Maj eyes me suspiciously as I get out the ingredients for reuben sandwiches.
I had planned to make chicken, but the girls wailed dramatic protest, and so I have opted instead for sandwiches.
Maj is concerned, “Are you sure you know how to do this?”
Snort!
“Pretty sure I can manage, Maj. Reuben sandwiches are not that tricky.”
“OK, but Daddy always makes these sandwiches. You have to make them the way Daddy makes them.”
Sigh.
“OK, Maj . . . Daddy’s not here for dinner tonight, so I will be making these sandwiches. Why don’t you stay here in the kitchen, and you can advise me. OK? That way we’ll be sure to get them right.”
Maj is pleased with this plan, and she micro-manages me through the assembly of the sandwiches. First the bottom piece of bread, then Swiss cheese (1½ slices per sandwich, carefully arranged), then a small bit of sauerkraut (drained and squeezed so it’s not too juicy), then pastrami (folded just so), then a second piece of bread onto which is spread the perfect amount of Thousand Island Dressing.
She speaks slowly and deliberately, as though I might at any moment throw these sandwiches across the room and then perhaps dance like a monkey.
If she can just stay calm and talk me through this next tricky part? She might get to actually eat dinner!
“OK, Mother . . . so now we need to move the sandwiches to the griddle,” she pauses here, and her face falls, “Oh no!”
“What, babe?”
“You forgot to butter the outside of the bread! Daddy always does that part first, before anything else! You forgot to butter the outside of the bread!”
“Maj, that makes no sense! There would just be butter all over the counter and my hands. Look, this will work. Watch.”
And I smear a generous portion of butter on the tops of the uncooked sandwiches, and then flip them onto the griddle so the butter side is down. I work quickly to butter the top halves as the sandwiches start to cook. Maj watches in horror.
“That is not how Daddy does it! This is all wrong! You can’t butter them while they are cooking!”
“Sweetie, it will be fine. I promise.”
Maj is annoyed, but she gathers the pan tops she claims Mark puts over the sandwiches as they cook. I don’t know what the fuck that’s about, but I let her cover the sandwiches.
Then we flip the sandwiches, cover them with the pan tops again, and then remove them from the stove.
Perfect!
I flip off the stove’s fan (which is loud and droning and hateful), and we sit down to eat.
Yum!
Maj is in the middle of grudgingly agreeing that even though I did not make the sandwiches correctly? They are still edible. She is right in the middle of this pleasantness when there is a shrieking screaming alarm.
I forget to turn the burners off beneath the griddle pan. But I did turn off the annoying stovetop fan. And so the last bits of buttered sandwich remnants have burned and made just enough smoke? To set off the smoke alarm (which by the way, is way too fucking close to the kitchen, but whatever).
Hmmmph.
So I drag a barstool over and climb up to pound uselessly at the smoke alarm. It does not care for my pounding and continues to issue shrill warnings of doom. Fuck.
I yell down to the girls to throw the dogs in the laundry room so that I can open the front and back doors and get some air moving through the house.
So they both start screaming over the alarm, “PERSIE!! JACK!! COME!!! COME!!! HEEL HEEL HEEL HEEL!!!!!!!”
The dogs assess the situation and apparently decide that if the house is burning down? No fucking way are they being ushered into a small enclosed room of future fiery death. No fucking way. They both lie down on the kitchen floor and refuse to move.
And the alarm continues to shriek as I smack at it.
Oh wait! There’s a button.
OK, well that would have been a good thing to notice a few minutes ago.
I push the button and there is silence.
Lovely silence.
Broken by Maj’s voice, “You realize that even if the sandwiches taste good? The sandwiches are not what I am going to remember about this night if the house burns down.”
Kallan giggles, “Yeah! I’ll be all . . . remember when Mom made those delicious sandwiches and then we were homeless?”
Sigh.
I reassure the dogs with treats and pets and send them into the garage.
Open up the back door and the front door and the windows.
And we finish our meal as the smoke clears.
The sandwiches were yummy.
Later, the girls greet Mark at the door.
Here’s Maj, “Mother tried to burn the house down!”
And here’s Kallan, “Mommy set the smoke alarm off and our dogs are stupid.”
Mark hugs them both and looks at me . . .
“You cooked?”
And then the three of them shriek with laughter.
So fucking annoying.
Sigh.
do you think Maj thinks she’s the mom and must parent you through your formative years? poor kid. so much responsibility at such a young age.
Maj is of the opinion that a tragic cosmic error has been made.
She should never have been entrusted to someone who parents her in such lackadaisical fashion.
So Maj keeps an eye on me.
In case I start monkey-dancing.
Snort!
You can be sure Maj will never forget to double check that you turned off the stove again.
I know.
I know.
Another thing to add to her interminable mental checklist.
Sigh.
Now I?
Want to see you dance like a monkey.
Because that would be so hot.
In a circus geek sort of way.
Snort!
For you?
I will also fling poo.
That’s how monkeys roll.
God, that is so hot.
You are so good to me.
I am far too good to you.
You are adorable, though.
And I am weak.
Catch!
hehehehe
“You cooked?”
i love it
Mark thinks he is hilarious.
Sigh.
Ah, adventures in culinary parenting.
You could point out to your shieking and laughing family that next time? Next time they can all just starve. So there.
Then again, I don’t tend to handle laughter and mockery very well. I’m not so mature that way.
I have had to learn how to handle mockery and laughter.
As there is quite a bit of mockery and laughter over at my house.
And because I dish out those two items quite often myself.
Ahem.
Ah-ha! Clearly, I need to start dishing it out a bit myself. Mockery and laughter-laced comebacks are way more entertaining than sullen pouting. ;)
Exactly.
Yes!
