Living with an aspiring chef/tweenager gourmet has its perks. When he perfects something—bahn mi or refried beans, hummus, tomato sauce—we really are pretty darn golden (and delightfully full) in our household.
Sometimes, his ideas don’t quite… work. That’s life, of course. The harder moments have to do with two things: either reaching agreement about ingredients and quantity of ingredients or assuring his willingness to create foods others will eat, too. When no one likes the thing he made for supper, things get kinda cranky around these parts.
No surprise then, that many of our biggest tussles and biggest triumphs happen in the kitchen.
Or, it turns out, in the co-op.
An aspiring chef is very willing—eager, really—to cook for people. Far as I can tell, my tweenager is personal chef to the teenager (not a bad deal for the teenager, obviously). For events, he is also a go-to chef—just recently, he made an appetizer for the preschool fundraiser and he cooked for a big school gathering.
His classmates seem to make cakes. They like to honor one another’s birthdays that way. He dreamed bigger: a Spanish meal for the Spanish teacher’s birthday. Of course, he did.
Then, he came home with this request: Can you take me to the co-op to get stuff to make guacamole? Turns out, he also wanted drinks and chips (someone is making salsa; another person’s baking a cake). All of that was just fine. The tension followed when I asked how much guacamole he planned on making and he answered enough for thirty people at the rate of half an avocado per person and nearly as many tomatoes required. You know, not in season. We got a tad bit snappish in the car, not a boil by any means, but a simmering brew of tension. I held my tongue walking from car to co-op, to cool off.
**
To set the scene a little better, this was a late-night (for the co-op, which closes at nine) expedition. We headed over at eight, with second grade brother in tow. It felt just a little like an adventure, the evening grocery shop under the tiniest sliver of moon—and thus no moonlight.
There aren’t all that many shoppers at this hour. It isn’t eerie or anything, but it’s not bustling either. We kept weaving our way by what seemed a pretty new couple, very intently focused on how to shop together. They wore these eager to please expressions, tentative and hopeful that made me feel tenderly toward them, regardless of whether my imagined scenario about them was fiction or spot on reporting. My cart—filled with oranges and potato chips—nearly tangled with a woman’s cart near the bagels; she looked half-asleep. I am telling you about these other shoppers to make clear that I was trying hard to avoid a big confrontation.
The avocados ($1.49 each) weren’t at all ripe. Nor were the tomatoes. Lucien didn’t want to make tomatillo salsa. The tomato salsa: spoken for. He looked crestfallen. His voice got small. I offered to look for avocadoes at another store. I offered to think up other Spanish foods with him. We tried a few. We called a friend who’d lived in Spain, but got no answer. We reached for pasta and onions. I suggested tapenade. “That’s French and then was stolen by the Italians,” he informed me. Oh, right.
I let him wander while I got dried apricots, nuts and carob chips. He came toward me and said, “There’s a guacamole-making contest later in the year. If I bring mine in this week, there won’t even be a contest because everyone will know that I’ll so win it.” He flashed his most I’m teasing but serious but a little embarrassed smile, the one that makes a mama’s heart melt, because it’s so very him to flash it. “I could just bring in chips and drinks for this party,” he offered.
I gave him a quick little squeeze around his shoulders in that not-too-showy but good-on-you mama to a tween way, heaped with a little verbal praise. He’d turned his own ship around there in the co-op aisles, a sight I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen. This growing up stuff, it’s pretty darn magical I tell you.
