Our youngest attended a girl scout event this weekend, so we were able to select a restaurant for lunch that did NOT have chicken nuggets on the menu. I had eaten at a Spanish tapas restaurant in nearby Weybridge with a couple friends last month and suggested we go there on Saturday for lunch once we dropped Cal off for her big adventure.
We got settled at the restaurant and were perusing the menu, trying to choose about seven dishes to try. The last time I was here with the ladies who lunch, we ordered a pitcher of sangria, thought it was quite tasty and recommended it to J instead of his usual beer. The waitress soon brought the sangria over to our table and it looked fabulous, with all that diced fresh fruit floating atop the red wine. We were each poured a generous glass of the sangria. Annie's eyes got all big and she didn't say a word as the wine glass was placed before her.
Before you get all up on your soapbox about parents providing booze to minors, remember that we are in Europe. The legal drinking age in the UK is 18, so at 16 Annie isn't that far off the mark. She always looks at least 18 anyway with her full face of war paint, aka makeup. We would never encourage her to drink or buy alcohol for her, like some folks here AND back in Texas do for their teens.
Up to this point, Annie has been adamantly opposed to drinking alcohol. We've offered her a taste of beer, wine or a mixed drink at our home and she always turned up her nose at it. I thought she might be swayed a bit when we moved over here because some of her more liberal classmates and friends from Europe talk of drinking alcoholic beverages. Thankfully, this hasn't been the case.
So Annie eyed the glass and then began looking around her with this guilty expression on her face, almost as if she expected DEA agents to come busting through the door and haul us all off to jail for placing a glass of diluted wine in front of her. We sipped ours and it was as good as I remembered. We encouraged Annie just to give it a try. She swallowed maybe a quarter of a teaspoon and wrinkled up her nose. When I asked her what she thought of the sangria, she told me it was like drinking liquid raisins with a funny aftertaste. She also compared the taste to cough medicine - music to my ears!
She told us that she just doesn't like the smell or taste of alcoholic drinks. She added that she'll probably drink maybe one when she goes to parties in college, but she intends to be the designated driver. It was at this point that I wished I had some sort of recorder with me to capture her words. Do you think it's too late to get that in writing?
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