I'll have whatever he's cooking

My favorite dish is anything that can be prepared in a half hour or less and that my family will eat without complaining. Cereal tops the list, and then yogurt, pancakes, waffles, eggs, scrambled or boiled, tuna spaghetti, although slicing olives is the sort of fussy prep work that I loathe most of all, and pizza. I can get a pizza on the table in a half hour, just.

Cooking is destined to be a chore for me. I grew up in a household where experiments in the kitchen were generally met with disapproval. It's tough when your audience consists of up to a dozen individuals, all starving and none of whom will eat anything interesting like organ meats or foreign vegetables. In spite of heavy opposition, my mother did try to widen our culinary horizons from time to time. The only person who appreciated her efforts was my grandfather, with the result that she only tried out new recipes on his birthday. So once a year, we'd endure something "icky" like carrot cake, for his sake.

I can see why now, at the age of eighty something, she's no longer interested in putting a meal together. Also, she's more inclined to be picky about what's set in front of her. Maybe it's the backlash that comes from having to put three squares on the table for a mob every day for more than fifty years. It's like she decided it's her turn to say "I'm not really all that hungry," or "It needs salt," or "I think I'll just have a melted cheese sandwich."

Mom's idea of a good time was not to spend any of it in the kitchen. I grew up resenting cooking chores, too. I especially hated peeling potatoes. In our house you had to do endless amounts for a single meal. And my dad had definite ideas about the right way to do it. According to him, my method would've landed me hours of KP duty in the army on account of how much actual potato I wasted. I was in awe of his skill with a paring knife, but not enough to practice using one.

Nowadays, my favorite recipes are the ones that other people make. This doesn't mean I like going to restaurants, however. Even if I like what's on the menu, after a recent homeschooling tour of the state lab, I'm reluctant to put anything that I haven't scrubbed personally into my mouth. There was an especially disturbing story told to us about a high school science project involving bagged lettuce and cat poop, which I will not go into here. Suffice it to say that I'm never ordering salad again. I figure the only thing that's safe is soup ("Make sure it's boiling hot!") and water ("No ice, no lemon.").

My husband is a great cook. He measures and stirs and sifts and grinds and generally makes a royal mess in the kitchen. But the results are worth it: colorful combinations of meats and vegetables, cut into neat, bite-sized pieces and spiced so divinely that I end up moaning like a lovesick zombie after every morsel ("Mmmmm!"). I couldn't begin to reproduce any of it, and until recently, this was frustrating.

I am competitive by nature and it irked me that my cooking never measured up to Steve's efforts, no matter how many good reviews the recipes had garnered on the foodie forums. Of course, sometimes I wouldn't read the reviews until after the meal had been served and found wanting. I've since learned the hard way that this is always a mistake.

For a start, the dishes never look as good as the pictures. And then later, after I've already gone to the trouble of cooking it and having it pronounced inedible, I read the comments and realize that, while everyone loved this recipe and promised they'd serve it again, they weren't actually cooking this recipe, having added lime juice and capers and omitted the meat and the nuts and most of the breading. To me, a caper is something that you pull off and not something that you eat. I've seen jars of them in the store, and frankly, I can't see how something that looks like that can possibly improve anything that it's stirred into. This is likely another reason that I'm not a very good cook.

The final straw for experiments in the kitchen came a few months ago, after I had researched and cooked a dinner so bad that I couldn't even make my kids eat it. Later, when Steve came home, he pointed to the crockpot and asked, "What's this?" "Dinner," I said. "But it's terrible." "Really?" he said, and tasted it. I cringed, wating for his reaction. "Did you find this on the internet?" he asked. I nodded. "And you put the marinated artichokes in it because…?" "That's what it called for," I said. "Well," he said. "If you added a little basil, salt, pepper, sugar and marjoram to it, it wouldn't be half bad." So he did.

It was then that I gave up competitive cookery for good. I mean, I can follow a recipe just fine. It takes a real creative genius to resurrect a meal that was just one step away from the dog's dish. In fact, after Steve got done fixing it, I had seconds.

