Medium Fry has been moved out for less than two weeks, and she already claims to miss our cooking.
Naturally, I took that to mean our delicious cooking, because I am a sucker for flattery and this dovetailed neatly with my idea of myself being a good cook. But when I woke up this morning I discovered an alternate interpretation had crept into my mind overnight: she misses our cooking, in the gerund sense. Implicit in that sense of it are also our planning the menu; our buying, transporting and organising the groceries; our doing the cooking... and her dining well every day for the low, low cost of occasionally washing some dishes.
Hmm.
I expect she does genuinely miss "our cooking," but it also wouldn't take long - perhaps less than two weeks, even - to start to get an inkling of how much work actually goes in to "our cooking." Knowing she was going to move out soon, I've been trying to back-lead her into some ideas by forcing DH to engage in fun dinner table discussions like, "What did you cook for yourself back when you were a student on a budget? No, really, I am suddenly extremely interested in this topic and we should discuss it in great detail. Right now. I insist."
Also: "Wow, this simple, healthy dinner with plenty of leftovers only cost seven dollars to make! That's less than a dollar per serving - what an amazing meal idea it could be for a student on a budget!"
Also: "Beans sure are an economical yet nutritious choice, for instance for a student on a budget!"
To which Medium Fry would smile politely yet vacantly, as if my mouth sounds were washing pleasantly over her but were in no way consequential to her life. And thus died my educational campaign on the merits of meal planning and beans.
On the bright side, DH and I ended up having quite a bit of fun talking about what we used to cook for ourselves back in the day. 89¢ Swanson meat pies featured heavily - but that was before, when they were way better, and did we mention eighty-nine cents?
Ugh. I'd tune us out, too. We sound like Reader's Digest and Woman's World had a profoundly stupid love child.
Anyway, I sent her off with a little rolly-cart to tote her groceries home in and nearly 21 years of exposure to my organisational mastery, so now she gets to figure it all out however she likes. Maybe one day we'll get to try her cooking and find that she has moved past the "+ side salad" days of yore without any back-leading needed on my part at all. I can hardly wait to wash those dishes up afterward.
