Cooking Lessons from Scary Mom

It’s no secret. I love to make fun of my mom. She’s my straight man. And she’s good at it. Today, I’m going to villainize her a little. If I were lying on a psychiatrist’s couch, I’d be blaming her for my shortcomings today. You see, my mom is the reason I can’t cook.

Ok, I can cook. Actually, I can cook really well, but I didn’t learn until I was in my 30’s. Until then, I had a pathological fear of the kitchen. Mageirocophobia – fear of cooking. It’s a real word. I’m using it in a sarcastic context and if you suffer from Mageirocophobia, I’m not in any way trying to diminish you. I’m simply trying to describe the power my mom’s Ataxophobia – fear of untidiness (another good one used in sarcastic context).

I think every child wants to help their parents in the kitchen at some time, but in my house, we sort of knew to stay out of mom’s way. There were rules. Rules that had to be followed. Now, I don’t want to delve too far into my mom’s psychological makeup (*cough* OCD *cough*), but we need to talk about a few kitchen-related things here.

1. Measuring
2. Counting
3. Cleanliness
4. Recipes

Measuring Rules

My mom is a GREAT cook. The best. My kids won’t eat any of my attempts to cook ‘outside of the box’ but they will eat anything she puts in front of them and loudly broadcast how good it is. Even vegetables. So, when I tell you how freakish she is about measuring, I just want you to know it’s not because she’s a bad cook. My mom uses a knife to measure. A measuring cup or spoon and a knife. The knife is used on the unsharp side as a straight-edge to slide the unwanted, leftover ingredient off the top of the measuring cup or spoon. For. Every. Measurement. Period. No. Exceptions. My mom owns a set of measuring spoons for a dash, pinch, and smidgen. I’m not lying. You can get one here: http://www.amazon.com/Andersons-Baking-Smidgen-Stainless-Measuring/dp/B000H0UAUI

Who knows? Maybe this is why her food comes out so great. Perfectly measured every time. I am not this exact. In fact, I’m more of a ‘wing it’ personality. If it calls for ½ a cup and I have a clean measuring cup, I’ll eyeball what ½ looks like and go with it. Same with measuring spoons. With vanilla, I don’t even use a measuring spoon. You can’t mess up vanilla. As a child, adhering to my mom’s strict measuring rules was simply counterintuitive to my personality style, so I chose simply not to try cooking.

Counting Rules

Oh, my goodness. I know my mom is reading this and she’s gotten this far and is either laughing hysterically or yelling, “Oh NO!” at her laptop. There were times when I bee-bopped into the kitchen to ask my mom a question and found her in the dreaded Counting Zone. My mom would be hunched over a mixing bowl holding it with one arm while the other arm stirred the contents. Her eyes were laser-locked onto the contents and her mouth was moving silently. She was counting. Because the recipe said to mix for 50 beats. I would freeze in terror. Had she seen or heard me? Had I messed up her count? Could I back away slowly from the Counting Zone without detection? What, oh what, would happen to the recipe if I messed up the COUNT? What if she had to start over? What THEN????? To this day, I refuse to count. I pay minimal attention to blurbs in the recipe about the mixture needing to be smooth or lumpy, but I refuse to get caught in the Counting Zone. Ever.

Cleanliness Rules

Here’s the real reason I didn’t cook until I was in my 30’s. I’m a messy cook. Always have been. And my mom is a neat cook. She cleans as she cooks. When she’s through, it’s like the Boy Scouts have been there. She’s left the kitchen and all its gleaming appliances in better condition than when she got there. I tried this as a kid. I really, really tried. I relegated myself to one recipe – Snickerdoodles – because I thought I could control the ingredients. But flour has a tendency to get away from me. Even to this day. Flour is my kitchen nemesis. I clean and it all looks shiny and then I discover flour on the lip of a drawer, or the underside of my Kitchen Aid mixer head. It’s no different from childhood. My mom always discovered the errant puff of flour and called me into the kitchen for the ‘If-You-Can’t-Keep-The-Kitchen-Clean-Then-You-Can’t-Use-The-Kitchen’ speech. I always nodded, cursed the flour and waited another year to try again.

Recipe Rules

Here, finally, my mom and I have something in common. Probably not for the same reasons, though. You see, we are both recipe cookers. There are cooks who ‘just go with it’ and cooks who use recipes. We are the latter. Even if my mom is intimately familiar with a recipe, she drags it out and consults it. I think her need for recipes is out of her perfectionism and mine is just out of forgetfulness. There are a few things I can cook without a recipe (spaghetti, coconut cookies, martinis, waffles, etc.), but for the most part, I simply can’t remember ingredients lists, measurements, and instructions. I consult the internet every time I need to boil eggs. I wish that were sarcasm, but it isn’t. I can’t remember if you put the eggs in first, before the water boils or after. How long do you boil? Cover on or off? Please don’t attempt to teach me a no-fail way. I’ll forget it. I also can’t remember temperatures and I’m always in a hurry, so I cook everything on high. Last night, I tried frying bacon and had the temperature way too hot. It was bad for the bacon, the kitchen, and my arms. My mom would have been mortified.

