Thank you, son!
That innocent comment got me thinking. I've probably cooked that boy over 6,000, maybe almost 7,000 meals in his lifetime (we don't eat out often).
I can remember his dad and him having conversations, such as, "Remember when Mom tried to feed us meatless meals of lentils?" and the other replying, "Eeeew! Do I ever! Or remember the time she made that real expensive, exotic dish and it tasted like cow dung?"
Various Exotic Herbs and Spices in Bowls
How is it that I've cooked all these meals all these years and the ones that my family remembers the most is the failures? I've probably only cooked 2 bad meals in my entire life! That's right, the lentils and the cow dung are the only 2 bad meals I ever cooked!
I've painstakingly cooked some wonderful, awesome meals, but the ones they can remember every minute detail about are the miserable ones.
Of course, you realize, that I'm only half joking, but they do have a tendency to really, really remember those horrible meals. We all have made them. Come on, admit it!
Then I realized for 4 months, my son had been eating meals at college. He didn't like the canned sweet potatoes, or the dried up quarter-sized tomatoes that were on his burger, or the mystery meat on that sub he ordered. Not to mention the time he had food poisoning when he ate 'free' food at the college deli one day. He told me that he knows now why it was 'free'. He said the guy behind the counter told him, 'Come back anytime, I'll give you a deal.' DS said that he got more of a deal than he bargained for.
So, I'm the world's greatest cook, you know, as long as you forget the lentils and the cow dung! I just can't seem to get those right....yet, but I'm working on it!
Green, Red and Brown Lentils (Lens Culinaris)
2 comments:
Oh Laurie, I really enjoyed this entry! Probably because I've had the same kind of experiences. I'm really not the world's best cook but I've made very few bad meals and the older my sons get the more they appreciate the cooking I did. ;) Ahhh, hope you have a great new year, lady, and cook some incredible meals! Hey, did you see I posted about a new blog about using leftovers creatively? You might be able to contribute to that. ;)
I read somewhere that our brains store memories by compounding them: similar memories are "grouped" (so the phrase "if you've seen it once you've seen it a million times" actually has some truth to it!) So all the wonderful meals you've cooked for your family are "grouped" into a smaller group of memories, same with the memories of the bad meals, so when your son looks back through his memory, the good meals and the bad meals have the same weight! Isn't that frustrating? lol.
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