A Visit To Great-Grandpa: Arranging The Eats

All outings require some advanced food planning but a visit to see Great-Grandpa requires the most. We are usually gone for most of the day and a good part of that time is travel so I need to keep ample snacks and beverages on hand.

Today we left the house at 9:30 a.m. and did not return before 8:00 p.m. Although Izzy ate a decent breakfast, we had much snacking along the way. From the Path train to NJ transit, snacks kept Izzy peppy.

We arrived at the station full of energy and Izzy scooted over the bridge to Highland Park. We stopped in to see Uncle Evan for 10 minutes before Izzy announced that he was hungry again. That was easily remedied since it was lunchtime.

We went up to Grandpa's apartment so I could prepare lunch. I brought along cheese pierogi, sour cream, tomatoes and cucumbers. This meal works well in his kitchen which has minimal space and equipment. I simply boil up the pierogi, drain and serve. Today I sliced up tomatoes and cucumbers on the side and we had slices of the banana-chocolate chip bread for dessert.

Izzy and Grandpa both seemed equally content with the fare and I love watching them eat, side-by-side..sour cream fiends that they are. Grandpa was slyly dipping his knife into the sour cream container after he had finished his meal (hope Izzy didn't notice that!).

Lunch was barely over when Izzy started looking around the apartment for nibbles. Some pretzel rods in the fridge did the trick. How does my toothless grandfather eat those I'll never know but Izzy was glad to have them. We then left Grandpa to take a nap and we went back to Uncle Evan's. Izzy worked on some sculpture while I took a walk to the chocolate shop fill Grandpa's order of five lbs. of chocolate.

Later on in the afternoon, we went back to see Grandpa before leaving. We even managed to get him to come downstairs and watch Izzy scoot, stunt-man style.Before too long it was time for us to make a run for the 5:34 train back to Newark. We made it with about 10 seconds to spare. Once on the train, Izzy had an apple to tide him over until dinner.

Back in JC, we made a bee-line for our favorite neighborhood Vietnamese restaurant which, thankfully, has reopened after some recent renovations.

It may have been long day but proper eating kept Izzy good-natured and calm throughout.