Chapati Night

Tonight I tried my hand at chapatis. It should be interesting, seeing that my "recipe" from the people who have "showed" me how to make them, goes something like this:

Woman standing by bowl of dough: "You put the flour, and the things in. You just make it like this, the normal way. It's just flour, and the other things."

When Emerson asked our Kenyan neighbor to write down what to do to make them so I could do it at home, she laughed uproariously, and told the story for months.

From observation, it seems to be pretty much a basic yeast dough, and I know how to fry them.  So I made a yeast dough, and I fried them.  The children really like chapatis.  They really, really like them.  I don't know if I made them up the "proper" way, but I made the dough light and the chapatis small and thin, so it wasn't like an entire brick hitting your stomach after you plough your way through the whole thing.  So they probably weren't proper chapatis after all; I have a habit of changing things so I like them better, until they aren't what they even started out to be!

But the children still liked them, apparently enough to explode.  They were served leftover bean soup and a chapati, and they had to finish the soup to get another chapati.  (Another benefit of small, thin, chapatis; you can bribe your children to finish their dinners because they can actually eat two!)

Dinner:
Me: I ate my soup, and then had two chapatis with butter and cinnamon sugar.  I really find chapatis too plain to eat on their own, and too dense for dipping in soup.

Hibiscus: Ate her chapati dipped in soup, tried to take another, re-heard the rule, and gobbled up the rest of the soup.  "My stomach tell me, it really like for eat hot food," she told me happily. Then she had her second chapati, which had happened to puff like a pita bread.  Inspired, she put a piece of broccoli inside.  Then she thought about what I had done, and put cinnamon sugar on the top.  Chapati, broccoli, and sugar?  Oh well; she was happy.

Emerson: Ate his chapati, worked diligently on his beans for a while.  I agreed that he had eaten enough, and that I had given him too large a serving, and he had a second chapati with cinnamon sugar.

Buttercup: Ate her chapati, with perhaps a bite of soup out of curiosity.  Took a second chapati.  I put it back and told her to eat her soup first.  She waited until I had glanced away, and reached out for the chapati again.  I only sit about eight inches away from her, so I did actually notice.  This repeated about two more times.  Her brother and sister started in on the soup-chapati rule.  "Me no likey eat soup," she said, and pushed her bowl away.  Everyone reminded her that there were no chapatis then.  She sat quietly and did nothing whatsoever for a long time.  Then I got up to get something.  I heard protests from the older children, and came back to find a napkin neatly covering the soup and a chapati on Buttercup's plate, while she sat with round, innocent eyes.  Amazingly enough, the soup still existed, even underneath the napkin.  I removed the chapati.  She told me she was all done soup and was no eat-y soup, and I suggested that I could get her ready for bed then.  That idea went over like a ton of bricks.  We had several more discussions about being all done soup meant being all done dinner ("no, me eat chapati now"), and she finally agreed that she was eating soup.  And didn't.  And didn't, and didn't, and didn't.  Everyone else was finishing, and I got up to run the first bath.  And I came back to find another chapati on Buttercup's plate, but her siblings weren't yelling.  I looked in her bowl and it was amazingly clean.  She said it was all in her tummy, and the other agreed.  Since they are very literal in their interpretation of the rules -- especially since they had followed the rules themselves -- I accepted it as fact.  When push came to shove, it was an amazingly fast devouring of the soup.

End of Dinner:
Me: I finished my chapatis, cleared my plate, put dishes away, helped with buttering and serving, and glanced at my email while the children ate.  And ate and ate and ate.

Hibiscus: Ate her broccoli and sugar chapati with appropriate exactitude and much discussion and compliments.  This child really enjoys her food!  When the meal starts, she eats at about the rate of your average starving Rottweiler, so by the time she is fiddling around I know she is getting full.  She was even talking about being full, but when I looked over I see her about to tuck into a third chapati.  I took it away.  She screeched and screamed like I was starving her to death.  We talked about two chapatis and a giant bowl of soup being enough for a small child, and that we could have more chapatis in the morning, and that she was actually full.  She pointed out her giant taut belly poking out of her shirt as evidence of the last point, but still thought she needed more.  I ended up carrying her to the bath; "you can pry chapatis out of my cold dead hands" seems to be her motto.

During bedtime, she kept complaining about how painfully full her belly was and that she could hardly move.  Then she engaged on a genuine stream of worry that her belly was going to explode in the middle of the night and there would be blood all over.  And THIS is why I DO pry the food out of your hands, my dear child.

Emerson: Finished his chapati with cinnamon sugar.  Asked if he could finish all his beans and then eat another chapati.  I suggested that he was actually full and it was bedtime.  It turns out he was also painfully full, and melted into a pile that could not walk to the potty because its tummy was too full.  At least he only does this on chapati nights.

Buttercup: Barely even ate part of the hard-earned second chapati.  First of all, everyone was leaving the table.  "Mama, go dere.  Go do more computer," she ordered me.  Apparently mama checking email on the other side of the room was an acceptable alternative to being left alone!  That, and she was full.  Sometimes, when Buttercup is full, she actually gets tired of eating food.

Final Argument:
All children this age are concerned with fairness, but Hibiscus takes this to an extreme, and she is always convinced that someone is taking advantage of her.  Tonight, she was fixated on the third chapati, and convinced that I had gotten a third chapati and she wasn't allowed one.  Sometimes I actually do allow myself to eat more food than I serve to her, given that I am about twice her size, although usually we eat about the same amount at meals.  But on this occasion I had also had two chapatis, I had just eaten them in a different order so I had eaten two in a row.  She was willing to argue the point to the death that I had actually had three.  I didn't care, other than I didn't want her to feel hurt and unloved over my taking away her third chapati, which was the way she was tending.  We discussed the order of my chapati-eating several times.  Emerson chimed in that I had eaten exactly two, just like everyone, he remembered.  Hisbiscus's final sally: "Mama, I am sitting right here, and I am right here next to you, and I SEE you eat three, I SEE you, I am right NEXT to you.  I am not lying!"  I observed that I was even closer to myself than she was, but there is no way to convince someone when they won't be convinced.  I just said she was only making her own self sad by worrying about something like that.  Although actually, it makes me kind of sad too.

Encore:
There are chapatis left for breakfast in the morning.  And I tossed the rest of the batter in a loaf pan, and it seems to also make a very reasonable bread.  Which I think I would prefer to eat... and I promise to stop before my stomach explodes and bleeds all over!