first thing I thought of was, “Boy, you’re going to wake up and eat a lot of Ramen and Pop Tarts for the next four years.” And that made me sad.

But on the bright side, Noah’s come a long way where food’s concerned. Here he is at age seven, watching cartoons in the kitchen. He is eating Goldfish, at one time the main component of his diet. I remember reading some place that children will naturally navigate toward healthy food and not to worry if they go overboard in one area or another along the way. There was a long stretch where I worried about that. Aside from Goldfish, he had his mini-ravioli period. The kind that’s fresh in the refrigerator case. He ate mini-ravioli for about two years, just boiled and coated with butter. Finally, the manufacturer stopped making them. Noah was so incensed that he made me contact the manager at the Publix to see if they could restock them. Fortunately, they could not.

Somewhere around age 13, Noah started making the turn toward not only healthier, but more adventurous food. He went through his banana phase, his apple phase and then he hurdled head long into Thai, Indian and Japanese cuisine.

So tonight I watched him as he wolfed down roasted cauliflower. And I wondered what will happen to him when he’s in a dorm room at Loyola with only a microwave as a cooking implement and a McDonald’s just down the street. I know he’ll survive. Heck, I lived on macaroni and cheese cooked in a popcorn maker for three years when I was in college.

But I know that on more than on occasion I will want to hop on a plane, head to whatever grocery store they have in Chicago, and show up to cook him a real meal. Withdrawal.

2 Comments

  1. RibDog
    RibDogReply
    December 16, 2009 at 3:55 am

    Katherine,

    You better start checking out the LTHforum.com as that is probably the biggest food forum for Chicago food. There is not reason for Noah to starve. Chicago has a multitude of ethnic eateries that I would love to see here. And a nice transportation system to get to them.

    John

  2. Terrell Jones
    Terrell JonesReply
    December 16, 2009 at 4:19 am

    Congratulations to Noah. He is now entering life and like his Mother and Father he will eat it up and come out on top. Tell him for me I am very proud to know his family.

Leave a Reply

Your message*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Name*
Email*
Url

What is 13 + 14 ?
Please leave these two fields as-is:
IMPORTANT! To be able to proceed, you need to solve the following simple math (so we know that you are a human) :-)