I am trying to be as mean a mom as I can.

Don’t take my word for it. Ask the Princesses. Ask them, particularly, at the dinner table.

I can’t help it. I have to be mean about something. They already eat way too much sugar, play way too many video games, stay up way too late and avoid way too many chores. I had to do something or lose my Mean Mom scholarship.

So I drew the line at Picky Eating.

Now, drawing the line at Picky Eating does not mean I don’t have Picky Eaters. It just means I refuse to cook for them. The Dinnertime Rules are, and have always been:

1) Here is dinner.
2) Eat it or not, as you choose.
3) If you choose not to, you will not get anything else.
4) You will not get seconds and thirds of the things you love just to avoid eating any of the thing you hate.
5) Mom and/or Dad are the sole judges of what is considered enough of the thing you hate to  warrant dessert.

(I am slightly more lenient in my choices when packing lunches, because it’s harder to salvage anything uneaten when it’s been in a warm classroom all day long.)

The Mean Moms committee members find this list acceptable. To really earn points with them, however, you have to cook the occasional meal that your children loathe.

Tonight, because we are swimming in squash, I chose an overly-large one, sliced it in half lengthwise, stuffed it with a mixture of sausage, spaghetti sauce, bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese, topped it with fresh mozzerella and stuck it in the oven.

Now, I know squash is somewhere near the bottom on the list of Acceptable Princess Fare. I didn’t like it as a kid myself. But they have already eaten it this summer in many forms: raw in salads, cooked in omelets and stir-fry, hidden entirely in bread and chocolate muffins. This was merely a variation on a theme. It was also a variation on a theme I tried about a week ago, when I stuffed a squash with maple-flavored sausage, cut-up apple, Parmesan, cinnamon and a touch of ground cloves, and Slightly Older Princess pronounced it, “Pretty good.”

So I served it, with steamed artichokes on the side.

Slightly Older Princess devoured her artichoke, then voluntarily put herself to bed without the rest of her dinner. Which would have been fine, except she emerged from her room an hour after bedtime, saying she was hungry. At first, I told her forget it, dinnertime was way past and she needed to go back to bed.

She started sobbing.

I cracked, just a little. “I’ll warm up the squash,” I told her. I could hear the Mean Mom committee tsk-tsking in the background, readying the black mark for my record.

SOP sobbed harder. The committee held its collective breath.

I rummaged in the refrigerator for the baking dish, sliced off a small piece of squash and stuffing and stuck it in the microwave. “This is your one warning, SOP,” I told her. “You choose whether or not to eat dinner, but if you don’t eat it at dinnertime, that’s it. I’m not going to do this again.”

I could hear committee members sitting back, warily, but still keeping their beady eyes on me, searching for further signs of weakness.

She ate perhaps two bites of stuffing, still sniffling, then put herself back to bed. “Brush your teeth,” I called after her. Committee members nodded approvingly.

I am adding the timing conversation as Rule 6 on the Dinner List. And then I think I’m going to sit in front of the bathroom mirror and practice scowls.