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The cause of all this misery
My seven-year-old daughter Isabella has recently discovered hummus. Never mind that it’s been on supermarket shelves for years, and on our dining room table for countless Shabbat dinners; to her, it’s new, it’s fresh, and it needs to be made all the time.
Making hummus isn’t exactly cooking, but she doesn’t care: dumping a bunch of stuff in the food processor and pushing the button is close enough. As far as she’s concerned, when her palate welcomes a new food, it needs to be eaten often. It goes in her lunch box, it goes with dinner, it comes as a snack, and I secretly suspect her of sneaking out of bed at 4 in the morning and eating some more.
What brought this on, I don’t know; it is only weeks ago that I caught her trying some and spitting it out in the trashcan, declaring it ‘the most disgusting thing ever’. Maybe it’s that, at seven, her taste buds are continually changing and adapting, maybe a cool kid at school said something to make her change her mind. I swear I did not allow her watch The Zohan, but maybe she heard us joking about it.
The new fad (and I do hope it’s a fad) does terrible things to her breath. We all know about hummus-breath; I believe it’s one of the most carefully shielded secrets of the Jewish community. In my daughter’s case, it makes me beg her to brush her teeth six times a day. I even suggest packing a toothbrush in her backpack so she can brush extra at school. This request is, unfortunately, met with disdain; she keeps a list of things she hates, and extra tooth brushing is definitely on it.
I explain to her that hummus breath causes friends to stay away and creates new enemies, and if she wants to know the meaning of civic unrest she should “by all means, keep it up”. She doesn’t really listen, and so I do what every self-respecting mother of a seven-year-old does: I stop trying. Why fight something that will eventually go away on its own? Never mind that the garlic stench leaks out of her pores and leaves an almost visible trail in our house; we’ll just let her stuff herself until she is totally and entirely sick of it and knocks it off on her own.
To help speed up the process, I go to the store and buy eight more cans of chickpeas. In addition, I put it on the menu at our monthly Temple dinner, and check with friends who have invited us for a meal that they have hummus in their fridge. If not, I offer to bring some. “Isabella will make it,” I say, “she loves making hummus.” I make sure she overhears me; nothing makes her lose interest as quickly as being bragged about to third parties. Before I can start feeling smug, she strikes back by convincing her little brother to eat it too. Now I have two stinky children. There is only one solution: we must join them.
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