TheBanyanTree: Cooking With Boys

[Monique]

My boy and I were in the kitchen the other night. We're in the kitchen a
lot. Well, when we're eating at home we are. Seems like if I'm making dinner
I can't ever get halfway there without him deciding he can do it better, and
there he is, helping me. He's probably a better cook than I am, so that's
not a problem. His helping often works its way into him doing all the work
while I sit on the couch with my feet up. I thought I'd forestall this the
other night by doing most of the food prep before he got home from work.
THIS TIME I was going to make dinner all by myself, I was going to show him
I could be just as good at these things as he could be. 

But it wasn't quite done by the time he got home. The pasta creation was in
the oven, but I still had polenta to fry. We do like our corn products. So
in my large pan I had olive oil heating. Well, I did, once I had him open
the olive oil. Seems the cork broke and got stuck, so I had to have him get
it out, and then he gave me a cork from a wine bottle to replace it with.

Anyway. So the olive oil is heating in the pan. Boy decides to test the oil
to see how hot it is. (Last week he found the butane torch used for making
crème brulee, which technically belongs to Stew but which I took away from
him for his own protection, and which boy decided was a fun toy. Boy is not
afraid of things he should fear.) He tossed a drop of water in the pan. 

It sputtered convincingly, I thought. Boy was not convinced. More water.
More exploding oil. 

I was ready to proceed with step two, but boy was still not satisfied with
the popping oil and, in fact, seemed to find it rather amusing. So he did
the next logical thing. He got an ice cube. Out of the freezer. And he put
it in the hot oil. 

And then I chased him out of the kitchen. We were a few feet away, in the
living room, he was holding onto me and we were laughing. That's when the
oil exploded.

Something about oil and water not mixing. I don't know. We stayed back a
safe distance and watched. Wasn't much else to do. The oil was happy, and it
was letting us know. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "that might not have
been such a good idea." 

Understatement is his forte.

Once the excitement died down, (and he'd thrown his body in front of mine to
protect me), he grabbed the mop and began cleaning the kitchen floor.

The oily kitchen floor. Did a good job too.

Then I fried the polenta. 

Then we ate. 

Sometimes we don't know what we're going to make, even when we're standing
there with the ingredients in front of us, but I'm always certain it will be
entertaining, one way or another. 

Monique