Murdered bacon:

Bacon Cooking Technique:

I will give my mom this; she’s only really crazy in her own kitchen. Last year, I made Thanksgiving dinner for the first time in my life and she watched from a safe distance with a look of contented amusement. She only interjected when I freaked out about the bird still being frozen and needing to cook several different things at the same time but at different temperatures. She was calm, cool, and collected in helping me avert crisis and even helped me clean the flour off the countertops. And the ceiling. And the kids. And the dog.

Cole's trickery (a.k.a. The Big Guns)

Sometimes, one of my kids surprises me with a thought process so unique, I am left in total awe. I hesitate to post this in the case it gets back to Cole's teachers. You'll understand why in a minute.

Cole and I were talking about his school day yesterday and he said he'd had a particularly good day. He'd even gotten through the one class he has a really hard time keeping quiet in. (side note: Cole's a talker)

So, he tells me that he likes to trick his teachers and I raise a cautious eyebrow and naturally ask, "How's that?" He smiles and says he started it with his 4th grade teacher (sorry, Mrs. Scroggins). The trick: He pretends he isn't listening then when the teacher calls on him to answer a question, he surprises them by knowing the answer.

I remain quiet because I find that if I do, I usually get more information than when I pepper the kids with questions. He continues:

"Whenever I want to trick my teacher into calling on me, I pull out my guns. Here's my regular guns." He pulls his feet up into his chair and looks down at his hands in his lap.

"Doing that usually works, but if not, I pull out the big guns." He transforms his hands into fighting creatures who are in an all out war - complete with quiet, albeit distracting noises.

"And if that doesn't work, well, I pull out the bazooka." He puts his feet back on the floor and stares forward, eyes glazed, mouth slightly open.

I'm trying very hard not to laugh, because I have a real concern about this 'trickery.' I ask him why he'd want to call that kind of negative attention to himself. He replies, "I like being called on and this is more effective than raising my hand."

And there you have it.

Bragging Rights (a.k.a. Dori gets on her soapbox)

I have a friend (a super, fantastic, awesome person) who has daughters roughly the same age as my older two boys. This friend of mine is on Facebook and I laugh - really laugh - at the differences between raising sons and raising daughters. That's not the topic for this post, though. The other day, she posted that she was hosting a sleepover and basic Facebook-related commenting began. Most of it was sarcastic because that's the crowd I run with and apparently it's also the crowd my crowd runs with. The people commenting were strangers to me, but we were brought together in the common purpose of chiming in on our mutual friend's funny life.

After a handful of comments (mine something related to the horror of having that many tween girls amassed in one location), a comment showed up from another of my friend's friends (are you still following?). The comment was rather long and passionate about how this super awesome friend of mine shouldn't complain about raising her kids and how the new generation of parents complains and whines about raising their kids and doesn't appreciate what an honor and blessing it is to have children.

My first reaction to this comment was one of anger. I sort of seethed at this stranger for several days. I calmed myself by remembering how laid back my friend is and how she probably let that comment slide. She probably shrugged. I also reminded myself that people from past generations have a different perspective altogether that I can't understand just as they don't understand my perspective.

Then, I wondered if this is how I'm perceived. I mean, if you read my blog, you'll find what looks like complaining and whining. I use sarcasm as a literary standard for writing about my parenting experience. But here's the deal - what I'm really doing, underneath the surface and way down deep - is BRAGGING. I'm raising these funny kids who entertain me and challenge me to my VERY LIMITS and it makes me want to share that experience with friends, family, and strangers if they'll read it. My basic point in all my blog posts is - I'm not perfect, I'm flying by the seat of my pants, I'm pretty sure my children are smarter than me and maybe manipulating me, and I'm loving every chaotic minute of it.

Even the moments that aren't funny become moments of bragging on Facebook and the blogosphere. I'm basically communicating that I'm living proof that you can't create crazy. Crazy just happens. And the more children you have (or in my friend's case, the more you invite over for a sleepover), the more crazy you have. We survive this with humor.

I don't understand the people I know who have 'perfect' children and 'perfect' lives. I feel like the friendship is not only a place of judgement, but also one where I'm not safe to be honest and one where my children aren't safe to be themselves in my stories.

To my friend (and she'll know who she is): I would NEVER in a MILLION years have that many boys to my house for a sleepover. I'm in awe of you. I relinquish the highest level of bragging rights to you. I defer to your greatness.

To my friend's friend (who will never know that this post exists - thankfully): I get that we use a LOT of sarcasm, but we aren't whining and complaining, we are bragging. We are like old men who sit around talking about their various ailments. We are like dirt bike riders who talk about how many bones they've broken and yet still get back on the bike to ride. We are like all those mothers who talk about their horrific labor experience ("I was in labor for 14 hours" "That's nothing, I was in labor for 24 hours and 12 of those hours was in traffic"). It's all bragging-based one-upsmanship.

And do you know what insanity I'll have to endure to get those bragging rights back from my friend? We're talking taking 10 10-year-old boys tent camping on a primitive site with no water or electricity. Or teaching my 3-year-old the art of silent meditation. It's going to take serious crazy.

And then she'll do something amazing and I'll have to give the bragging rights right back to her.




***My friend gave me permission to publish this post***