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So I was at Menards a couple days ago. Not shopping for a D-I-Y project or in search of a very specific type of light bulb.<\/p>\nSo I was at Menards a couple days ago. Not shopping for a D-I-Y project or in search of a very specific type of light bulb.<\/p>\n
I was there to buy dog food. A friend of mine, a former podcaster on all things pet-related, recommended a brand of dog-food that was not available at typical Dogs-R-Us stores.<\/p>\n
This dog food company is a family-owned business and apparently Midwest founder John Menard has a soft spot for other family owned businesses and the chain includes their kibble and cans in their pet aisle.<\/p>\n
Menards didn\u2019t carry a huge inventory, but I managed to slide a week\u2019s worth of cans into my cart. I was hoping to serve my canine pal portions of cans for breakfast and dinner.\u00a0 This chow would allow me to feed my dog nutritionally balanced meals, control her weight, be cheaper than ordering prepared meals from well-advertised sources, and be simpler than following online recipes.<\/p>\n
After I snaked my way though household cleaners and made my way to the checkout, I saw these clear bags of bulk candy, simply labeled by type not brand, including a large bag of malted milk balls. I had to have some.<\/strong><\/p>\n I bought a package and propped it up in my tote resting on my car\u2019s passenger seat after checking out.\u00a0 I was extra careful that cans of \u201cChicken and Rice\u201d and \u00a0\u201cOcean Fish\u201d did not get in the way. Of course, I tore into the bag before I left the parking lot. \u201cAh, Whoppers,\u201d I sighed.<\/p>\n I was not a big candy eater as a kid,\u00a0 but I loved certain types of sweet treats for the unadulterated PLAY they sparked.<\/p>\n I loved Twizzlers, twisted hollow lengths of strawberry licorice, because they made excellent straws for drinking OJ. I loved malted milk balls because there were so many ways to consume them.<\/p>\n The most common brand of malted milk balls when I was a kid was \u201cWhoppers.\u201d\u00a0 They often came in half gallon cardboard boxes that looked like milk containers. They were popularized by Leaf Confection (one of many Chicago-based candy companies) which sold the brand to Hershey before this millennium.<\/p>\n Sometimes, I would pop one in my mouth and slowly scrape the chocolate off the hard and porous sphere with my teeth, letting the chocolate melt in my mouth first, then chew the whipped and hardened globe of malted milk. Sometimes, I would dissect the orb in half with my front teeth, as if cutting through the globe at the equator, and suck the insides out before consuming the two pieces of chocolate shell.<\/p>\n Sometimes, I would just pop one in my mouth and guess how many seconds would pass before it melted on its own.<\/p>\n I know young parents are schooled in passing the warning on to their children, \u201cDon\u2019t play with your food.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 I would advocate the opposite.<\/p>\n PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD. PLAY WITH EVERYTHING!<\/p>\n Yes, my mother concocted games to get me to eat things I didn\u2019t care for (like calling peas skindivers and serving them in consomm\u00e9). But making eating fun or interesting is not just about tricking yourself to do something you\u2019d prefer not to.<\/p>\n All types of PLAY is an invitation to be curious, to try different things, to consider outcomes and influences.<\/p>\n \u2026to appreciate the serendipity of the moment.<\/p>\n Yes, I can operate on auto-pilot a lot, but in truth, I am seldom bored. I don\u2019t chalk it all up to the various methods I used for ingesting malted milk balls, but it didn\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n Taking delight in infinite variety and your own capacity for self-amusement is no small thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So I was at Menards a couple days ago. Not shopping for a D-I-Y project…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[632],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weekly-blog","grateful-dozen-noticing-small-things"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n