• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
  • Hire a Moxie-Writer
  • Speaking
  • Contact
  • Books
  • Podcast
  • Press

Moxie-Dude

Life updates gone wrong. Or right. I'm undecided.

  • #KitchenFails
  • Writing
  • Teenagers
  • Hamster Ramblings
  • Aging and its niceties
  • Shared Thoughts
You are here: Home / Kids / There’s just no fooling the kids anymore

There’s just no fooling the kids anymore

April 12, 2013 by Mona Andrei 3 Comments

Now that my kids know about my disability . . .
Now that my kids know about my disability . . .

Once upon a very long time ago, my children believed that I was a gourmet chef and we lived happily ever after. But that’s when they were young and naive and also believed in the tooth fairy.

Things are different today. As it turns out, wisdom really does come with age. With two of my kids now in their 20s and my younger two having recently grown into teenagers who know everything, hiding the truth from them is a little bit more of a challenge. And when I say “a little bit”, I really mean impossible. Despite any attempts to hide my disability, it’s now a known fact in my household: I’m terrible in the kitchen.

I’m really not sure how this happened; how I’ve managed to reach “this age” without somehow picking up the skills required to take food from the fridge, to the microwave, to the table with a certain level of enticing panache. All I know is that I’ve reached an age where I simply can’t hide from my shortcomings any longer.

I have to face the truth: me learning how to cook is equivalent to a mentally challenged person learning how to fly a commercial plane. And according to my kids, both share the same level of life-threatening risks.

Although my culinary skills are limited, in my own defence I’d like to state that I can make spaghetti sauce with my eyes closed and according to my kids, nobody makes toast with peanut butter like I can.

(Confession: sometimes I suspect that this is what my kids tell me just so that I’ll stop harassing them out of bed in the morning.)

To be perfectly honest, I’ve come to terms with my disability. Truly. I’ve reached a state in my life where to sauté or not to sauté is really not an issue for me. I just fry everything. My inner Martha Stewart is – admittedly – a short-order cook with a passive-aggressive attitude towards the cult-like belief in 365 ways to cook hamburger meat.

Although I will admit to one regret; and that is that I’ve lost my touch at fooling my kids into eating anything with my stamp of culinary-challenged to it. The smiley face ketchup across their scrambled eggs just doesn’t work anymore. Partly because the said scrambled eggs are always supposed to be a pair of sunny side ups (to which I blame the delinquent eggs) but mostly because my kids now know the difference between “real” cooking and the stuff I over-zealously try to pass off as delicious. (In case I forgot to mention, the word “undelicious” is a common and very real word in my house.)

You would think that cooking eggs without breaking them into a state of yellow-yoke-havoc mess wouldn’t be an issue, right? I mean, how hard can it be to fry a couple of eggs or, for that matter, make soup from scratch? After all, they both START with a chicken.

I mention “soup” because just last week my second oldest daughter called me to ask if I knew where her grandmother was.

“I don’t know. I think she’s playing bridge today. Why?” I asked.

My daughter responded with an almost defensive demeanor as though I was about to ruin everything: “I want to ask her how to make soup.”

“Oh. Well I can help you with that,” I answered.

“I’ve tried your soup. I used to live there, remember?”

“Yes, but I make it better now,” I said, pleading my case.

“Mom, have you met yourself?”

How could I argue with that logic?

And speaking of chicken, my younger teenagers still think that EVERYTHING I make is poultry-based. And now that they’re older and their taste buds have more experience in the way of eating at their friend’s houses and therefore venturing into the land of “real” home-cooked meals, the expression, “I don’t like this chicken” has become the most often-used descriptive term of my recipes – even when what they’re eating is macaroni casserole.

Which makes me realize that I’m still fooling them in a way, because even I know that there’s no chicken in macaroni casserole.

Is there?

Share with your followersShare on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on email
Email
Share on stumbleupon
Stumbleupon
Share on buffer
Buffer
Share on diggit
Diggit
Share on pinterest
Pinterest
Share on reddit
Reddit
Share on tumblr
Tumblr

Filed Under: Kids, mom adventures, Non-travelling Adventures, Raising teenagers, Random

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Delana says

    April 14, 2013 at 5:26 am

    “Mom, have you met yourself?” That’s classic. Hey, children love you anyway…for the good, for the bad…but maybe not for dinner.

    Reply
    • Mona Andrei says

      April 14, 2013 at 6:38 am

      You’re right on that, Delana. Lucky for us, my mother lives down the street. Apparently the culinary gene skips a generation 🙂

      Reply
  2. Glynis Jolly says

    April 16, 2013 at 12:31 pm

    I wouldn’t say I’m quite as bad as you are in the kitchen, but if I don’t have a recipe to follow, forget it. You can be sure that I will fail. My husband, however, can just whip things together and they usually turn out fabulously.
    It just isn’t fair.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

A book for single mothers? BOOYAH!

Buzz

“Mona’s ability to mix humor with insight is truly admirable.”
Holly Monteith, Cynren Press






Subscribe!

Enter your email address:
Loading

Recent Posts

  • All this talk about AI is making my brain explode. Just me? Never mind.
  • For Heather. For anyone who’s sitting on the edge.
  • When you’re a single mother, money is a BIG thing. Mostly because we don’t have any.
  • Single Moms! You Deserve the BEST Mother’s Day Ever and Here’s How!
  • Juggling Parenting, Finances, and Telling Dad Jokes Like a Boss: Single Moms Are More Than a Statistic

Recent Comments

  • Pennie Nichols on All this talk about AI is making my brain explode. Just me? Never mind.
  • Pennie Nichols on For Heather. For anyone who’s sitting on the edge.
  • Pennie Nichols on When you’re a single mother, money is a BIG thing. Mostly because we don’t have any.
  • Diane on Single Moms! You Deserve the BEST Mother’s Day Ever and Here’s How!
  • Carol Cassara on Single Moms! You Deserve the BEST Mother’s Day Ever and Here’s How!

Archives

  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • July 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • December 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • June 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • July 2010
  • May 2010

Categories

  • #KitchenFails
  • Aging and its niceties
  • Boyfriend stories
  • Dating
  • Friday Funny
  • Guest post
  • Hamster Ramblings
  • Kids
  • Memory Lane
  • mom adventures
  • Non-travelling Adventures
  • Out & about – because Montreal is contagious
  • Out & About in Montreal
  • Pretending to be a grown-up
  • Raising teenagers
  • Random
  • Shared Thoughts
  • Single moms
  • Solutions to world problems
  • Sponsored Post
  • Technology (sort of)
  • That effin hamster
  • Travelling Adventures
  • Uncategorized
  • Weekly Wrap-up
  • Wordless Wednesday
  • Writing

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

© 2023 · Moxie-Dude · webmaster