I don’t think I deprive my kids when it comes to snack food. I actually feel like I’m pretty generous. So when my six year old asked me for a treat the other day with the caveat that he wanted something different than the usual chocolate chip cookie, ice cream cone or ice pop, I was pretty stunned.
I grew up in a health conscious home in the 1970’s where everything was homemade and homegrown, from juice to yogurt and sprouts. I only got treats for special occasions and there weren’t many options. Crisscross peanut butter cookies (made with all natural peanut butter of course) and Charles all Natural Chips were the junkiest of foods offered. I grew up loving most vegetables and eating good food but felt deprived in the junk food category. (Oh poor me!)
So I’m raising my kids somewhere in between, making most sweets homemade, shopping at farmer’s markets for organic produce, gardening a bit but also allowing chips (even Doritos but baked ones) into the house. I send my kids to school with a bag of Lay’s potato chips but cross my fingers that they will eat their carrots, celery or apples.
Last week, Jackie and I got together to bake something different than the usual homemade chocolate chip cookie to fill our empty cookie jars and appease my little one. We made Snicker Doodles, a classic sugar cookie rolled in cinnamon, which happens to be my 12 year old daughter’s favorite cookie. We used Martha Stewart’s recipe but there are dozens of others as well. With only 80 minutes to spare in our mutually busy days, we were on a mission and even got started before Jackie’s cleaning lady had finished cleaning her kitchen. We lugged the Kitchen Aid mixer, bowls and ingredients into her dining room and started the cookie making process until we were allowed back into her sparkling clean kitchen.
The kids were thrilled with a new cookie but there are still a handful left in my cookie jar. I’m pretty sure a chocolate chip cookie wouldn’t have lasted through the weekend. But the good mother I am, I’ll keep baking new and different treats. And then maybe, just maybe, he’ll start asking me to go back to a good old boring batch of chocolate chip cookies.