We're Out of the Special

I am ready to go on strike.

I have always enjoyed cooking and baking; it's how I show my love.  Lately, though, cooking has become, well, a chore.  It seems every day my husband or my teenager is on a new diet. Add that to my other daughter who is allergic to half of all the food and hates the other half, and you try making one dinner everyone will eat. If these people I live with refuse to agree on some foods in common, then I am going to start just making what I like. And I like some pretty weird stuff.

I remember those Hamburger Helper commercials from when I was a kid. The Helping Hand was cute as hell, but his food sucked.  Who needs all that extra salt and fat, or worse, who needs a box of Hamburger Helper when there is a perfectly good box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?  I also remember the Chef Boy R Dee pizza mix, and that was a treat. I suppose that was before Hot Pockets and Totino's Pizza Rolls and Bagel Bites, when people wanted a pizza but had no way to acquire one, hence the need for a shelf stable version.

Yeah, I don't make any of those things for my family. I make them real food, from real ingredients. I shop the perimeter of the store. Generally speaking, I cook from what’s known as scratch, and I do it happily. Only lately, not so much.

My husband, in an effort to lose ten pounds, the same ten pounds he has wanted to lose for years, has decided he is going to low carb it until he reaches his goal. Fine, whatever. The problem is, I don’t eat red meat, not even the other white meat, and I also don’t cook it. He, on the other hand, won’t eat any eggs or tofu, and also hesitates when the main protein is beans. Which leaves us fish and poultry. My teen is on an anti-poultry kick and read somewhere that soy is bad for teenage girls, so she is off tofu and all fake meat products.  My baby girl won’t eat seafood. She also won’t eat eggs, tofu, beans, or red meat, which leaves poultry. So much for a main course everyone will agree on.

OK, there’s always lasagna. Except the teen won’t eat dairy right now because it makes her acne worse. And the baby girl gets heartburn from red sauce.

You try cooking for these people.

Vegetables present a whole other issue. Three of us will eat salad unless I put cheese or beans or carrots on it. One will eat cucumbers if nothing else touches them. Two eat broccoli, one eats squash, and no one wants any more cabbage because I made it too often since I thought it was something they all liked.

Starch? Forget that too. The man is off of starch in any shape or variety. One likes rice or couscous, but won’t eat potatoes, not even the sweet ones. The other one is the opposite.

I keep trying to remind them that Mama ain’t running a meat and three, but it isn't working.

When my husband was growing up, he had to sit at the table until he cleaned his plate. He would sit there for hours, having a staredown with the green beans, seeing who would cave first. My mother played it a little differently. She would make things that no kid in their right mind would want to eat, like fried chicken livers or some sort of chicken fried cube steak, the tough overcooked version. If you didn’t eat it, she didn’t make you sit until it was gone; she made you leave the house. If you weren’t going to eat her nasty cooking, she didn’t want to have to look at the shitty expression on your face, so outside you had to go. Many a night I would sit on the back steps of the house, staring at my dumb dog who wanted to be outside with me on the other side of the glass sliding doors, waiting for the meal to end and the smell to dissipate. Why I never learned to just feed my crappy meal to the dog under the table, I'll never know.

What I mean is, back in the day, you ate what was put in front of you or you went hungry. If you ate at a restaurant, you had what was on the menu or you had a hamburger. There was no such thing as a kids menu.  There was no choice of chicken fingers or a grilled cheese sandwich, nor did everything come with fries. And guess what, my house doesn’t have one either. Now we are so concerned about overeating we don't make kids clean their plates, but we also forgot we aren't short order cooks.

Those people I live with are wearing me out. Don’t make something I love to do into a chore. Just eat the damn food.

My grandfather, Pop-pop, used to tell a joke about three cowboys out on the ranch. One of them had to be responsible for the cooking, and they drew straws to see had to do the chore. The loser told the others he would cook, but if they ever complained, that would be the end. So day in and out, the other two cowboys would go out, herding the cattle, and the loser would stay back and prepare the evening meal. Days turned into weeks, with never a complaint about the food. Finally, the cowboy was tired of it. He waited one day for the other two cowpokes to go out riding, and then he gathered up a bunch of cow patties. He floured them up and fried them in the cast iron skillet, even made a pan gravy, and served them up for dinner that night. They all sat around the campfire, the two cowboys chewing and swallowing but not saying a word. Finally, the cowboy asked, "How's dinner?" and one of the cowboys said, "Tastes like shit, but good!"

