#and that's why it's so hard to skewer a pea with a fork

[we-are-all-nobodies18]

finally the answer to the question 7 year old me asked is here

A spoon's only objective in life is to make soup go upwards, and it knows this. That's why when you put one under a running tap it blasts the water way high. The spoon thinks there's suddenly TONS of soup to deal with and it freaks out.

[the-truth-will-light-the-sky]

Eat your veggies, Noct.

“Noct, time for your midday lunch. His Majesty awaits you at the dining hall.”

Midday lunch. 

The young prince of Lucis finds himself staring in front of what seems like an army of vegetables, neatly placed in front of him as if soldiers in a battlefield.

Noctis swallows hard as he eyes the dubious green soup, plated in front of him in beautiful Lucian tableware along with hordes of Keycatrich salad appetizers and skewered mushrooms. 

His father, King Regis, picks up the spoon in a graceful lift, eyes dark, hair pushed back neatly in a fashion that befits the king of Lucis. 

The young prince expects his father to scold him for holding a staring game against the army of greenery but he was surprised to find him scowling as if the soup has offended his Majesty, sticking out his tongue in disgust.

“Eos Green Pea Soup,” he muttered, chugging down a small helping of Altissian wine. He looked at his son, a comical expression playing across his features. “Never sits well with my taste buds, unfortunately.’

Noctis laughed at his father, finding a comrade to fight with against the Lucian chef’s army of dubiously cooked plates of veggies and herbs. 

‘I hate peas, too,” the prince said, the high tone of his voice filling the dining hall, sunlight filtering through against the black curtains with gold embroidered trimmings.

Ignis sits from across the prince, stabbing lettuce after lettuce and stuffing them inside his mouth. 

“But young Ignis likes his vegetables, it seems,” King Regis remarked the young retainer with approval.

“It is delectable, your Highness,”Ignis replied meekly.

The Lucian King smiled, eyeing the way his son’s neck craned to see what has so delighted his friend.

Fork lifting and eventually stuffing his mouth with the vegetable in question, Noctis’ brows furrowed and it took all his might to swallow the food, finding Ignis’ taste in food very questionable.

It was Ignis’ turn to smile. “Lettuce alone won’t be too delicious, I’m afraid. You have to put in some dressing to make it taste better.”

“And some cheese and bits of ham, Noctis. Makes it all the better, trust me,” his father added, smirking.

Noct studied his two companions and then stared at the one standing further from the table, her figure a beacon of hope to guide him through his struggle with the vegetables. 

“Do you like veggies too, Veritas?” his voiced filled the hall once again.

The young woman smiled at her place beside the scary looking Cor. “Why yes, my prince. His Highness and young Ignis are right to tell you about the cheese,” she replied with a light and amiable chuckle.

Her voice soothed him somewhat, finding back up to finally face the menacing leafy greens. Noctis huffed as he stabbed yet another lettuce, added some cheese, dressing, ham and then....

“Don’t forget the carrots, child,” King Regis said, eyeing the way his only son cautiously choosing his ingredients in his garden of a plate.

“Not my kind of crunchy,” he muttered.

Cor Leonis and Veritas both chuckled in unison, followed by the King. 

Ignis Scientia held his breath as the young prince slowly took a bite.

As soon as he did, Noctis’ eyes lit up, smiling.

The tension in the room lifted, as if a veil had finally been lifted.

“I think the cheese did it,” the young boy replied, taking another forkful of the not-so-offensive Keycatrich Salad.

The king of Lucis sighed as if he has won yet another treaty. “Well then, it wasn’t bad, wasn’t it?”

Noctis shook his head, adding another bit of cheese into his fork.

“Yeah, but we should call it Cheese Salad instead. It’s not so scary if you call it that way,” he suggested.

“I shall make you one, one day, Majesty,” Ignis replied, committing to memory on how to make the young prince eat his greens.

Noctis finished his salad in a few minutes, his eyes alight in mirth.

King Regis sipped his wine in triumph, finding the sweetness and headiness of it agreeable against his tongue.

“Another battle has been won, it seems,” Veritas remarked with a chuckle.

“Yeah!” Noctis cheered, imagining himself atop the defeated mountains of veggies.

“Well-played, Highness,” Cor Leonis commented as the desserts were being ushered in. 

“True enough. Although, one would wonder as to how I will get him to eat carrots.”

Noctis’ shrill voice rang like bells in the air as King Regis pinched the bridge of his nose, listening to his son’s repeated battle cry against the mighty vegetable army of Regis Lucis Caelum being chanted with fervor.

“NEVER!” 

“Let’s save that battle for another day,” King Regis muttered.

He smiled in content as his son ate the dessert in front of him with undisguised happiness. 

At least Noctis loves the same dessert his mother loves, Regis remarked in his mind, sighing even more in his drink of delicious Altissian wine. 

Reminds me of you, every passing moment, my love.

[americangoulash]

Sample Lunch

Growing up, one of my favorite things to do with my family was “sample lunch” at Costco, even though I don’t think my family ever had their own Costco membership.

