I gave the baby a cheese string today leftover from Hanna’s lunch bag.

By the time the string returns from school it’s very often slimy, warmer than a string of cheese should probably be for optimal palatability with a rubbery, unsavoury finish. Pair it with boiled chocolate milk. My kids love them…..this week.

We have had a love-hate relationship with the cheese string for quite some time.

I didn’t know what a cheese string was before I was a parent but assumed anything with wild, purple packaging with cartoon animals screamed, “high sodium, high fat, hey-kids-come-and-lick-this-bag, junk food” so I left them dangling from their assigned hook in the yogurt aisle.

Then as many conversations go in our house, “Mom, D’angelo always gets a cheese string in his lunch, why don’t you ever buy cheese strings?”

At first I thought she said, “Cheesies” and considered calling Children’s Services to report D’angelo’s neglectful caregivers but was quickly corrected and was back to, “am I a terrible parent for depriving my kids of strings of cheese?”

I guess there was no harm in trying. The cheese string’s ingredients are simply that, “a string of cheese” and my creative way of serving cheese in either a slice or cube was obviously so 1987, my kids were returning them in their lunch bags uneaten.

They devoured the cheese string for at least a year and then boycotted them for the same amount of time, vomiting in their mouths at the sight of them.

I was actually okay with the strike because litterless lunch days nearly did me in.

Our school runs an inspirational program where children are asked to bring a lunch where no garbage will be leftover after the meal. It’s a way to get parents and kids thinking about how much plastic, paper, non-recyclable goods we dispose of every day and an attempt to lessen our global footprint.

The problem is plastic wrap and zip-lock bags are the enemy on litterless lunch days so we have to place sandwiches in washable, reusable containers with lids. The same is true for fruits and veggies. By the time three, reusable containers are jig-saw puzzled into the lunch bag, there is no room for anything, including a cheese string and further, I’ve used all of the containers I can find lids for, where do I put the cheese? Should I cut it? (There’s a joke in there somewhere)

And the cheese string unfortunately is one of the biggest problems on litterless days because it comes individually wrapped already. I have to remove the plastic, throw it into my own garbage and drop a string of cheese, echoing into a rectangular container meant to house fourteen grand cap muffins.

The kids continued to return home with the gigantic container, like an animal cage with a slithering cheese worm staring back at me.  I was tempted to puncture holes in the lid and place it on the counter to let it breathe.

I later learned it had nothing to do with the cheese flavour the kids enjoyed but everything to do with the original packaging the cheese string came in. The kids liked the surprise of the name each cheese string was assigned so Charlie Cheese-doodle without the packaging became really sad Chuck and rather unsavoury.

So I started unwrapping Gordon Gouda and making up my own names for the strings and writing them on my containers with permanent marker.

Then I sit at my computer with cheese and marker stained hands, all of my reusable containers assigned ridiculous names and think to myself, “am I really writing about cheese strings?” What has my life come to?