Breakfast with Dr. Seuss

I yawned as I scanned the ads recently until one caught my eye. I reread it carefully and flew to wake up the sleeping teenagers.
“Hey, you wanna go have green eggs and ham for breakfast today?” I shook the sleeping bodies awake, loudly announcing my find.
The first one’s eyes popped open fast, “Sure Mom, why not.” He sat up ready to tackle the task of dressing and getting out the door quickly.
The second one bounced out of bed. “All right! Yeah! U wanna go. Do I have time for a shower before we leave?”
I thought about his 45 minute showers. “Probably not. It’s only supposed to be served for another hour.”
We piled into the car and headed out for our great adventure in eating.
The eggs were whipped green, sea foam of scrambled eggs, but the ham was the usual pink. Actually wasn’t surprised that the ham wasn’t green. Several years ago I fixed a Dr. Seuss meal of green eggs and ham, in honor of his book, “Green Eggs and Ham.” I discovered tat the oils in the ham resisted food coloring. It looked horrible, but it all tasted the same as usual, just as it did at our recent buffet breakfast.
Besides the green eggs and pink ham, there were biscuits and gravy which tasted great, but the gravy was a candy apple red. No one had bothered to disguise the pale white grits or to add color to the orange oranges, bright red strawberries and delicately colored melons.
It was a feast fit for kin, if the king could forget that eggs are usually a warm, cozy yellow, not brilliant green and that the gravy tasted better than it looked.
It’s not the first eating adventure I had discovered in the News-Times advertisement. The most surprising one was a small notice several years ago at the bottom of a grocery store ad. The store would be holding a cookie stacking contest in the several age categories with savings bonds for the winners.
Fun way to get free cookies and do my shopping, I thought. I took the family along grocery shopping. We all stacked chocolate cookies filled with white frosting. Mine toppled after about 12 or 13 cookies. But the toddler and grade schooler stacked their high enough to be winners.
Several weeks after being given a savings bond for the unusual knack of being able to stack cookies, my son was asked to participate in the regional cookie stack-off. The stack-off was scheduled for the half-time of a professional game in Houston.
The cookie company sent us tickets for the game and a list of prizes, including a computer. We already had a computer, but a chance to see a professional ball game was too much to pass up. He would stack the cookies.
The official family cookie stacker was given an official cookie stacking T-shirt and taken to the center of the stadium where turkey roasting pans were heaped high with oversized cookies. Official cookie stacking judges read the rules and watched the stackers. A whistle sounded the beginning of the timed stacking contest. Our cookie stacker did his best, but didn’t come close.
I still look over the ads for another cookie stacking contest. Haven’t found one yet, but I did find a great breakfast of green eggs and ham.