the underwear drawer

harshing your mellow

So since it was the end of Cal's big week, we let him choose where we were going to have dinner. The choices were:

1. Vietnamese food
2. Pizza

Guess which one he chose?

Man, that was the worst pho I ever had.

I know everyone complains about what their kids will eat, but you know, I feel like Cal had a much more varied diet back when we lived in New York. Sure, part of it is probably his age (he's just so much pickier now, he likes chicken but not when it's cooked that way and not with that kind of sauce and not with those green things on top and I don't like those black dots etc. etc. until you just wish that food came in pill form or at least in some form of suppository) but part of it is probably also that there's just not as much day-to-day variation in the food available. Yes, I know that I could just cook all sorts of different foods at home for Cal, cuisines from all different lands, and then he would have to be exposed to it...but that would involve me cooking. Me. COOKING.

Ah well, at least Mack will still eat anything.

(I know that me showing you a picture of a kid eating pizza isn't exactly evidence that he'll "eat anything," but trust me, there is nothing that he won't cram into that gaping maw of his. Edible or not.)

The pizza place we usually go to around here (I know in New York there are a billion different choices--insert obligatory "Ray's Original Pizza" joke here--but in Atlanta we've only found one place that makes a halfway decent crust) is a franchise called "Mellow Mushroom Pizza." I know that totally sounds like some sort of bong shop, and I thought I was reading too much into it as well the first time I heard that name. However, let me assure you that your first instincts were correct, and whoever opened the first of this chain of pizza restaurants was clearly smoking a lot of weed. I'm pretty secure in saying that, if for no other reason than that any person commissioning a full wall "Alice in Wonderland"-inspired mural--drawn in the style of "Fritz the Cat"--was most probably high.

The gigantic wood-carved wizard leering at you as you walk into the door really also sets the tone, don't you think? Let's just hope that the mushrooms on our particular pizza were merely of the "white button" variety.