embraced by Grace

Pudding is one of my favorite things to eat. Sugar free. Fat free. And my very favorite way to eat it....is frozen. If you haven't tried this, you totally should. The beauty in it is that you can have an ice cream like treat, without as much of the bad stuff. Now, it doesn't come close to replacing Diddier's Frozen Yogurt (a local SpokWa fave) or Coldstone Creamery, but it's still a great home treat. There is one little trick though; when you pull it out of the freezer, it's way harder than you really want it to be, so I stick it in the microwave for a bit. Tonight, when I was putting it in the microwave I thought I may have put it in for just a few seconds too long. When I pulled out my pudding, I had a flashback of a childhood memory (which is actually the main point of this post!)...

Isn't it annoying when things just aren't as they should be? Like when things that are supposed to be hot, are actually cold....or vise versa??
When I pulled my pudding cup out, already fearing that I may have nuked it too long, the side plastic piece was hot. It was this moment that flooded in a piece of my past kid world. Before I go on with what the kid story actually is, I will tell you that I indeed did not melt my pudding too much; it was perfectly cold and creamy. But - a second longer and it could have been a disaster! ;)

This moment of something that I thought was going to be cold still and indeed was hot, reminded me of Kid Cuisine's. Anyone remember those...the kids' tv dinner with the little penguin? I use to love, and I mean LOVE Kid Cuisine's. Love them as I did though, the darn things never seemed to cook correctly. The main part of the dinner usually cooked fine, but often I was left with cold corn and an overcooked, gooey, brownie. I could not get them to all heat evenly!
I must not have minded too much because I still had a blast picking out the different dinners at the grocery store. Usually didn't even matter what was on the inside, it was just this whole idea of a TV dinner that made me excited. The other thing I remember about eating Kid Cuisine is watching Nickelodeon at the same time with my Mom. I'm sure there were a lot of little shows that I liked, but I specifically remember Flipper, the dolphin. That show was one of my very favorites! I even wanted to be a dolphin trainer when I grew up!
I will add a disclaimer in here: you may have to check with my mom to see if some of these things are actually true. I was only about 4ish years old at the time, and am only telling it how I remember it.
This Kid Cuisine/Nick fest only happened for a really short period of my little life. I mean, I guess my mom still bought them on occasion throughout my childhood but these memories are from a specific season.
My mom and dad were either going through the process of getting divorced or were recently divorced - I don't know which. It was just the two of us - Mom and I - living in our apartment. I think we were probably really close to poor, but between Kid Cuisine's and watching Flipper on Nickelodeon with my Mom - I would have never known it. I loved those evenings! I'm sure that we did other things and ate other meals..(I'm not really sure what Mom ate when she made me a K.C...maybe she had one too?!) but I remember it so clearly that it seems like we did this every single night. Mom didn't just plop me in front of the TV so it could babysit me; she watched with me. We did it together. I wonder now how my mom feels about those months...or years...I don't even know the time frame. I thought I was the richest and coolest kid in the world! Even if we were stinkin' close to poor - I didn't have the slightest clue.  I knew even then that my Mom cared about me a whole bunch; I'm sure she would have rather watched an adult show and cooked real food for us, but she not only let me enjoy KC and Nick, she seemed to enjoy it because I enjoyed it!