I remember as a kid looking forward to having a bedtime snack for a number of reasons.

The first (and most obvious), I was hungry. Growing up with three brothers, the dinner portions weren’t always huge so much as I now suspect perhaps some of my food items may have been borrowed to make someone else’s plate a little fuller. The boys always seemed stuffed and I remember dreaming fondly of my bedtime snack.

The second, was snacking at bedtime was a great stall tactic. It meant we could wait to listen for my Mom to prepare one of three things 1) a bowl of soda crackers (most popular choice hands down) 2) graham crackers with cream cheese or 3) a bowl of plain yogurt. And I mean plain. I remember the health food store plain yogurt we gagged down and were even tricked into thinking it tasted good as an alternative to sour cream on baked potatoes until we tried actual sour cream and thought we’d died and gone to full fat heaven. It was a dark blue container with white lettering and I think it was called “Perth County Yogurt” (even the name screamed boring) though I can’t be sure. I’ve tried over the years to block these things from my memory. On our birthdays we were allowed to add a ½ teaspoon of honey poured into the yogurt over sliced bananas, but I digress. I know my Mom is yelling at the screen right now that this is totally fabricated but somewhere in her cupboards is a sleeve of 500 empty Perth County Yogurt containers, flavour—plain.

Any of these snacks meant staying up a little longer both due to preparation time and a second teeth brushing followed by a drink and if that was anything other than water, yet another brushing. Maybe my Mom would forget we read stories before the first brushing and snack and she could be tricked into reading a second batch of books while I counted down the days until my annual honey allotment.

Skip ahead thirty years and our kids haven’t changed much when it comes to wanting a snack before bed.

My kids ask for apple sauce which today is readily available in individual serving cups with no sugar or colour added. Yep—I caught that too. I. Am. Her.

They also like individual yogurt servings. Again, I don’t think they were available thirty years ago but if they were, we didn’t have them and unfortunately, the flavour “plain” has been replaced with options that are edible.

Sometimes they want peanut butter on toast or a bowl of Cheerios but last night, I think Hanna’s request was my favourite.

She headed down the hall, dragging her heels, yawning en route to the bathroom to brush her teeth (round one) she paused, “Wait, I didn’t get a snack. Do we have any steak?”