But like I said, in our house I'm the cook, my wife does the cleaning. If she had a blog I'm sure she would write a post about cleaning up after a houseful of slobs, I'm here to share my experiences trying to cook for a houseful of picky people.
I'll start at the beginning. I married into having three teenagers. When we first got married my wife showed me how she made macaroni and cheese for her and the kids. I couldn't wait to see her skills in the kitchen and quickly wished I hadn't. After boiling and draining the macaroni, she tossed some chopped, raw onions into the pot along with the noodles and started adding handfuls of shredded cheddar cheese. Just as I was thinking that there had to be more to it than this, she announced it was done and her innocent kids lined up to get a bowlful.
"You don't make a sauce for it?" I asked cautiously.
"No, this is it," she smiled, handing me a bowl.
We weren't married long when one evening I had to go out; shortly after I left, the kids excitedly asked her to make the macaroni and cheese they loved so much, but I had already ruined it for them. After cooking for them for only a few weeks they were already learning the difference between real food and whatever their mom had been making for them for years. I refuse to discuss the broccoli and ketchup soup; except to say that it happened, but she happily made them the mac and cheese. They all took a bite and, chewing slowly, said that it wasn't as good as they remembered. I never even saw that pot of food so I guess it got tossed out before I came home.
The first time I cooked for my kids was an amazing experience for myself, and I imagine for them as well. I made something simple; chicken spaghetti, we like to call it. I simply cut up raw chicken breast and put it in spaghetti sauce instead of using ground beef; the chicken cooks in the sauce. My grandmother used to make sauce with chicken and I've always loved it. The kids were totally silent when I placed this food in front of them; they just sat there, staring down at it like they had never seen anything like it before. Maybe they hadn't, come to think of it. When they started eating they stayed quiet, but they were eating like they had been marooned on an island. They liked it and they let me know by devouring it and asking for more. To this day, our middle daughter asks for this for her birthday meal. And my wife hates it; not the request, but the actual food itself. Therein lies the beginning of said trials; these are some of the pickiest people I've ever cooked for in my life, people that willingly ate raw onion macaroni will turn up their nose to well prepared chicken spaghetti.
It actually started with onions, if I remember correctly. Our son, a founding member of the raw onion macaroni foundation; or ROMF, insisted he didn't like onions. I think back on this wondering how he ate that mac and cheese and then had the nerve to tell me he didn't like onions. But he was so insistent that I started making small portions of our meals onion free just for his sake. I subscribe more to the school of thought that says, "Eat what I cook or go hungry," but my wife begged me to make onion free food for him so I relented. It wasn't that it was difficult, but it did take up a lot of space on the stove and was a general pain in the neck. I would get frustrated having to do this and sometimes when making spaghetti sauce, or anything else, I would add extra onion powder to his pot, taking secret vengeance. He never noticed. A note to you readers out there- don't frustrate your cook. Muahaha!
I tried to get him to try grilled onions and caramelized onions thinking he would like the different flavors since he had most likely only ever experienced crunchy, raw onions in his macaroni, but he never would give them a try. Then he comes home from the Marines one day and tells me his buddy was grilling onions with their steaks and now he loves grilled onions. Mixed emotions of wanting to kill him and being thankful to the Marine Corps for changing our son's palate flooded my heart. It makes cooking for him a lot easier now; unless it's soup.
Our son claims to hate soup. Yes; soup, a global food offering with limitless varieties is hated for no actual reason by one of our family members. Winters were fun at our house. Upon entering the kitchen and seeing me adding ingredients to the pot on the stove he would immediately wrinkle his nose and ask what I was making. Another word for you readers: when a family member is going out of their way trying to provide tasty, nutritious meals for you, you might want to learn to control your nose wrinkle response. I see it in my wife and daughters too. Nothing says contempt like wrinkling your nose at a cook's food.
