"Mommy, is dinner ready yet?"
For someone who rushes home to release the babysitter of her duties and cooks dinner at the same time so we can start eating at 6:30 and Alex can fall asleep by 7:30, I don't need a reminder that I am falling behind schedule.
"Mommy, I am stahr-ving"
"mommmmmmmmm! foooooooooood!"
It's annoying as hell. I am doing my best.
"ew, you gave me tomato sauce. I hate tomato sauce. I'm not eating this"
That does it.
That does it.
No dinner for you. Ever.
Okay, that is not realistic.
I am explaining over and over that making meals take time.
"So then let's go to McDonalds"
No you need to eat real food.
"Then lets get delivery"
There is only so much sushi we can eat and I am not ordering Dominos.
It's not like this is NYC where you can order in any food you can imagine.
You can make your own damn dinner if you are so demanding.
And I had an epiphany.
That is it, have Alex cook something so he knows how difficult it is.
Breakfast is out of the question.
School bus picks Alex up at 7:20am which is a 10 to 15 minutes walk away from where we live.
We only wake up at 6 so we don't have the luxury of enjoying Alex's sunny side up.
If Alex ruins dinner, that will ruin MY day, since dinner is the only time I get to eat something that resembles real food.
So have him make snack. If he burns it, it will still go in his backpack as his bus snack. He should be responsible for his own creation.
So we go through cookie recipes and he settles for "irresistible chocolate chip cookies".
We go buy the ingredients.
"Do I have to? Why don't you just go buy and I will stay home playing Legos"
Shopping is part of the cooking experience. No shopping, no bus snack.
He obliges.
We have trouble finding 12oz of chocolate chips.
The modest Japanese do not dump in 12oz of chocolate chip for just 40 cookies.
Each bag of Chocolate chips is 1.7oz, or 50grams.
I need to get 7bags of these things?
They only had 4, so I buy all. We decide to settle for m&ms for the rest.
Ken made pasta for lunch so we used the still hot pasta pot and put a bowl over it to soften butter.
We dump in dark brown sugar to it, then scrape out vanilla beans from it's pod and dump it in too.
"ew, this is vanilla? it looks like dirt. why isn't it white?"
Why should it be white? This is the real deal. We use real ingredients for our real food.
"But vanilla ice cream is white"
Good, I am teaching him something. Vanilla is NOT white, the cream is!
So Alex starts mixing the sugar-butter mixture.
I stress that the slower he works on his food, the yummier it gets.
He is careful not to spill anything and mixes really slowly and carefully.
I start mixing the flour, salt and baking soda and then allow Alex to break an egg to put into the sugar mixture.
He cracks, opens and drops half the shell.
I think Salmonella but then realize that we will be baking it anyway. Lets just cross our fingers.
I scoop out the shell and let him continue.
"Still mix slowly. Slow is king"
Amazingly, he is concentrating on what he is doing. He enjoys how the yolk breaks up and disappears.
We mix in the flour mix to the sugar mix and he keeps on whisking.
The mixture gets thicker but he is not backing out.
It's time for the chocolate to go in.
Alex is all starry-eyed with the prospect of a creation, or so I thought.
"Am I doing good?"
Yes, you are very careful, and have not rushed things. The dough looks awesome.
"Good, what is my prize"
Prize? What prize? We are baking here. It's not a contest. You will get to eat the cookie, that is the prize.
"Oh, I thought I'd get Optimus Prime or something"
Hope dashed, he is less enthusiastic about the last step.
We spoon the dough onto the baking sheet and start baking.
It only takes 12 minutes, and we can see the dough softening, melting down flat and then slightly rising.
Alex is fixated on the oven window, I am worried about the lifespan of the light bulb in the oven.
The timer goes off, it's ready.
"Mommy, this doesn't look like the picture on the recipe"
No, it doesn't. Sometimes these things turn out differently with a slight difference in ingredients or how you bake it.
"but I wanted the one on the picture"
He walks away, going back to his Lego.
Once the cookies are cooled down, I call him for a taste test.
Alex takes a bite.
"mommy, this isn't good, it's irresistible!!"
He realizes that the whole process took an hour.
"Yep, making cookies take time. Just like making dinner takes time"
"Yeah mommy, I know now. Now, I really know."
mission accomplished!!!
