I'm not a mom, but I wonder if moms ever look at something their kids do wrong and think, "Wow, I have failed you somewhere along the way." That's how I felt about Rex last night. He's my best friend and my hero, but I think I may have spoiled him a bit too much. I do 95% of the cooking at our house, and clearly that has to change. Exhibit A:
I came home from Calculus class, and I was dead tired. It had been another looooong day in the semester-from-somewhere-not-very-nice. I wanted nothing more than to go to bed. Rex mentioned that he hadn't eaten dinner yet (which was a little ridiculous, as it was after 9 PM. Go to Taco Bell or something, you nurkle). He said, "You know what sounds really good right now? Macaroni and cheese." The old Christine would have said, "Okay, no problem. Go put up your feet while I make some for you." But...I was really tired, and the new edging-on-a-somewhat-feminist side of me said, "Okay, cool. Then make some macaroni and cheese." He looked surprised, but then looked at the blue box in his hand as if he were seeing it for the first time. It's only macaroni and cheese. He has a doctorate. He can probably do this himself. It's as if I watched this thought occur to him, which was kind of funny. He finally said, "Yeah, okay. I think I will make this."
This is the part where I've failed him: my brilliant, highly educated husband absolutely CANNOT cook macaroni and cheese.
First, he didn't look at how much water to put in the pan. He"ballparked" it. It was at this point that I decided to stay awake long enough to see how this ended. I figured it could potentially get interesting. I went upstairs to change out of my work clothes, though, and after a few minutes Rex followed me upstairs. We spent about fifteen minutes talking about our days, what happened at work, what happened at class, etc. Suddenly, Rex said, "Oh no! My noodles!" I said, "You already put them in?" I had thought he was waiting for the water to boil. He called back "yes" as he hurried down the stairs to rescue his completely overcooked macaroni.
I came down to find him rinsing the mushy macaroni in a strainer. "Ummm...you're not supposed to rinse that," I told him. "The starch on the noodles is what makes the macaroni sticky."
"WHAT?" he looked a little panicked. He picked up the box and read the side. There it said in bold and italicized print, "DRAIN THE WATER BUT DO NOT RINSE." He looked incredulous. "It really does say that. Why didn't you tell me?!"
Um, because I thought a twenty-seven year old might have done this before? Silly me. I only started making macaroni independently at age SIX. I guess I'm a Kraft prodigy or something.
So he put his rinsed-clean noodle mush back into the pan, and he read the side of the box to see how much milk and butter to add. I noticed that he did not add enough butter (which is fine...butter is bad for you anyway), and when he measured the milk he poured way too fast, The milk splashed over the side of the tablespoon, adding at least twice as much milk as he was supposed to. By this time I was laughing and thinking, "Ah ha. Blog post." When he finally finished his creation, the completed project was a sad looking pile of orange mush that may have dreamed of being macaroni somewhere in a past life. He looked at it, sighed, and said, "Maybe I should start over..." I told him that he was not wasting an entire box of macaroni. That's irresponsible. Then he sighed again and said, "Okay, fine. Anything will taste good if I add enough pepper!" There's that Rex optimism that I love. So he put about two tablespoons of pepper on his orange gruel and proceeded to eat the whole bowl of it. Eeeeeeew.
I laughed while he ate it and asked how on earth he got through two years of college without a meal plan. He said, "Well, I mostly ate a lot of hot dogs." Poor guy - he can fix the delicate, complicated nerves of your spine, but he can't make his own dinner. I'm going to fix this. Team Webb cooking together starts next week. He's up for it. I am too. No more macaroni mush.
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