Candid Camera

The other night we had a ham dinner.  As with most non-dessert and non-white-bread type foods, ham is liked by some of my family, but not everybody.

Eliza said that she simply could not eat the ham.  Unfortunately for her, some amount of ham consumption was required before she would be allowed to have any dessert.  I told her that I'd be happy to puree it, baby food style, if that would help, and she immediately requested that I let her eat it that way.  Since I was joking about the pureeing, I decided to do the next best thing.  I took a few regular-sized bites of ham and cut them into the tiniest bits I could manage, then mixed them up with a scoop of mashed potatoes.  Eliza likes mashed potatoes, so I thought the combination would work well.

Eliza decided that the ham wasn't diluted enough in the single scoop of mashed potatoes, and immediately added two more big scoops of mashed potatoes to her plate.  I reminded her that she needed to eat every one of the little bits of ham, and she assured me that she could.

Until, she couldn't.

And she asked me to retrieve the ham bits from the mountain of mashed potatoes on her little plate.

So I did.

And it was after about 15 minutes of playing search-and-rescue for miniscule bits of ham swimming in cold mashed potatoes that I decided I was probably being punked.  Because what I was doing was absolutely in sane and would provide great entertainment for the general public.

But the Candid Camera crew never did emerge.  I suspect that they're still hiding somewhere in my house, awaiting the next opportunity to catch me in the act of crazy.

For the record, Eliza finally managed to choke down the ham.

All in the name of dessert, my friends.