In June, I will be single (as in not married) for six years. That is a long time. It is the longest that I have been single in my adult life.
When I was married, I was always in the kitchen cooking dinner while my husband was doing something other than cooking. He wasn’t lazy around the house at all, but the kitchen was my domain. He did the dishes every night. Then after nearly ten years of marriage, I found myself cooking and doing the dishes. This pretty much sucked.
Then, about this time last year, Brainy Bird became curious about how to cook a chalupa. At the time, it was his favorite food on Earth. It was as if he was planning to leave home for college and wanted to make sure there would be chalupas at his bachelor pad. This set off a nightly cooking lesson. We started calling Brainy Bird by his first name prefixed with Chef.
Little Chirp wanted in on that action immediately. We assigned Little Chirp to clean up duty. While Brainy Bird learned to cook, Little Chirp would wait excitedly for us to dirty a spoon or dish so that he could rinse it and put it into the dish washer. Little Chirp would grab his wipes in delight when we spilled something on the floor or countertops.
Brainy Bird began to appreciate the meals that he could provide on a stove instead of a microwave, and he began to lobby for the privilege of using the stove when he was at home alone. Before long, he was cooking entire meals on his own. Brainy Bird’s cooking method is to follow a recipe with perfect diligence. The results make for a great dinner.
The kitchen went from being a place of nightly chores that I dreaded and back to a place that I love. Every night, Little Chirp would beg to do more than clean up. He wanted to cut up a vegetable, stir a pot, measure a spice or put a pan in the oven. It wasn’t long before he was assigned a recipe for a dish to prepare from start to finish each night. This works his reading comprehension, math skills and curiosity about science all at the same time.
When I stop to think about it, cooking is the perfect activity for Little Chirp. Little Chirp is creative and inventive, and he loves science. He loves to watch things change from one state of matter to another. He is a little foodie. He likes his proteins and veggies, and he relishes at the opportunity to try anything new. He craves more attention than one could ever provide. So the culinary art/science of cooking with Mommy and Brainy Bird hanging out with him, followed by a delicious meal, is Little Chirp’s heaven.
Then at Christmas, his Aunt asked what to get him for Christmas, and I told her about Little Chirp’s love for cooking. At that time, Little Chirp had a little measuring cup, spatula and whisk that he called his own. I told her to get him a little something to add to his collection of kitchen items. She came to our Christmas celebration with an entire bag of kitchen fun for Little Chirp. Little Chirp now spends his Sunday morning reading through cookbooks looking for recipes where he can try out his egg timer, his cucumber slider, measuring cups, measuring spoons….the list goes on.
His Aunt’s Christmas gift became poetic the day that I called him by his first name, prefixed with chef. He started to correct me as if he thought that I had mistakenly called him by his brother’s special title. Then he realized, that it was the title of chef in front of his first name, and he glowed with pride. Now, he takes turns with Brainy Bird in being the master chef for the evening, while the other one runs sous chef duties. I am on clean up crew these days. I could not be happier to have my kitchen domain taken over.
I think of all of the Christmas gifts that were given to children this past Christmas that were played with for a week and are now sitting on a shelf. Then I think about Little Chirp’s drawer full of kitchen utensils from his favorite Aunt. I think about our Sunday meal planning, and all of the interesting recipes that he and his brother have found in my cookbook library. I think about our evening routine of preparing a delicious, healthy meal together. I think of Little Chirp’s delight in enjoying that meal, and think of the pride that he takes in his now perfected dishes. So far, he has mastered (entirely on his own) – scrambled eggs, sautéed mushrooms and sliders. The sliders crack me up as he has long been obsessed with sliders at restaurants. I think he has ruined most restaurant sliders now that he prepares such juicy, delicious ones at home.
I also think of all of the money that I am saving by cooking at home. We are eating prime steaks and seafood at home for less than we were eating middle of the line chain restaurant food. I think about all of the happy memories that Little Chirp will have of these days in the kitchen together, and I hope that he continues on with his passion for cooking when he has a family of his own. I think of the recent evening when the boys prepared a salad with homemade dressing, pepper steaks and sautéed mushrooms completely on their own. I intentionally left them to their own devices, and I came into the kitchen to find Little Chirp working the timer to tell Brainy Bird when to flip the steak. They are a great team when you leave it up to them. I picture the two of them together one day in a kitchen of their own preparing a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner for the entire extended family to enjoy.
I think of all of this, and I can’t imagine a better Christmas gift for Little Chirp….these days, that’s Chef Little Chirp.