A sign of better times

I recently posted a sign over the kitchen sink. It reads: "If you dirty it, then you must wash it. The Management." Notice I've given myself a promotion. I'm no longer chief cook and bottle washer.

Mom smirked when I told her about my new plan to do less cleaning up after all the able bodied men in the house. I actually heard her do this over the phone. It sounds like it's spelled. "Smirkff," she said and right away I started worrying that this experiment in training my children and my husband to be better roommates was doomed to failure. She told me to tell her how it was going in a week's time.

Well, it's been a week and it's still working. It's all due to the paper plate with the marker message on it that's taped to the kitchen window. When the boys see the sign it reminds them that I'm right there, looking over their shoulders, making that Dog Whisperer noise, that "tch" sound that stops them from setting down a dirty plate or cup somewhere convenient and prompts them to run some hot water and soap over them and then put them in the dish drainer.

It hasn't been perfect. I still have to empty the dish drainer from time to time, otherwise the stack gets teetery, and broken china was never part of management's vision, but if you look at it as a way of counting how many dishes I don't have to do every day, it's impressive. I'm thinking of making another sign on a paper plate, enclosing it in a ziplock and hanging it in the shower. "If you shed it, you must clean it out of the hair trap. The Benevolent Dictatorship." I'm due for another raise.

A beautiful season

"I hate working in the garden," snarls my oldest son. I ignore him because, according to my newest expert book on child rearing, "Animal Training Techniques for Parents Who Have Tried Just About Everything and Are Totally Desperate," I must ignore the behaviors I don't want and reward the behaviors that I do want. Right now I want my boys to help me plant the garden. They're not showing any signs that they're even remotely interested in doing this and, according to the book, I shouldn't force them to do anything they don't initiate themselves, either purposefully or accidentally.

On the other hand, I need to get this garden in sometime this century, so I decide to help things along.

"I'll make shakes as soon as it's done," I tell them. This particular bribe works because, as a part of my laissez faire approach to parenting and also to encourage them to at least fantasize about living on their own, I'm no longer making meals for them on a regular basis, and so, since it's nearly noon and they haven't yet figured out how cereal in a box, bowls in a cupboard, spoons in a drawer and milk in the fridge all come together, they're starving.

Eventually, we all make it out to the garden. I'm armed with a map of what is to be planted where, a rake, a hoe, some stakes, string, seed packets and a lot of determination. I'll need that last thing in the face of all this decided lack of enthusiasm. Currently, they're standing around the garden perimeter, looking at me as though I'm an evil overseer and they're the oppressed peons. "You start planting this corn," I tell one, pointing to one end of the garden, "and you can make hills for pumpkins," I say, marking off another patch. They sigh and get to work.

My husband cheerfully rototilled a monstrous-sized garden plot against the fence between ours and the neighbor's yard last weekend. I can't help but notice that since he's gotten a rototiller there's a lot more garden than there was when he just had a shovel and his back to make a plot with.

The soil is cool and dry and sandy. My youngest son is carefully shaping little mountains, using the yard stick to determine the proper radius of each mound before he begins and then plunging it through the center after he's done to make sure that each is 9 inches tall. He's the meticulous one. The other son is making what can only be described as organic looking furrows for corn, having obviously decided that stakes and string are for losers. I figure that the corn will come up anyway, straight or crooked furrowing aside, and I praise his artistic way with a line as well as the other child's masterful engineering abilities.

About this time of year in Ludington I would be busily talking myself out of starting vegetables from seed. There would still be a threat of snow in the forecast or an ice storm, and I'd be hoping the crocuses and hyacinths in the back yard would survive it. My tulips would be thinking about poking their heads out of the ground in another month, but I'd be out there every day anyway looking for signs of incipient blooming.

Here in Jacksonville, planting season starts in March, with none of the desperate longing for green shoots that presages springtime in Michigan. You go from hot weather where everything is wilted to watery weather where everything has molded to cooler weather where everything is dulled to warm weather where everything has suddenly sprouted. No dark depressing time in weather or in attitude from which to recover. Spring happens regardless of the fact that I haven't suffered through bone shattering cold and consequently don't feel that I've done anything to deserve such a beautiful season.

