I’ve always enjoyed taking an active role in my daughter’s
education until I received a note requesting a donation for the
annual classroom
”
International Holiday Feast.
”
I grew suspicious after I noticed it was similar to the lease
agreement I signed for my car.
I’ve always enjoyed taking an active role in my daughter’s education until I received a note requesting a donation for the annual classroom “International Holiday Feast.” I grew suspicious after I noticed it was similar to the lease agreement I signed for my car.
At first I was lulled into a false sense of security by the picture of smiling cherubs dancing around a Christmas tree. Then I noticed the words “family project” and “pot luck” farther down the page. Under the line for my signature, the fine print said I had three days to produce my family’s favorite dish for my daughter to share in the classroom.
I wanted to create something that would impress the other parents and make my young daughter proud, but most of my cooking knowledge came from the back of a Bisquick box.
And so I decided to call my relatives to see if they had any traditional family recipes, but after making several calls, I realized my defective cooking gene was inherited. Instead of getting instructions on how to create a customary dish, I got directions for microwaving TV dinners, advice for making Minute Rice that doesn’t stick to the pan, and the number of a local Chinese take-out service.
I sat down at the kitchen table and began to plan our international cuisine. “We need to make something based in our family traditions,” I said. “Something exotic and impressive.”
“Like macaroni and cheese?” my daughter asked.
I shook my head. Then I remembered the Domestic Goddess Culinary Cookbook I had stored in the back of the closet, when I first became a mother of two. I dusted it off and skimmed through the pages.
“This is perfect,” I finally said, pointing to a picture of a cream cheese igloo. It was surrounded by a pack of penguins constructed from olives and carrot wedges skewered on a toothpick. The recipe called it, “Penguin Paradise.”
OK, so it was neither international nor traditional, but it was impressive, and I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to make since cream cheese is close in texture to Play-Doh.
We went to the grocery store to buy the ingredients: eight boxes of cream cheese, five cans of olives, two carrots, and a box of toothpicks. As I stood in line, staring at it all, I started having flashbacks of my first pregnancy. Then I noticed a woman behind me with 12 boxes of cheese balls, five boxes of raisins, and a bag of marshmallows.
“Cheese ball snowmen with ear muffs and ski hats,” she said cautiously. “And you?”
“A cream cheese igloo and enough penguins to feed a classroom for an entire week.”
She nodded knowingly.
That evening, we began to assemble our masterpiece. I worked on molding the cream cheese into an igloo while my daughter carefully made the penguins.
She poked a toothpick through two olives then added carrot wedges for the beak and feet. When we finished, we had created our own Picasso, sort of. Several penguins had beaks sticking into their stomachs. Their carrot feet were on their head. Meanwhile, the igloo looked like a large, yawning, white turtle.
“We did it,” my daughter said, holding up a penguin. “Just like the picture!”
I didn’t have the heart to fix it.
The next morning, I brought our contribution to school and put it on the back table before any of the other parents spotted it. As my daughter sat with the other children, I looked at the other culinary creations: a tray of lopsided cheese ball snowmen in ski hats, a wreath made by pouring macaroni and cheese into a Jell-O mold, three dozen store-bought cupcakes, and a fruitcake still in the tin. I was relieved to find no sign of traditional family recipes anywhere.
I proudly slid our tray into the center of the table. “It’s not so bad after all,” I thought, as a group of children gathered around it.
“Hey, look!” a little boy said, pointing to the igloo. “It’s a big, white turtle.”
He reached over and flung an olive into the opening. “Cool.”
Our creation was a success.
