Where Have all the Blue Crayons Gone?

As I near the end of my fifth summer waiting tables at a family-friendly (perhaps overly kid-friendly) neighborhood restaurant, I find myself pondering the crayon situation. Like many restaurants, we provide paper place mats and a four-pack of Crayolas to the under-twelve crowd, a feeble attempt to keep the kids entertained and in their seats in an age where fewer and fewer parents feel responsible for doing this themselves. In recent years, we've made an effort to reuse the crayons we hand out, tossing the unbroken colored wax sticks into little pails, which we loan out and then recollect at the end of each table's meal.

Despite these Crayola conservation efforts, we still lose a fair amount of crayons to the everyday wear and tear of restaurant life. Crayons that have been broken, chewed on, ground into the carpet, or melted under a hot plate or an extended stay on the patio are removed from the rotation and tossed out.

What baffles me, though, is how we always seem to have a shortage of blue crayons. No matter how many times we stock the little pails with fresh crayons, filling each with an equal number of colors, the blue crayons are always the first to disappear. Are blue crayons more susceptible to breaking? Are they used more often than the other colors? Is there a demand for blue crayons on the juvenile black market?

Whatever the reason, all I know is that once the blue crayons are gone, the red and the green aren't far behind. Which leaves us with-- you guessed it-- pails full of yellow crayons. And no kid wants a bucket full of yellow crayons. This is why I've taken it upon myself to oversee the regular stocking of the crayon pails, because there's nothing worse than having a section full of children and a wait list half a page deep and being taken to task by a four-year old because they don't want to color the sky yellow. Not that I blame them, but still.

So in the interest of crayon equality, I encourage children everywhere to use all of the colors equally. Their world will be brighter because of it, and not so blue.

Potato Mashing FAIL

I don't know what it is about mashing potatoes that is so difficult for me, but I've managed to fail at yet another attempt to recreate this creamy, buttery, All-American comfort food. My troubles with mashed potatoes began back in grad school. Potatoes were cheap, so I ate them frequently. Feeling adventurous, I attempted a basic variation of this dietary staple, using the only tool I had available at the time; an old-fashioned hand mixer. I stuck it in the pot of freshly boiled potatoes, watery milk, and oily margarine, and turned the hand crank. With a "ca-CHUNK", I managed to shoot potato bits all over my gloomy afterthought of a kitchen, leaving little but a milky, buttery gruel in my garage-sale sauce pan.

Fast forward ten years. I have a bright, spacious kitchen, decent culinary skills, full-sized appliances, brand-name pots and pans, and more kitchen gadgets than I know what to do with. Among those gadgets is a bonafide potato masher. It is made by a reputable American company, and this specialized utensil's only purpose is to-- as the name implies-- mash potatoes. So I boiled up a pot of locally grown, farm share potatoes, added fresh cream and pure, unsalted butter, and began to mash.

As I mashed, I noticed with horror that the potatoes weren't blending at all, but rather, aerating--squeezing up through the holes of the specialized gadget in an oddly disturbing shape. Was I making potato worms? No... it was more like... aerated potato turds.

A true Midwestern girl, I like my potatoes any way you slice 'em. Except for, apparently, in turd form. So I quickly abandoned the masher and-- before I had a chance to dwell too much on the sight and gross myself out-- took a fork to the mess. I'll be sticking to baked potatoes from now on, so if any of you are looking for a handy-dandy potato aerator, stay tuned, as it will be available soon in a central-Illinois garage sale near you!

Flakes on a Train

Having lived in Chicago for the better part of a decade, my view of the city's bright lights and gleaming skyscrapers has dimmed and dulled. Instead of shopping and sightseeing, I spend the better part of most days working and sitting in traffic or on transit. So I couldn't help but smile when I overheard snippets of phone conversations on the Amtrak this morning. I was heading to St. Louis, surrounded by a group of teenage girls from nowheresville, Missouri. They thoroughly enjoyed their trip and were eager to share the highlights with their friends and relatives back home. To the people on the other end of their wireless connection, they gushed:

"The restaurant we went to was so fancy, they actually took reservations!"
"I'm gonna save up my money so that, when I come back, I can rent a Segway!"
"They put an awful lot of stuff on their hot dogs!"
"Cirque Shanghai was more like a show than a circus, cuz it didn't have any animals."
"That car I saw from the Sky Deck was a Transformers car! They're filming the actual movie right in the middle of downtown, and I saw the set!"
"The Macy's stores have multiple floors here! Like, more than two!"
"Did you know that you can see Michigan and Indiana from Navy Pier?"

Ah, how I long to be wide-eyed and wondrous again, to be able to see this city through the eyes of a teenage tourist.