Dirt for Supper

My mother was a good cook. She was as adventurous as one could be given the ingredients available in our town. When she had created some sort of health food concoction entirely of her own design, she said that we were having dirt for supper. This lead to me thinking that the phrase that my sweetie thinks is ‘soy and granola’ was ‘soil and granola.’ It meant people who eat dirt for supper and granola for breakfast. I thought this was a normal diet. I still think that though it seems I’m incorrect.

My mother liked textiles. She wove, she spun, and she dyed her wool using natural dyes. Often when I came home from school and looked in the kitchen hoping that she was stewing up something delicious for supper, I would find a giant pot full of not completely clean wool and assorted weeds. I thought this was normal too and again it seems I’m incorrect.

I had a mostly happy childhood. Sometimes in my own parenting, I make some attempts to recreate some of the happier bits of my childhood for my children. Of course, one can’t really recreate such things. Sometimes my attempts are hilarious. Sometimes they’re sweet. Sometimes they’re just confusing.

I did one of those confusing ones recently. I prepared this for supper.

I decided I wanted at least someone in the world — even if it wasn’t my own children — to understand the sweetness and silliness of what I’d done, hence this post.