Owen - The Spice Ninja

By all indications, Owen will grow up be a chef... a chef who is not afraid of seasoning, spices, and flavor.  He has long pulled a chair up to the stove to cook with Niles and me.  At this point, we're just trying to make sure he's entertained enough to not catch himself (or anything else) on fire.  It was a sad moment when I realized he DID know how to turn on the gas burners.

Once he's got his pot of "food" (meaning extra scraps of what I'm cooking minus raw meat) "cooking" (meaning he's stirring it with a large wooden spoon, rubber spatula, whisk, or his chosen culinary tool), he usually will then push the bar stool over to the spice drawer to choose appropriate seasonings.

Unfortunately, his favorite spices to add seem to be: red curry, onion powder, and garlic powder.  And he only knows one amount: half of the container or whenever I stop him, whichever happens first.  Other than going through an outrageous amount of these seasonings, the main problem is this:

He' s a spice ninja.

He'll add these items to your food when you are not expecting it.  It's one thing for him to season foods under my supervision.  It's quite another to do it when we're not watching.  Beware of leaving open containers of food on the counter or items bubbling away on the stove at our house.

True story: I was putting away leftover curried beef with spinach and rice into a tupperware container, turned my back to take care of something, and then popped the lid back on.  The next day, I wondered why the normally sweet curry burned the roof of my mouth.  Then I realized, I had been a victim of Owen the Spice Ninja.

Other victims of the Spice Ninja include: two separate occasions of boxed macaroni and cheese, scrambled eggs, stir-frys, pasta with (now) garlic sauce, (now) garlic mashed potatoes.

So in case you have a spice ninja on your hands, here's my best advice:

- give up trying to get the seasoning out of the dish.  Powders are impossible to remove
- adding sour cream and whole milk to heavily curried macaroni and cheese makes it a creamy, spicy, Indian influenced dish
- adding sweetness (honey, sugar) will help cut through some of the heat
- adding more butter to overly garlic/oniony flavored items makes it seem almost intentional

Otherwise, lock up your spice drawer while you still can.

Owen the Spice Ninja strikes Niles' dry rub

The Law of Inertia (and small children)

Okay, so I have just enough physics education to be dangerous.  The Law of Inertia, when applied to small children, every parent though is familiar with even if they don't recognize it in those terms.  I'm just going to plagiarize the rules of physics to put it further into words. 

The Law of Inertia according to Wikipedia:
"In common usage the term "inertia" may refer to an object's "amount of resistance to change in velocity" (which is quantified by its mass), or sometimes to its momentum, depending on the context."

Here's the equation for momentum:
p = mv

Now tailored for small children:
where p equals your ability to actually get your kids out the door by a certain time
where m = the amount of resistance your child provides by taking thirty times as long to do something that normally takes them two seconds or the ability to break down into an unexpected (completely unnecessary) tantrum
and where v = the speed you actually need to get out the door to make some deadline or appointment

And yes, the relationship is inversely proportional... Meaning the sooner you need to actually get out the door (smaller v), the harder your children makes it for you to get out the door on time (gigantic m).

And yes, generally, p is constant, meaning:
1. If it doesn't matter, you'll get out the door with little mess and probably on time.
2. If you are going to be embarrassed by being that parent who shows up twenty minutes late for appointment and throws the entire day's worth of appointments into a tizzy, you're never going to make it there on time.

So in the end, I salute any and all parents who make it to appointments on time (or even somehow early!) with their kids.