A Terrible Meal

Part of being the father of tween daughters is occasionally having to decide whether you want to negotiate a settlement to a familial disagreement or invoke parental privilege and close the topic to further discussion.  Yeah, invoking closure is frequently the more hard assed option, but it also ensures premature tween angst and general moppiness. In that vein, I recently found myself using dinner as a bargaining chip in some inconsequential decision.

My kids, like every child on earth between ten and thirteen  is smitten with two TV shows, the always excellent Phineas & Ferb and the less good, or completely stupid to be more accurate iCarly. In one episode a character, Carly’s brother and guardian (as every Disney production demands that at least one parent be dead, preferably the mother, although it’s better if they are both run over by a truck,) makes Spaghetti Tacos for dinner. A tween meme was born.

I’ve been asked for ages to make spaghetti tacos. I acquiesced as part of a bigger negotiation. To be fair, my motives were not entirely un-self-serving, they were to make them on a Monday night freeing me to watch football and drink wine.

In a word, they are terrible. Whereas many childhood favourites do have redemptive qualities, chicken fingers are salty and greasy and crunchy if unsophisticated, spaghetti tacos have nothing to recommend them. They taste exactly like you think they will, higher quality ingredients wouldn’t improve the concept.

The only other thing I’ve eaten that was quite so bad from the “kids favourites” category were Kool-lickles, which honestly were fucking horrid and vile. Both the pickle and the taco lead you to suspect there’s an alchemy at play in the construct, they are going to be better than they sound on paper. They are not.

~KT