That joke is the basis of my cooking philosophy.

I’m thinking about going to a seven meal rotation, you know, meat loaf on Monday, tacos Tuesday, Spaghetti Wednesday, grilled chicken Thursday, and Fish Stick Friday. You don’t like what I make now; just wait until it’s meatloaf every Monday. You’ll be begging for some black bean soup or a lovely tofu stir fry.

Or here’s another idea. Make your own damn dinner.

Cast a Wider Net

Once a week, my teen has a guitar lesson at a music store that sells both new and used string instruments, guitars, banjos, mandolins, and ukuleles, as well as song books and accessories. Usually, I park myself in the very small waiting area while my daughter has her lesson.  I take a book along but just pretend to read it because the people that come and go in the store are more entertaining.

It’s nothing like when my daughters have piano lessons at a studio down the street that is frequented by home schoolers or Jesus freaks from the local unaccredited Christian fanatic educational institution. When I have to wait there, I am surrounded by breeders with a minimum of four children, none of which they attempt to control, and it’s the same people every week.  At guitar, you never know who will walk through the door, which lends an air of mystery to the whole experience. Plus, the waiting area is too small for large families, and they teach, gasp, rock music, so it’s not the same crowd at all.

One day, as I sat there with my younger daughter listening to the teen play the same chord over and over in the other room, the door burst open and in strode a young man wearing a shirt and tie, full of purpose. He shouted, “Hey, man” to the guy working behind the counter, then turned to where we sat and apologized to us for startling us. We were startled, honestly; it was so peaceful before he rushed into the room with such drama. I assumed he was friends with the guy behind the counter because his greeting seemed so personal somehow, as if the salesman had been waiting to see him all day.

He walked up to the counter and said, “Hey, man, do you know anyone who likes makeup?”

That wasn’t what I expected at all.

The guy behind the counter is new to the guitar shop, and clearly he has had no previous experience, both with working retail and with interacting with people. He doesn’t know how to do a credit card sale. He doesn’t know where they keep the guitar stands. And he doesn’t know how to answer the phone. He is definitely not trained on how to deal with make-up salesmen.  He wore a blank expression on his face, but with his head tilted just enough to indicate his confusion, much like a puppy.

“Um, my mom, I guess?” He answered the question with a question. He wasn’t really sure his mom liked makeup, but she was the only woman he knew.

“Well, listen,” the salesman said. “I have an incredible deal to offer you on a makeup kit. It’s got everything you need right in one convenient set up.”

My daughter and I sat there, mesmerized. I couldn’t believe the balls on this salesman. Who just walks into a store and tries to sell stuff to the guy behind the counter, who is, in fact, also there to do sales? Even odder, who walks into a guitar store and tries to sell make-up to an adolescent boy? Why didn’t the kid tell him no, or, better yet, try to sell him a guitar?

He continued on with his make-up spiel, about how useful and affordable it was, but it was clear he lost his audience, if he ever actually had it. The counter boy just stared at him, confused.  The odd part is that I was the only woman there, but the salesman never addressed me, only the teenage boy. Maybe he is authorized to sell make up to the employee of a retail establishment but not the other customers there.

When the salesman finished, he asked If the teenage boy might be interested in buying the kit for his mom, at which point the boy answered, “Um, not really?” like he wasn’t really sure but he should probably say no.

“Hey, no hard feelings, man,” the salesmen said. “Maybe not today.” And he flew back out, much as he did when he came in, like a blonde tornado.

We sat there in the silence, until the boy behind the counter said, “Well, that was random.”

Indeed, it was. It was one of those “did that just happen?” moments, one that leaves you more puzzled than amused. He certainly didn’t look like the Avon lady or Mary Kay. Who hires a twenty something straight blond man to sell make-up door to door? He never even indicated the brand of cosmetics, so maybe the whole thing was a ruse, but why? And why didn’t he try to sell it to me? Did I already look so good I didn’t need any make-up, or was I a lost cause that even his product, while fabulous and a must-have, couldn’t fix?

Little did he know, he lost two sales that day. Not that I would have bought his crap. But still, it feels good sometimes just to be asked.