Yesterday I took the daffodil bulbs that my neighbor gave me way back in January out of the vegetable bin in the fridge and put them in pots on the patio. It seems like cheating, shocking them like that. My neighbor, more used to the seasons down here, is already enjoying yellow daffodil blooms. My bulbs got tired of waiting for me to remember them and sprouted in the shopping bag I'd wrapped them in, tucked away behind the carrots and broccoli.

The boys and I manage to get two kinds of corn and twelve hills of pumpkins and squash planted before we call it quits for the day. They're cheerful going back to the house, as well as filthy. Amazing what a little grubbing in the dirt will do for even the most sullen teenager. There is more garden to plant on the south side of the house and another patch on the north side that's due to get gourds and cukes and flowers. We'll finish it up later in the week. Barring any more unauthorized rototillage by my husband, we should have everything in the ground by end of the month.

I listen as my sons congratulate themselves. Gardening isn't so bad. They can see light at the end of the tunnel. This, of course, is where they're completely wrong. I set chocolate shakes down in front of them to reward them for their good behavior like it says in my book and then I go research cookie recipes for next week, when we have to start weeding.

Rock and Load

It's Saturday morning and I'm listening to my son doing color commentary on the state of the refrigerator.

"This is disgusting. Yuck. Who put this in here?"

He marches out of the kitchen and thrusts a half empty can of green chilis toward me.

"Mom, are we saving this?"

I don't want to crush my child's newly found zeal for search and destroy style housekeeping, but I happen to know that my husband put this can of chilis in the fridge, doubtless planning to use it for some culinary masterpiece in the near future. If I tell my son to throw it away, my husband might be annoyed. I weigh my husband's probable future irritation with my son's overwhelming need to use the bulldozer approach to cleaning the refrigerator, i.e., everything not nailed down gets pushed into the nearest garbage can, resulting in an appliance that is sparkly clean, fresh smelling, and above all, emptier than when you started.

I recall feeling exactly this way a long time ago, just prior to our move from Grand Rapids to Ludington, except that it was a house I was emptying instead of a refrigerator. I'd been upstairs cleaning the attic and stumbled across a large sack in one corner. Inside the sack were rough pieces of alabaster, pink and white and gray-veined, ranging from a few as small as a baseball to some as big as a loaf of bread.

Maybe it had something to do with being hot and dusty from hours of clearing the detritus that had accumulated after twelve years of cohabitative bliss, maybe it was because I knew that I'd only scratched the surface of what still needed to be organized, maybe it was because I distinctly recalled having moved this same sack of rocks at least three times in the last seven years, but right then I knew I'd never hated anything as much as I hated those rocks.

It didn't matter anymore that I and my husband had driven six hours to collect these very stones, sacrificing an entire afternoon to climb around on quarry piles in the hot sun, determined to find the perfect raw material for sculpting candle holders, incense burners and miniature busts.

That day in the attic I had exactly 72 hours before I had to pile everything we owned into a 24-foot truck. The contents of that sack were no longer potential art projects, they were a bag of rocks that weighed about thirty pounds and they represented everything I hated about moving.

I hated having to organize and pack up our stuff in order to move it when it was only going to get unpacked and disorganized the moment we reached our destination. I hated making choices about what had to go or stay and I particularly hated making choices about someone else's belongings, which these rocks technically were. They weren't just my rocks. They were my husband's rocks, too.

That's why I decided to do what I did. After all, he was already at the new place, possibly working hard and not having to pack up the old house. I was resentful about the whole arrangement. Also I was getting help loading the U-Haul from my brother and already was having a hard time justifying the bajillion books that were coming with us. ("Don't they have books in Ludington?") How could I possibly explain a bag of rocks? ("Marie, did you know that this sack has rocks in it?" "Yes." "Don't they have rocks in Ludington?")

Decision made, I crashed the sack down three flights of stairs and dragged it to the curb for the garbage men to take away in the morning. If I didn't accomplish anything else that day it was fine, because the bag of rocks was gone and that was four square feet of misery I wouldn't have to cram on the truck.