Trying hard not to kill him, or yell, "Soup you little ingrate!" at the top of my lungs; I would calmly tell him, "Soup." He would then inform me that he would be dining on cereal. This strikes me as odd in retrospect when you consider that cereal, at its heart, is nothing more than crunchy, soggy, milk-soup.
I haven't even gotten to the girls yet. Our middle girl, the one who likes the chicken spaghetti, is OCD about her food touching. To the point that she will get a separate small bowl for her corn or anything else that could possibly stray into the neighboring food on her plate. I've considered buying her a green, plastic prison tray with the built in depressions for food, but then she would use it and get the last laugh on all of us. Sometimes I like to mix my corn and mashed potatoes in full view of her horrified face, laughing like Dr. Evil as she winces. Dinner is never boring at our house.
She also hates mushrooms. I have given up a lot of foods over the years that I used to enjoy because of my family's refusal to eat them. Mushrooms are one of them. Sometimes I will add them to a stew, but I now leave them chopped big enough for her to remove easily. She invariably ends up passing a small pile of mushrooms on a napkin to some lucky person at the table. Once, when I still dared to put them in spaghetti sauce, I tried to chop them in a food processor thinking she wouldn't see them and never notice. I was wrong. She inspects her food to an infuriating level if you're the home cook. She bends over it at the table with an accusing stare and starts slowly stirring through it with her fork, looking for offensive additions like mushrooms and cyanide capsules. Using this method she plucked out a minuscule fragment of otherwise unidentifiable mushroom on the tip of her fork and asked, "What's this?"
"A mushroom," I conceded. She didn't eat any more of that meal, acting like a head of state that narrowly avoided being poisoned. For months after that, any time she asked me what was for dinner the question was always followed by, "Are there mushrooms in it?"
Then there's our oldest daughter. She doesn't like corn. Or; she does, but not frozen corn or canned corn, but she likes corn on the cob. Or maybe it's: she likes frozen corn, but not canned corn. I'm pretty sure she likes mushrooms. And this is where we get into a huge problem; they're all so picky in their own ways that it's hard to keep track of who likes what. It seems that for most meals I find out all over again that someone doesn't like something.
This is mom's fault. She raised them to never try anything they thought they might not like and never forced them to eat anything. Don't get me wrong; I don't think we should make dinner time a horrible experience for children in the name of expanding their tastes, but I do lean toward just making them try things. If they don't like it; fine, at least they tried it. I think that a lot of times when kids say they don't like something, chances are high that they've never even eaten it before; they just don't want to try it.
But this is lost on my wife who has easily become the pickiest of them all. It's not her fault, she has been stricken with a terrible condition called Cuckooitis that has affected everything about her eating habits. She no longer likes pork, bacon, chicken, any kind of meat; except steak, but she probably won't like that tomorrow, never liked the chicken spaghetti and doesn't like any bread. She doesn't like pizza, people that eat pizza or Italy. She does like pasta; which doesn't technically count as Italian since it was invented in China, and vegetables- she loves vegetables. She doesn't like potatoes or rice unless I accidentally prepare them in a certain, undefinable way, which she will compliment and then I will never have the good fortune of reproducing again. She hates all fruit; much like my son with soup, and won't eat ice cream because it makes her teeth hurt then gets mad at us for eating ice cream without her. She likes diet soda, probably one of the most disgusting things on the planet. I'm not the type to get into the whole sugar substitute argument, I just think diet soda tastes nasty. Ants won't even touch it. If I'm going to drink soda, you might as well give me the sugar-filled variety. Either one is bad for you so give me the one that tastes good.
She will also tell me she doesn't want to eat sweets, but when I make myself a chocolate cake will ask me why I didn't make something we both like.
Who doesn't like chocolate cake? And I thought you didn't want any anyway.
It can be pretty maddening trying to cook for these people, but you'd be surprised; most of the time they actually like my cooking. Or at least, one of them per meal.
Breakfast prepared by the author.
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