I love that even though Maj walked you through every. single. step. she still thinks YOU forgot to butter the bread.
Exactly!
Thank you!
Recently? We revealed to my mother what she suspected all along. That even though her and her sister cooked exactly the same, my mom dries her meat out WAYYYY too much. So in order to “get back at her” for making us eat dried nasty meat all the time, we would rave about how well her sister, our aunt cooked. Even though the only difference was my aunt used higher fat meat and didn’t cook it as long. We were all sorts of genius that way.
I am forever hearing from the girls about how Mark is a better cook than I am.
The flip side?
He makes a lot of things they HATE.
They actually prefer dinner when Mark is not involved, as I am more likely to offer cereal or french toast or leftover cold chicken.
Snort!
Mark’s reaction seems not unlike both my ex and my husband when I would cook.
Oh, and the many times I’ve set off smoke alarms. Sigh.
But my daughter didn’t micromanage me. No. In fact, I taught her to cook. First meal? Scrambled eggs. Then she wouldn’t eat them because she convinced herself they were poisoned. Yeah. Fun times.
By the way, I love Maj. Totally.
Kallan loves to cook.
Maj hates to cook.
We have taught Maj how to make certain dishes for herself, but she is incredulous that we would allow her to do something so dangerous without close supervision.
And eggs? As she scrambles them, she yells out into the house, “Do you think they are cooked enough yet? Or will I be poisoned? What about now? Are they cooked enough now? I don’t want to be poisoned!”
She is all kinds of independent.
Where do these girls get this stuff?
I never liked to cook. I can. And I’m reasonably good at it. But I get no joy from it. It’s a chore, like laundry or cleaning the cat box.
My daughter threw herself a massive fit about the “poisoned” eggs. My husband ate them. I’m happy to report he’s still alive and well (very well…hehehe). We laugh about the whole incident now (she’s now 19 and quite a good cook). At the time, I wanted to trade her in on a new model.
My son, on the other hand, loves to cook and makes a steak that will melt in your mouth. Yum! He’s never had a cooking related meltdown.
Yes for me, cooking is a chore. Something to be done so that I can eat.
In related news?
Left to my own devices, I will often forget to eat.
Maj has hit upon the solution of cooking her eggs until they are toasted a bit. Not as tasty that way, but safe.
She is a goofball.
And Kallan?
Kallan can cook. She bakes and fries and boils and follows all kinds of recipes.
Maj is astounded and horrified.
~Where do these girls get this stuff?~
School mostly. I realize the girls are young but they started in on us in 6th grade (I was 11). “If you do not cook until it is a little burned, you WILL get bacteria and die”, and then they show you food contamination videos where the pizza sat at all day and someone had a piece and died. Fun times. It’s a tactic in the school to avoid kids poisoning themselves while cooking at school, so there can be no lawsuits. The kids? Often become cooking traumatized.
Stupid lawsuit-fearing school and their fear-mongering videos.
I’m sure that’s where Maj gets this shit.
Maybe.
Snort!
“Yeah! I’ll be all . . . remember when Mom made those delicious sandwiches and then we were homeless?”
DEAD.
Hee hee!
Kallan is my best source of material.
She is just awesome.
Them laughing at you cooking cracks me up. Only because I LOATHE cooking. I can cook, pretty well actually, but I hate it. I am a recipe follower, and I can’t just substitute things and pull recipes out of my ass and get something that tastes good. The husband is good and enjoys it…so he is the official cook. He tells everyone my best dish is the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese that I make. Ass.
I do not enjoy cooking, although I can cook.
I tend to gather items for a recipe and then realize that way too much work is involved.
Fuck it.
And then I eat whatever items I have taken out that can be eaten raw.
And put the rest back in the fridge.
This annoys Mark no end.
I think with kids, whoever shows them first is the one who does it “right.” There are things that Daddy does, and things that Mommy does. And if we perform the tasks of the other, whoa, look out, There’s gonna be a tantrum. “Not like that, not like that!” Oh, and it’s not your fault you left the burner on. All that overseeing can be distracting! :)
Thank you!
Clearly the leaving on of the burners? Maj’s fault.
Snort!
And there are definitely Mommy and Daddy jobs at our house.
Recently, Mark has taken over more of the cooking, and I have been happy to let him have this job.
But heaven forbid I try to recreate a DAD dish.
Even a sandwich.
Sigh.
ha ha ha ha!!! good one.
i love the way kids remember the (in their minds) near-tragedies. we have a few of those that they bring up regularly.
i make very delicious tempeh reubens (yes, you can mock me, i can take it) and i do use a lid on top of the sandwiches to press them down and make the cheese melt a little better. but you know what? my kids won’t go near that stuff. sauerkraut? no way.
more for me.
In Maj’s mind?
Our days are filled with near tragedies and barely averted crises.
She has a long list of the times I have almost killed her.
And did you say tempeh?
I had to Google that word.
And now that I have returned?
Bleagh.
Your ‘near tragedies and barely averted crises’ made me look up a Mark Twain quote that I have long loved but sadly not been able to keep intact in my memory.
“I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened”
Oh, that is awesome.
Just awesome.
I love how, in your tags, you state “I RARELY throw food and dance like a monkey…” Not that you “Don’t ever.” You “rarely.” Glorious.
Hee hee!
I set off the fire alarm once a week. I can’t help it. I wasn’t born with a cooking bone in my body.
Floppy unboned high-fives!
Oh holy hell you and your family are all sorts of awesome! I too have set off the smoke detector with my culinary skills.
I can cook.
I just tend to cook with small emergencies.
A necessary ingredient.
Snort!
it’s TRUE! I’ve seen her do it.
but just try her homemade mac n cheese! divine!