Cooking Upstream

I don't take criticism well. I like to be liked; I like for my food to be liked and enjoy cooking for people who appreciate it. My favorite person to cook for is my friend Rachel who ooh's and aah's at just the right time and really, really savors my creations. She's envious over my ability to just throw stuff together and make it taste good.

Therefore having a 7 and a 9 year old who do not appreciate my cooking and are very verbal about it is basically a very cruel joke. The daily opposition has actually brought me to the point of an unofficial cooking strike; one day, I just stopped. That is to say, I still brown the occasional beef, throw store-bought sauce on it, boil the noodles and voila, here's your boring dinner. I no longer chop onions first and come up with what we're having second. The only thing remotely 'grown-up flavored' is the premade pizza crust topped with garlic, onion, pepperoncini, ham, pepperoni, maybe some other veggie (the grown-up half only, of course!). Today I came up with a term for what it feels like to cook these days: it's like cooking upstream, against a very strong current of child-sized food critics with no concept of how much work this life really is, from the food to the dishes to the laundry to the meal ideas. This has been a tough summer for me because even the usual breakfast fare of random boxed cereal is no longer pleasing the food critics. Tough, I'm already getting whined at for lunch and dinner, you're on your own for breakfast!

I am changing how much they get without lifting a finger. I am making them earn their keep. They have to take responsibility for eating before we leave and it gets too late to find something quick and easy. This year's summer camp is on the subject of "Mother is not a maid". Tough going. I know I've created these spoiled people myself and now I am struggling to undo the damage I've caused by catering to them. From now on, they will have to be the ones to go upstream if they want to eat. I'm done cooking upstream.