Old Martial Arts Tradition Gives Way To Reality

Test day at Ernie Reyes West Coast Martial Arts Portland.

One of the most basic, and beloved, tenets of martial arts, in our household, holds that after a successful advancement to a higher belt everybody must celebrate with doughnuts.

Like many who survived a protracted bout of overeating during the holidays, I was concerned about having to innundate the household with sugary fat so quickly after declaring a return to "the simple life." By that I mean generally keeping to a paleo-lacto-ovo-vego-Lego diet, complete with legumes, breads, and just about anything else we deem appropriate at the moment. But the essential point was that we wanted to eat less caloric desserts.

Making our return to healthfulness more tricky, relatives from out of town were visiting and we needed to apply some henna tattoos to our forearms and show we knew how to eat.

But here is my secret sauce about parenting, when you can't do the absolutely right thing (in this case subsist on clear mountain water), just do the basically okay thing -- bake an apple pie. Sure it has some sugar and butter, but it is loads better than the alternative.

Most importantly the most radical wings of my constituency accepted this without fuss. Whew!