Over dinner last weekend, Mama answered a call from her parents and promptly headed to the cabinet to read off the specifications of her food processor. My raised eyebrows only got a grunt of defeat from Dad. Judging from his eye roll, this topic has made it into frequent rotation lately.
Chuckling into my wine glass, I looked over to the kitchen floor, where my mother was patiently explaining what to look for in a food processor. 50/50 that one of my grandparents was was squinting and holding the model in question at arms length for full review and the other held some poor Sears employee hostage while interrogating my mother. The only other real options would be Grams trying to glean facts from the brand websites. