1. Ask "did you buy any food-food?" when your mother comes home with $250 worth of groceries.
2. Refuse to define what is meant by the term "food-food." You know it when you see it.
3. Start every other conversation by asking "what are we having for dinner?"
4. Open every cabinet in the kitchen while sighing between meals.
5. Stare at pantry contents in disapproval. This is no way to live.
6. Insist that you have not eaten all day no matter how many plates you have used.
7. Be uncharacteristically nice to your little sister, then ask her if she wants to make cookies.
8. Drink from milk jug while staring at refrigerator contents until temperature drops 20 degrees.
9. Later, complain that the temperature in the refrigerator has dropped 20 degrees.
10. Be the plate. Time spent on dishes, napkins or silverware is time spent still hungry.
from the care and feeding of boys archives: The Virtual Food Critic
I suppose me saying "my children will never be allowed to drink/eat directly from the container without intervening dishes/utensils" will make you laugh just as hard as my pregnant friend saying "my toddlers will not be allowed to throw temper tantrums in the grocery story" made me laugh when I had a three-year-old?
Posted by: MommyTime | May 05, 2012 at 05:54 PM
Is that really spaghetti in his hand?
Posted by: Aixamon | May 05, 2012 at 06:22 PM
Oh please MT, a little warning. I just sprayed wine through my nose.
And yes, AM, that is how the boy interprets "serve yourself."
SK
Posted by: Suburban Kamikaze | May 05, 2012 at 07:12 PM
I think it is time for the Audubon Ron "How To Cook" video modules for the 17-year-old.
1. Put on this apron. (It is by no happenstance that the word Ron is a function of the word apRon.)
2. Dude, peel this potato until you find the carrot in the middle.
3. Tomorrow's lesson will be "How To" peel a carrot until you find the potato in the middle.
4. The cooking word for today is "preparation." It's right before the word mastication.
5. The word mastication BTW is right before the word Loadthedishwasheration.
6. You don't work, you don't eat. Can it be that simple? Someone say Yes.
Boy, I’ll tell you like my Daddy told me, “Someday you’ll make some lucky gal a fine wife.”
Posted by: Audubon Ron | May 05, 2012 at 09:43 PM
If you have to peel it, it's not food-food, says the boy, who offered the following definition:
Food-Food noun: "Shit you can put in the toaster and crap you can eat out of the box."
"Don't buy ingredients," he says, "because then we have to ask you to cook them for us and you act like a martyr."
By ingredients, he means: things that must be added to at least one other thing before being eaten with a fork.
"Nothing good ever came out of a toaster," I say, in a voice full of courage and suffering.
"'Good' is something you made up with your rich, snobby, wine country appetite," he says.
By which he means a taste for food that is eaten from plates, preferably in a teenager-free setting.
SK
Posted by: Suburban Kamikaze | May 06, 2012 at 05:04 AM
If he could use a spatula as adroitly as he does the word "martyr" in a sentence, he would be golden.
P.S. I am sorry to have made you waste what was probably a very nice sip of wine.
Posted by: MommyTime | May 06, 2012 at 12:53 PM
Frankly, I was surprised to learn that toasting was an option. He has really come a long way.
SK
Posted by: Suburban Kamikaze | May 06, 2012 at 02:08 PM