Bruce Cameron - Jan. 7, 2009

Jan 07, 20100

Dad the Cook

When my children get together to tell scary stories, one of their favorites is The Time That Dad Cooked.

By “the Time” they are actually referring to a stretch of several months when the only person cooking the food was the same one who paid for it — a concentration of power that very decidedly worked against them.

My oldest child was, at this point, a teenage girl, and therefore had valid reason to suspect I might want to poison her. The other two were younger and felt free to behave as badly as they wanted because their sister was supplying so much covering fire with her transgressions.

When I cook, I make meals that are healthy and nutritious or not. They are, however, meals that I personally like, and I have always ignored my children’s opinions, which usually consist of projectile-gagging noises.

I was pretty excited to serve up my Seafood Lasagna, a meal so rich in cream and cheese that it could raise the cholesterol in the pan I cooked it in. The recipe is simple: Just take everything that tastes good and make lasagna out of it. I gave my children large servings, plus some broccoli and bread.

“Oh my God what is this?” my teenage daughter shrieked.

“You haven’t even tasted it,” I pointed out.

“I don’t have to taste it, I can tell by the smell that I hate it. And I hate broccoli.”

I wasn’t too upset — as anyone with even a few minutes’ exposure to teenage girls knows, they tend to hate a lot of stuff. Her siblings were watching her performance silently, waiting to see if this would be the night that I finally threw their sister out of the house forever, thus giving them access to the bathroom in the morning.

“Just taste it,” I urged. All three of them tentatively did so. My son gave me a look of utter betrayal; my younger daughter brought her napkin to her lips and daintily ejected every single molecule of Seafood Lasagna from her mouth; and, as usual, my older daughter had something to say.

“Oh my God, Dad! It’s like a seagull just threw up on my tongue. The dog wouldn’t eat this!” My canine leaped to her feet — she’d been waiting for this moment. Try me, her look pleaded.

Dinner for them that evening consisted mostly of bread, milk and a single bite of broccoli each. Their lasagna was completely untouched, though the next morning I noticed that at some point they’d managed to deplete the family supply of ice cream.

For the next dinner, I made a simple burrito for myself. My children, however, got something very different.

“What is this?” my older child screamed.

“Don’t pretend you don’t recognize it,” I responded. “It’s the Seafood Lasagna from yesterday. Plus the broccoli.”

“You can’t serve the same plates from last night,” my teenager raged. “That’s against child services.”

“It is illegal, Dad,” my middle child chimed in helpfully.

My son, the first to understand the long-term implications, reached out and snatched the last remaining piece of bread off the table.

I heard lots of yelling that night — my handwritten signs, posted all over the kitchen, said things like, “Sorry, We Are Out of Cereal,” and, “Sorry, No Ice Cream.”

The next evening the Seafood Lasagna was looking a little limp on what was, after all, its third showing, and the broccoli was somewhat mushy, but my son and younger daughter ate it silently and completely. “I hate you,” my older daughter whispered through quiet tears.

The next night, my son and younger daughter were served their favorite — hamburgers. My teenager, however, sat and stared at a square of Seafood Lasagna for three hours. And, when I visited the kitchen later, her plate was clean.

I used the same method for every meal I cooked — if they didn’t eat it the first night, it was on their plates every night until they did.

My older daughter says it was the worst time of her life. But the funny thing is, when she comes over for dinner, guess what she wants me to fix?

That’s right. Seafood Lasagna.

To write Bruce Cameron, visit his Website at http://www.wbrucecameron.com.