About six months ago, I warned the offspring that when I got a full time job (intended for this summer internship), they were suddenly going to be responsible for cooking dinner once a week. Now, mind you, this is after a couple of years of anecdotes about my teen years when my mother went back to work and then back to college and my mother, sister and I would sit down at the beginning of the semester and decide who had time to cook dinner when since we were all three going to school.
I wasn't sure how this was going to work out. K has been interested in cooking for some years, but S has not. S is the one I was worried about - he needs to know how to feed himself without resorting to fast food or tv dinners. (We will not even go into his stated opinion of two years ago which was that that was what girlfriends were for - ever since he ran into the Zits cartoon that said "nothing says 'knuckledragger' like sexist expectations of your girlfriend" he has ceased to even try to tease his sister with such statements.) While having additional hands to fix meals is of course bonus, the point is to make them learn to be self sufficient. This summer's addition to the self-sufficiency plans is cooking.
It's working out great. When I said, ok, it's time - they both shrugged and said "OK". No fuss, no muss. I thought they might want to choose the menu, but that seems to be more than they want right now. I'm writing out recipes, leaving ingredients and instructions, and when asked, walking them through the instructions over the phone. I'm also coming home to meals not cooked by me.
I could get used to this.
No comments:
Post a Comment