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buggy sign by Lyndi&Jason, on Flickr

Sometimes I feel so…different. At the orthodontist’s office the other day, for example, the receptionist and I started talking about homeschooling. We don’t really have “school hours,” I explained, we just live and learn as we go. I do a lot of teaching from the kitchen because I’m there so much. She knows we have a large-ish family and thought a moment. “I’ll bet you cook a lot. How often do you cook?”
“If all goes according to plan, I cook three meals a day, six days a week.”
Her jaw dropped and she was utterly dumbstruck for several long seconds. “You cook…BREAKFAST?!”
“Most of the time. There are a couple days a week that we have some homemade cereal if I have an early appointment or I’m not awake enough to cook safely.”
“What kinds of things do you cook?”
“Oh, you know, bacon and eggs or pancakes. Muffins a lot, they’re easy.”
“What do you make for lunches?”
“Today we’re having lunchmeat sandwiches because I’m not going to get home until right at lunchtime. More often, though, we’ll have a homemade soup or some pasta.”
“Yeah, Chef Boyardee is a blessing huh?”
“We try to have it a little more fresh than that, and making homemade sauce is almost as easy as opening a can anyway.”
“You make homemade stuff for lunch? What on earth do you do for dinner?”
“A roasted meat and a couple vegetables. Nothing extravagant. I have planned a squash casserole to use up some of the butternut squash taking over my kitchen, but we’ll have a simple meat like hamburger patties or roast chicken with it.”

From there, the discussion evolved into CSAs, the farmers who grow my veggies and provide my meat and milk. Then, the dreaded question, “The milk is all pasteurized, right?”
“Um, no. We drink it raw.” This time, her jaw dropped and her eyes bugged out. “But, I have an allergic daughter and a lactose-intolerant husband who can both drink raw milk who can’t tolerate pasteurized.”

She loves asking questions like that of me when we are there. She knows she’ll hear something totally different from me than she hears from most of the moms who come to the practice, and I think that’s probably why she asks. But it still sometimes makes me feel…so different.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted by Cheeseslave.