The next day on the phone, my husband asked me if I'd remembered to pack a certain bag of rocks. Naturally I told him that I had no idea where they were. Thinking about it fifteen years later, I'm sure I'd throw them away and lie about it again, no problem.

Now my son stands in front of me with can in hand. He's transferred his irritation with me for giving him this particular chore to the refrigerator itself and his body is stiff with that air of righteousness that's so conducive to a good cleaning session. I know exactly how he feels.

"Go ahead and pitch it," I say. "I'll think of something to tell your dad."

Endless summer, endless chores

School’s out, summer’s here and that means it’s time to get out The Endless Chore Game.

Chores are not popular at my house. Nobody looks forward to them. Nobody appreciates the trouble I take to make sure that everyone has chores to do that will build character (“Why do I have to clean the bathroom again? I did it last week!” “Because you did a terrible job and you need more practice.”). Nobody thanks me for assigning chores that are a good fit for them (“You told me I did a great job on the bathroom this week so why do I have to do it again?” “You’re so good at it I’ve decided to make it your regular chore.”).

Chores are not easy to think of. By the second or third week of summer I’ve lost all my zeal for assigning things that actually need doing, like washing windows and weeding the garden, and I’ve settled for assigning things that can be done without direct supervision, like answering the phone or checking the mailbox.

Chores are not contagious. My children see me doing chores all the time, so how come they’re not patterning themselves after me? If you’re a reader your child will most likely be a reader, too. If you’re athletically inclined it’s a cinch at least one of your children will embrace sports. You’d think that watching me work like a dog would induce my children to sweat buckets in order to be just like me, but it hasn’t worked out that way.

A few years ago, desperate at being faced with another long summer arguing about chores, I invented The Endless Chore Game.

The Endless Chore Game has no winners or losers, just players. It’s called “Endless” because it has no start and no finish. Your game piece just goes around and around the path, until summer’s over and it’s time to put the game away.

Here’s how it works. I make a board with a circular path on it, divided into about 40 squares and I write a different chore on each square. These can be simple and boring, like scouring the kitchen sink or more complex and interesting, like making dessert for six people for less than $5.

The finished board looks like a Candyland game, only the images are more sinister. Instead of kids climbing ice cream mountains and playing under gumdrop rainbows, I draw pictures of kids mowing the lawn and washing dishes and sweeping floors. In the corner on the upper right is a shadowy adult figure, arms crossed, tapping her foot. I think it sets the mood.

I put the board on the refrigerator door and the kids use magnets for game pieces. Every day in the summer, they take turns rolling dice and moving their pieces to find out what chores they have. It’s not completely grim. The board has a few free spaces with fun stuff, like cloud watching or pudding construction or singing Old MacDonald Had a Farm on the porch in three part harmony.

This will be the third year of playing the Endless Chore Game in our family. Every summer I modify the rules a little bit. For instance, you’re not allowed to reverse direction anymore. This keeps certain resourceful players from moving back and forth between free spaces for the duration of the game, thereby getting almost no chores at all compared to everyone else. And I’m toying with the idea of assigning points to certain chores, so that if you land on the “Paint the Garage” square you don’t have to roll again for a week.

Some members of the family enjoy games so much they leap downstairs every morning and play the Endless Chore Game first thing. I think it’s the thrill of knowing you might get lucky and get no chores at all for the day. It feels like a mini-vacation almost. Some family members are less enthusiastic, suspecting that the Endless Chore Game is not really a game at all, but just a way for a certain parent to get out of having to face unpleasant realities, namely, being unpopular in the name of character building.

I love The Endless Chore Game. I even play it, although, technically, I do chores whether or not I roll the dice first. I don’t play because I lack a list of things that need to be done. There will always be chores in my life. I will always feel obligated to do them and to insist that my kids know how to do them. Chores are required. The Endless Chore Game just makes them more interesting. Well, all right, and there’s something else. The truth is, I’m still shooting for the “Sing Old MacDonald on the Porch” square, and I have a feeling this might be my lucky summer.