Chock Full of Guilt

Forget “guilt-free”—today I give you two healthy cookie recipes that are making me feel more guilt than my entire first year of college.  Nearly every time we go to Nana’s and Oma’s (grandma and great-grandma respectively), the kids gorge themselves on baked goods.  Since I’m trying to cure Isaac of his carb addiction (he can get seriously strung out), I had to take drastic measures.  I made my own cookies to bring with us today.  Let me first tell you—I can’t stand it when moms carry around their own healthy treats to visit friends.  What? My food isn’t good enough for you?  WTF?  And now I’m one of them.

I am sometimes accused of being a food cop, but I’d like to think of myself more as a food constable.  I’m an unarmed keeper of the peace—not bad-ass enforcer of the law.  I just want to get Isaac to stop acting like one of those street monkeys in India. He follows me around all day asking for snacks and he’s more ADD and tantrum-prone than ever.  I feel sorry for him.  Often, the first thing he says to me in the morning is, “What’s for dessert tonight, mom?”  If it’s not that it’s, “Can you make us pancakes please?”

I did this to him.  I am Frankenstein.  I LOVE to bake and he does too.  When you have something in common, you want to share it with your kid.  It was wonderful while it lasted.  Then I realized I’d created a monster.

In short, he was like me.  I eat carbs and I get hungry, fussy and obsessive.  I was indulging my love of baked goods vicariously through my five-year-old and I was making him crazy (and really hard to be around).  Our blood sugar just can’t handle it.

I removed wheat from his diet and added more protein and fat to see if it would help.  Sure enough—a day later he stopped complaining about being hungry.  A few days later his mood swings all but disappeared.

But when we go to the grandmas’ tonight, all bets are off.  They can’t deny him anything when he makes his cute puppy face.  I’m counting on the wheat-free, high protein cookies to subdue their urges.

The subject of food is replete with emotion—especially between mothers and daughters.  I remember a friend telling me that she and her mother couldn’t mention milk without it causing a fight.  She stopped drinking it in favor of soy milk and her mother never forgave her.  For God’s sake, I’m still bitter that my mother quit breastfeeding me when I was six-months-old and fed me strained meat and skim milk.  The nutritional generation gap is too wide to cross without conflict.

My generation of moms is admittedly neurotic about food.  Hell—we grew up and found out that what we ate as kids might kill you.  We don’t know what to eat.  What’s safe?  What’s healthy?  Why is everyone fat?  Can we ever forgive ourselves for feeding our babies from poisonous BPA bottles?  It’s no wonder we’re worried and confused.

We don’t want to insult the people we love and it’s outright taboo to reject food when you’re a guest.  The urge to politely let the kids eat what’s put in front of them is so overpowering, you hesitate and before you know it your kid crams three cookies in his pie hole.  At some point you have to break the cycle.  One cookie won’t kill them.  But it’s not one.  They get one at camp, one at day care, one at a friend’s house, one at the sample table at Trader Joe’s, one at a birthday party, and a few at grandma’s house.  It adds up and before you know it your efforts are for naught.

I doubt I’ll have to put him on a wheat free diet.  I just want a few days in a row with no wheat so I can see if maybe it makes a difference (not exactly scientific, but it will do for me).  So, I will have to go to grandma’s tonight armed with wheat free cookies.  I hope they’re ready to face the long arm of the law.

oatmeal cookies  and  peanut butter cookies