Kittymomma's Adventures

Our family eats spaghetti for dinner at least once a week. Although now slightly modified to accommodate the gestational diabetes diet (I have not been diagnosed with that and probably don’t have it, but my glucose on the first test was slightly high.), we still eat it weekly.

Max, like many kids, prefers his with no sauce and meatballs. I have made homemade meatballs in the past, but mostly heat up the frozen kind. One day, I discovered we were out of frozen meatballs. For once, I thought of a great hack at the right time and simply heated and chopped up turkey breakfast sausage links.

Max LOVED it. He actually asked for more links after dinner. We couldn’t believe it.

The next week, during our weekly shopping trip, we headed down the frozen food aisle. Like most four-year-olds, Max is full of questions all the time, especially during shopping trips.

“Mom, what are we getting in this aisle?”

I responded somewhat abstractedly, “I’m looking for the frozen meatballs you like, honey.”

Max stopped and excitedly yelled, “No, homemade! HOMEMADE!!”

I realized, to my great amusement, that he wanted the chopped up, turkey breakfast sausage links. He knew we chopped up frozen breakfast sausage, but to him, that is homemade. Forget the fancy, turkey pesto meatballs I concocted from the Weelicious cookbook once upon a time. Max loves my kitchen hack meatballs. I felt an absurd sense of pride. Not only did I think of a way to save dinner at short notice with something we already possessed, but my son actually liked it, ate it, and asked for it again.

Now, we enjoy our weekly spaghetti topped with breakfast sausage. True to four-year-old form, Max does not always eat it. However, the pride I felt in the store when he asked for my “homemade” meatballs, will last me through the next few weeks of preschooler culinary arbitrariness.