For those of you who are not familiar with Costco, it’s a wholesale warehouse store where you can get a mega-size of anything from storage sheds to a year’s supply of emergency food to actual coffins ( (if the apocalypse prep doesn’t work out for you.) I think the coffins are regular-sized, not mega-sized, but I digress. The deal with Costco is that you have to pay a small annual membership fee in order to access their extraordinary savings/10-pound tubs of butter. I was told that you had to also be a business owner - which is why my family pretended to be our business-owning neighbor. Honestly, I think we were just frugal. It was easier to commit these small crimes back in the ‘80s/’90s. Early digital photo technology was so bad that my mother, Anyu - a perpetually worried, statuesque brunette Transylvanian woman - somehow managed to pass herself off as Humberto Jose González-Villaseñor - a barrel-chested, long-haired Latino man with an infectious grin. If questioned, she’d say that the picture was of my grandma, Nagymama, who had not smiled since 1955. Anyu said that the picture was just really, really old. At 24 pixels-per-inch, either the Costco greeter either couldn’t tell the difference or did not want to risk angering my Nagymama.

I have included a rudimentary illustration to indicate how ridiculous this was:  

I’m the little one in the hat dancing because Costco had ice cream samples that day.

I’m not actually sure what the heck we bought at Costco. We were a small family, so I doubt we would have been able to go through five gallons of 100% Pure Vegetable Oil or afford the 10-pound bag of fish sticks. “Vild caught!” Anyu would say, “Just like your fadder and the po-lice, ahahaha.”I’m pretty sure that the number one reason for going to Costco was for Sample Lunch. You see, Costco has vendors come in to do product demonstrations, which usually comes with a free sample. We could have smiled, thanked the vendor, and enjoyed one sample per item per person like normal humans.  The thing is, there is no limit on how many samples you can take. So per usual with my family, there was always some kind of scheme.

Here’s how it went - my mother would “distract” the person handing out the samples. Meanwhile, I would pull out my oversized sweatshirt like a sort of parachute so Nagymama could load up sample after sample into my shirt. (Though unrelated to the scheme at hand, it's worth mentioning that she’d always check first to make sure that my undershirt was tucked into my underwear so no torso skin would ever be exposed to refrigerated air, lest I catch a “kidney cold.”)

When my mother was done being distracting, we would combine the samples into a piece of tin foil that Nagymama had been saving since the war and go for a loop around the crate of frozen peas. I’d usually eat a few before they went into the tinfoil and Nagymama would yell at me for eating too fast because the sample was too hot/too cold. Only room-temperature foods were safe. Then, Nagymama would put on her glasses, thinking that she as a 5-foot-tall lady who looked exactly like George Washington in a babushka wasn’t enough of a disguise, and we'd round the sample aisle again. And again. 

We did this so often that the vendors started to get to know Nagymama. She even asked if she could bring the perfume sample vendor, Marlene, to my choir recital, even though I have no idea why she hung out in the perfume sample section since  Anyu was allergic to perfume. “Vrap them up in a plastic in case we can give them as a gift to somevon,” Nagymama said. As little as we had back then, Anyu and Nagymama were oddly generous about collecting as many things as they could so they could give gifts to other people. 

A part of me also thinks that Anyu knew that we could get as many samples as we wanted without all the trickery, but simply welcomed the time to commiserate with another adult human being. Sure, they were paid vendors, trapped behind a booth and forced to be nice to her, but isn’t that also what 90% of therapy is? 

Anyu: “Nobody appreciates how hard I vork.”  Vendor: “You do work hard. Why not treat yourself to Totinos Pizza Rolls™?” Anyu: “...and I told him, you get out!” Vendor: “The great thing about Totinos Pizza Rolls™ is that your deadbeat husband can take them even when he’s on the go!” Anyu: “...and you know vhat? He doesn’t even pay child support ” Vendor: “The Totinos corporation understands that money is tight sometimes. That's why it is just three dollars for 150 Totinos Pizza Rolls™. And yet, they technically qualify as food!” I poked fun at all of this even at the time, but flash forward 20 years and I am not any better. This is my food diary entry from today: 

Bibigo Steamed Vegetable Wonton (½) 

Kirkland Orange Juice (2 ounces)

Dark Chocolate Coconut Almond (3 almonds)

Organic Chickpea Puffs (2 & 1/4 puffs)

Haagen Dazs Vanilla Milk Chocolate Almond Ice Cream (like a thumb size?) 

An indeterminate number of sausage pieces (each skewered with ½ pretzel stick! This is a good idea. Remember to do this at parties so people don’t waste plastic forks. Add to a different list of things that I’m supposed to remember)

Weird Chicken Salad Thing ( ½ oz)… man that sucked, why did I even get that? I knew it was going to be bad but there wasn’t a line. Now I know why. Who wants to lap tepid chicken salad with low-fat mayo out of a cupcake liner? I should have gone back for another piece of wonton instead, but there was a lady standing there, causing a bottleneck, talking to the vendor about her sciatica and.... OMG! I think other people do the thing my mother did! Remember to write blog about this.

Etc.

At least I actually pay for my membership now, and I never take more than 2 at a time - one for me, one for my husband, who I swear exists (even though he refuses to wear an oversized sweater.) I may or may not do multiple laps.

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Costco samples photo by Tim Boyle/Getty Images