Choices

Each summer when my sons, daughters-inlaw and grand children are all together at our summer home we seem to have less room in the refrigerators and cupboards. The family keeps growing, the children get older as do the adults, who acquire many different tastes.

Take milk for example, we have skim, 1%, 2%. Whole, soy, almond milk, coconut milk, rice milk, buttermilk, coffee creamers in assorted flavors, half and half, fat free half and half. These will all be in my refrigerator at one time. Then we have stick butter (both salted and unsalted) tub butter (also salted and unsalted) low fat spreads (each persons favorite brand). The Juices just about take up a whole shelf, we have pulp, no pulp, calcium added, original. That’s only the orange juice, we also have apple juice, natural and original, then the grape, tomato and pineapple juices.

Everybody likes a different flavored salad dressing— French, Caesar, Russian, blue cheese etc. Even with just oils and vinegars, they come in many varieties— red wine vinegar, white wine, red balsamic, white balsamic, cider also olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, corn oil, canola, walnut and peanut oils.

I grew up in an Italian household, married an Italian, mostly ate and cooked our traditional foods. I laugh when my granddaughters request certain grated cheese on their macaroni dishes. Some want parmesan others want pecorino, etc., when I was little I just asked to have some cheese grated on my macaroni. They will complain if I do not have the one they request. So I have different containers of “grated” cheese, and also a chunk of cheese for cooking because I like to grate it fresh into my recipes.

We have Guldens dark mustard, French’s yellow, Grey Poupon, Chinese hot mustard and horseradish mustard. I try to arrange the door shelves in the refrigerator with the same type of items so they will be easy to find, but it still gets out of hand. Grape jelly, strawberry jam, raspberry jam, marmalade, mint jelly!

There was a day when you asked your guests if they would like either a cup of coffee or tea. Now, you practically have to hand them a menu listing the choices they expect you to have on hand; regular coffee, decaf coffee, lite coffee, regular tea, decaf tea, green tea and dozens of flavored teas both regular and decaf. Then we have the sweeteners, the yellow packet, the blue packet and the pink packet (Oh! If you do not have the right brand it would almost ruin the party) of course you have the sugar but now you also need sugar in the raw.

Today the weather was very hot and humid so for supper, I decided to cook hamburgers on the grill thinking it would be nice and simple. I did not count on the matter of choices again. Well, we had to make a trip to the market for buns, and when I say buns with an “S” I mean it. We had to buy potato buns, sesame seed buns, whole wheat buns and just plain old fashioned buns (wait I already had those). Oh! Then we had to buy turkey burgers for those who do not eat beef.

The freezer is jammed too. Everybody has to have their favorite flavor of ice cream (what happened to plain old vanilla and chocolate?) Then they want pops, and ices and sandwiches in their favorite brand names. We also have an assortment of waffles, fries, chicken nuggets, etc. Plus the meats and vegetables I use for planning meals. I must confess when a fruit or vegetable is in season I stock the freezer with it.

In the cupboard we have three different brands of tuna, assorted cereals, macaronis and breadcrumbs (yes, I said breadcrumbs) regular, Italian style and panko. Choices are wonderful, the world has changed, a little faster than I would like, (remember when cornflake cereal was just plain Kellogg corn flakes?). I am a little old fashioned, I do things my mother and grandmother did in the kitchen but I feel I am lucky to now have the choice of gadgets and different products that were not available to them to make their lives easier.

Love my family and their different choices do make our lives quite interesting and sometimes overwhelming, but every summer we have something to laugh and complain about and we make memories to last over the cold winter and beyond.