I’m hosting a bridal shower for a friend’s son this weekend, and I was talking over the menu with my mom. She’s an entertaining expert and gave the green light to fruit and vegetable trays and my punch recipe.

Then we got to the subject I was trying to avoid – the sandwich tray.

In my experience, the “let’s-give-a-shower” world is divided into two parts – those who cut the crusts off the sandwiches and those who do not.

My mom is in the first camp – she wouldn’t dream of having a social gathering without a tray of crust-less, triangular-shaped sandwiches.

I danced around the issue but she’s a cagey inquisitor.

“It’s easy to make sandwiches yourself,” my mom said. “You know how to make chicken salad, right?”

“Of course, Mom,” I replied, thinking I’d stop by the grocery store and pick up two pre-made containers from the deli.

“You’re not thinking of getting that chicken salad from the deli are you,” my mother said.

Busted.

“The only good chicken salad is the kind you make yourself,” she continued. “You do have a food processor, don’t you?”

It’s common knowledge in the family that I don’t have a food processor. In fact, I am the only female in the entire Hebert family – cousins included – that does not own a food processor.

“I can just use the hand mixer,” I told her.

“That won’t work,” my mother said. “You’ll have to make that chicken salad the old-fashioned way – chop everything up nice and fine. Now back to that bread. You do have an electric knife to cut off the crusts, don’t you?”

I decided to be brave. After all, I’ve gone through natural childbirth three times. I’ve driven on the 610 Loop during rush-hour traffic. I’ve worn a bathing suit in public. I decided to come clean.

“Mom, I’m not going to cut the crusts off the bread,” I said.

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“I don’t think I heard you,” she said. “I thought you said you weren’t going to cut the crusts off the bread. Everybody knows that when you go to a shower, the sandwiches are crust-less. Leaving them on is strictly a no-no.”

I took another deep breath.

“Well, I’m not going to waste a perfectly good part of a sandwich just so it looks good,” I said.

And there it was, the diving line in the chicken salad.

There are those who do not cut the crusts off the bread. The only silver we own is in our mouths and serving food from the counter is perfectly fine. We wear faded shorts, color our hair with the assistance of Lady Clairol and believe 10-year-old T-shirts aren’t old – they’re vintage.

And then there’s the ones in my mother’s camp. They polish the silver before family functions, put out pink and green dessert mints for every social gathering and wouldn’t dream of putting crust-less sandwiches on a serving tray that wasn’t first lined with white paper doilies.

“You can do whatever you want,” my mom said. “Just know that when your guests see those crusts on the sandwiches, they’ll know you were either ill-informed about the correct way to put on a shower or you were too busy to do things the right way.”

A daughter knows when she’s lost the argument.

“Okay, I’ll cut the crusts off,” I said, sighing. “You win.”

Even we hippies know when to throw in the towel. In this case, as my mother informed me, that towel had better be a white linen one with a monogram on the front.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Due to an email glitch, my column didn’t appear in the Fort Bend Herald this evening. Maybe it’ll be in tomorrow, not sure, but Happy Easter!

Easter is right around the corner, a holiday that’s one of my favorites. After all, there’s chocolate Easter bunnies, chocolate Easter eggs, chocolate Kisses and chocolate candy bars, all courtesy of a little bunny that hops around early Easter morning delivering all that for free.

Not a bad deal when you’re a kid.

Although I became the major underwriter for the Easter Bunny once I became a mom, the Easters from my childhood were carefree and filled with tradition.

Easter egg preparation began the Saturday before Easter. My mom boiled the eggs right before Saturday night dinner, and it seemed like forever between the time she’d put those eggs on the stove and when we could all sit down and dye the eggs.

Somebody always had to run to a neighbor’s house for vinegar because we never seemed to have that key Easter egg dye ingredient to pour over the Paas tablets.

We’d fight over the white wax crayon so we could write our names on our egg, but all of us cracked the shells, despite warnings from my mom.

Eventually, we’d carefully lower our egg into the color and then the real fun began – transforming dull white eggs into works of art.

Some of us gave our egg a two-toned look, while others thought if we left the egg in the same color dye for 10 minutes, ours would be the most beautiful in the carton.

Hours later, with our eggs tucked into the fridge, we’d head off to bed, dreaming of giant chocolate bunnies and red jelly beans the size of a Buick.

On Easter morning, we’d run to the living room before dawn to see what the Easter Bunny brought. We always knew which basket was ours because the Easter Bunny used the same baskets year after year, including the same shiny green polyester grass.

Our bunny was generous, covering the grass with a liberal sprinkling of jelly beans and M&Ms.  We all got a tall chocolate bunny in our baskets and the order of eating said bunny was set in stone:  the white candy eyes were the first to go.  Next we’d snap off the ears and then we’d snap off chocolate body parts until he disappeared.

Easter Mass we simply endured.

Not because we had to dress up in stiff clothes and even stiffer shoes.

Not because we knew the service would take forever.

Not even because we were wearing Easter hats with a rubber band under our chins that cut off the circulation to our lips.

The real reason was because for the two hours spent sitting through Sunday Mass, all we could visualize was our Easter basket, filled with half-eaten jelly beans and a dismembered chocolate bunny, calling our names from across town.

Once we became adults with children of our own, we continued to hide eggs in my parents’ back yard every Easter Sunday. After we moved to Texas, we did the same for our boys until the last one left for college.

Of course, by that time, the Easter Bunny had to replace the chocolate candy in the plastic eggs with dollar bills, but the tradition remained.

