I love to cook. I’ve been cooking most of my life and even
did it professionally for a time. If I had to swear under penalty of death that
I had a hobby, cooking would be that hobby. Naturally, when we learned we were
going to have a child I had grandiose ideas of the foods we could make for our darling, little child who would, of course, enjoy my gastronomic
ingenuity with all of the sophisticated etiquette
of a tiny, Emily Post. She would, with perfect use of her sterling silver
utensils, take the tiniest nibble, gasp in awe, and exclaim in well cultured
Received Pronunciation, “Oh, Daddy, this is the most delightful morsel I have
ever tasted! I am in utter awe of your culinary abilities, and I am so proud to
call you my father.” I would then grin
like some cartoon character as a bright, star-shaped sparkle flashed across my
teeth accompanied by a chiming ‘ding’ sound effect, all while I plated and slung servings of Baked
Alaska to all of our closest friends like a fire-juggling card dealer. Everyone
would cheer and applaud as old-timey flash bulbs exploded around us like
miniature supernovas and photographers with fedoras and clunky cameras would jostle
for the best vantage point to get a picture of the world’s greatest dad.
For the following months of my wife’s pregnancy, that naïve delusion
infected my mind to the point that I was scoffing at the thought of buying baby food. Why
should we? I can make it at home with all of that time and energy I’ll have. Baby
food sweet potatoes are nothing more than pureed sweet potatoes…I can do that!
I have a food processor! We can buy organic food and make it ourselves! It’ll
be great! I’m amazing and I can do anything!!
Fool.
Then our daughter was born and a tiny, livid reality came
clawing into our world. The ludicrous fantasies of becoming The Miraculous
Artisanal Super Chef Dad that had so permeated my thoughts were quickly
decimated in the nuclear heat of our tiny banshee’s screams. Survival was now
the goal; any thoughts of cooking were hastily buried in a shallow grave
somewhere in a misty valley deep within the recesses of my mind, and that
valley was guarded by a screaming baby. Even adult interaction had become
sparse. It was as though my wife and I were trapped in a purgatory that was oft
visited by restaurant delivery drivers who were taken aback by my disheveled
Castaway-esque appearance. With wide eyes and trembling accents, they would
kindly refuse our invitations to come in and talk or be friends. The site of
two sleep deprived individuals with fixed half-grins, glassy, blood shot eyes
and the overall demeanor of escaped asylum patients who jerked and shuddered at
the shriek of what sounded like a rabid Tasmanian Devil is enough to keep away
all but those with the strongest of fortitude and constitution.
Nowadays, however, cooking meals is again the norm; but our
daughter wants nothing to do with any of it. Most attempts to serve civilized food
to my daughter are met with screaming contempt and venomous hatred. I’m
convinced that she not only houses a tiny nuclear reactor inside her, but that
she also has some sort of mutant digestive system that allows her to thrive on
crusty goldfish cracker crumbs, boogers, and dirty bathwater (not to mention,
her knees and elbows have been trained by deadly ninja assassins to destroy any
testicle within reach, but that’s for another time).
She happily announced over her pancake breakfast this
morning that her favorite food was butter and that she intended to eat the
entire container of yoghurt-based-pretend-that-it’s-butter spread. Then, like a
tiny pirate, she plunged her pancake cutting knife into the depths of the
pretending-to-be-butter bucket, pulled forth the heart of the buttery beast,
and began to lick the butter straight from the butter knife like it was some
kind of Paula Deen popsicle. The made with love Mickey Mouse shaped, chocolate
chip pancakes weren’t good enough, even though that’s what she specifically
asked for, no, she wanted to pirate a pound of butter off of a knife, then lick
the sugar-free syrup from her plate like a dog. So, by the end of breakfast
there was a Mickey Mouse pancake with a hole chewed right through the center,
and a four year old whose face was covered in pretend butter and syrup with
little bits of pancake shrapnel embedded in the buttery-syrup spackle. She
looked as though the breakfast wars erupted all around her and she had emerged victorious
from the sweet, fluffy rubble.
As per her current attitude toward dining, we are doing the
general public the favor of not taking her to any restaurants. We’ll have to
cross into that war zone eventually.
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