My Bermuda Triangle

There was a leadership seminar long ago that showed us all a slide with a big triangle in the center. Each of the three sides were labeled. One was Quality, another Speed and the third was Economy. The premise of the seminar was that no project could meet all three of these criteria – only two. It’s possible to be cheap and simple, but your product will be low quality. You could prioritize speed and quality, but it wouldn’t be cheap. Or you could focus on quality and cost, the downside being that it would take a longer time to complete.

This triangle is pretty much a summation of my life. I try far too often to accomplish all three objectives (cheap, fast & easy) simultaneously, only to mentally revisit that slide each and every stinking time. I hate it when those classes prove me wrong.

My mother has told me from a very early age that I have something called “champagne taste on a beer budget”. My wife puts it a little less gently and says, “Of course you like that one, it’s the most expensive.” They’re both right, though. I do gravitate towards fancy and too much and too big. That is just who I am. But who I also am is a broke stay at home mama. That means that these days, I end up choosing quality and economy over speed each and every time.

Roo has a classmate with a very severe nut allergy this year. Not just peanuts but any seed or nut, and exposure to these substances can be lethal. Fun fact: Goldfish crackers are cooked in sunflower oil. Goldfish are therefore verboten at school and Roo is cut down to about 1/4th of his daily diet – the remaining fourth is hotdogs, which are blessedly nut-free.

Because of this allergy, and because my kids are all lookie-loos who want the exact same snack every day for fear of missing something spectacular, I mostly resort to my go-to snack: fruit. But sending fruit to school is both messy and expensive as heck when you’re talking 15 servings a week. Which is how I ended up yet again picking my default points of the triangle and made my own applesauce pouches.

I don’t know about your kids, but once I’ve done something they like, it’s henceforth chiseled in stone that it’ll always be done in the exact same manner. (We say the word FLEXIBILITY a lot around here, meaning chill out, man.) But I made a batch of applesauce pouches about three years ago, and now I have to make them regularly or the natives tend to mutiny. Those applesauce pouches at the store are $2.50 for four. I make them for about half that, with 100% fruit and zero sugar. I just finished turning 20 pounds of fruit into almost five gallons of Blackberry Peach Applesauce, because clearly plain applesauce just wouldn’t do. It’ll get pouched up and frozen tomorrow.

Sidenote: it says a lot about the current appetite levels of my children that I have to cook their snacks in a pot that doubles as an oil drum. That’s all I will say about that.

And, because at least one person will say it, no I’m not gonna sell these things. I choose the slow, quality route for my kids because I (usually) like them and because I’m a cheapskate. I do not like anyone else’s children enough to push 15 pounds of boiled apples through a food mill. Some days, I don’t even like my own kids to do it. But I dislike hearing them whine about snacks far, far more… So here we are.

Bean’s birthday is in a month and the child is expecting the soirée of the century. Based on my current project list, I should have started last spring. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t sleep much. Quality always wins.