Although I’m no longer helping the Easter Bunny assemble baskets of jelly beans and Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles, I am keeping the bunny’s traditions alive – there’s green polyester grass in the bottom of an old Easter basket on the counter, waiting for someone to add jelly beans, M&M’s and dyed, cracked eggs early Easter Sunday morning.

Not a bad deal for the Bunny’s underwriter

 

I looked in the closet the other day and spotted our old board game “Monopoly” on the top shelf. The Scotch tape on the corners was yellowed and cracked, and money and game pieces were scattered in the box, but the game brings back memories.

As kids, we loved playing “Monopoly,” but over the years, we amended the Parker Brothers rules and played by the Hebert rules.

First, a $500 bill goes in the middle and all fines go in the middle. The first person to land on Free Parking gets all the money. Anybody who rolled “snake eyes” – two 1’s on the die – got $500.

By the book? Nope. But it sure was fun.

In Scrabble, players could switch out tiles if the word still made sense. That way, we could use the high-ranking letters like “J” and “Z” more than once. Best of all, we could brag we racked up over 300 in Scrabble, conveniently leaving out that lagniappe Hebert rule.

We played board games for years, mostly on Sunday afternoons where we’d all settle around the kitchen table and decide we could play a friendly game to pass the time.

We were lying.

When Heberts play board games, we play for blood.

“Jeopardy” was our favorite because we all thought we knew more than anybody else in the room. Since we broke the plastic clickers the first time we played – repeated, heavy clicking will not ensure you are heard – every player had to find something to bang on the table to indicate they were ready to answer.

That worked fine until my brother-in-law – as competitive as the rest of us – dragged in something that weighed five pounds and we all screamed foul.

Usually it was the guys against the girls, but mostly it was who didn’t want Dad on their team. He was a compulsive but fun cheater and would always try to con his way out of a wrong answer.

Partial answers were dismissed as wrong by the opposing team; and no matter who won the argument, the loser would mutter that only people who didn’t have a life would know the answer to the question.

We also knew each others’ strengths and weaknesses. My mother knew movie trivia as if she’d written every word about Hollywood glamour. My father remembered everything about the 1950s and 1960s.  My brothers were good at science, my sisters at literature and my brother Jeff at everything.

Most of our Jeopardy games were evenly matched until we got to the Final Jeopardy question and each team had to decide how much to wager on the final question.

We girls were conservative and would only bet half of our winnings. The guys, my maverick dad overriding everyone else’s objections on his team, always bet the whole pile of money and yelled out an answer before they could discuss the question.

When they got it wrong – which was most of the time – no amount of protest on their side would get us to let them give a second, group answer.  We’d walk away, high fiving each other, leaving the boys to pick up and vow revenge the next week.

As I put all the faded Monopoly money back in the right holders, I thought about those Sunday afternoons. Before I grew too nostalgic, though, I remembered my sister’s favorite trick at the end of a Monopoly game after she’d win.  

She’d pick up the game board by both ends and flip all the money, hotels and playing pieces into the air proclaiming “Loser picks up.”  

Gotta love those Hebert rules.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

  I was listening to National Public Radio, choking down some tasteless fiber cereal with fat-free milk, when the clouds parted and the sun came through. A new study claims a low-fat approach to life might not be all that great.

Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, stated that when people replaced saturated fat with carbohydrates, there was no reduction in heart disease.

I looked at the cardboard cereal floating in pale milk, put it in the sink and hauled out the Frosted Flakes and whole milk, all the while wondering why I totally revise my life based on what so-called experts tell me is the best thing to do only to find out later they might’ve been mistaken.

For instance, I found an reputable article stating that fruits and vegetables cause 46 percent of all food poisoning, and leafy greens, like spinach and lettuce, are the biggest culprits because we tend to eat them raw.

Just as I was shaking my head in disbelief, I saw a headline for an article that exercise might not be all that good for you.

For years, we’ve been told to get off the couch, lace up those expensive $150 running shoes and get out the door. But a new scientific study claims that when it comes to rigorous exercise, more isn’t always better.

As someone whose DNA is infused with guilt, these revelations should be cause for celebration, but I’ve got to face the truth. People who exercise, even just a little, have a lot firmer backsides and thighs than I do.

I started thinking of some other health myths I’ve heard over the years. My dad used to tell us that if we watched television for too long, our eyes would grow together until we looked like a Cyclops.

Untrue, Dad. I watched Saturday morning cartoons for years with no ill effects except I still judge people by which character they think is funnier:  Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck.

I’ve seen every episode of “The Andy Griffith Show” at least three times and I still have two eyes.

We were told chocolate would make our faces break out and one bite – yes one bite – of a chocolate bar would be our doom.

Not true.  

Eating an entire package of candy bars will put on the pounds, but a few Hershey’s Kisses will not send you into an immediate heart attack. Nor will a night curled up with the boxed set of “Cheers” DVDs.

I’m not a doctor, dietician or expert. I’m just sitting at my computer, slurping up the last few soggy flakes at the bottom of my Bugs Bunny cereal bowl, aggravated at all the scientific gobble-de-gook I’ve accepted at face value over the years.

I’m mad at myself for drinking weak no-fat milk when I could’ve had a cup of rich hot chocolate made with whole milk.

I’m aggravated I gave up double-stuff Oreos for ginger snaps I could use to tile our roof and recently considered buying tofu instead of steak.

Moderation, I believe is the key. If you want that bowl of ice cream, do so but perhaps after you’ve ridden on the stationary bike for 20 minutes.

If you want to watch back-to-back episodes of “Gilligan’s Island,” do so without worrying about your eyesight.

Worry about your IQ, but not your eyesight.

And if you want to jog around the block when you finally drag yourself off the couch, go for it.

Tony the Tiger would think that’s great.
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.