Mash-ups

I'm totally Gleek - how about you?  I look forward to Tuesday night like a little kid looks forward to Christmas!  And by Tuesday night, I mean whatever night after Tuesday we can squeeze in 42 minutes to watch it on the DVR, because who has time for commercials anymore? My favorite episodes are the mash-ups where they take two seemingly unrelated songs and make something better.  I'm always amazed at the creativity of those kids - um, I mean producers.

Anyways, last night we were having a different kind of mash-up in our house.  Dinner time is never fun for little Miss T.  She is a great eater for breakfast and lunch, but dinner has never been her thing.  I've stopped being insulted (kind of) that she won't eat anything I make, no matter how long I've slaved away at the stove (microwave), and that she'd rather eat the raw ingredients including shredded cheese and frozen peas.  I've tried to stay away from the motivation of condiments.  We will not be a household that considers ketchup a vegetable!  However, the inevitable happened and now T has a liking for both ketchup and ranch dressing.  OK, fine, if she'll eat the food dipped, I'll learn how to deal.  Usually, though, she just sucks the condiment off of the bite and dips again.  Total fail.

Last night, T decided to make some new mash-up combinations of food and condiments.  I'm sure we're all familiar with dipping chicken in ketchup or ranch, perhaps even french fries.  Last night, T decided to dip pomegranate seeds into ranch dressing.  Ever try doing this?  It's basically battered in dressing and now so are your fingers because this is work that a fork or a spoon just can't handle.  In doing so, T also discovered that a more efficient condiment delivery system is just to dip your entire hand into that beautiful puddle of flavor.  Why waste time with some bite of food that will just get in the way and cloud the savory taste?  Before I knew it, her hands were completely coated in ranch dressing and she was rubbing them together as if washing with soap! 

Silver lining?   At least the girl has mastered the mechanics of hand washing.  That came in handy as I carried her up to her bath at arms length and plopped her in a tub full of bubbles.  I think I need to hide the ranch dressing now or the girl will be hitting the sauce straight out of the bottle!

p.s. By the way, don't think for a second that the condiment will hide food that you want her to eat.  She was no fool when I tried to dip a bite of zucchini into ranch.  In addition to hand washing, the girl has mastered twisting as far away from the offensive food offer while whining "noooooooo!". sigh.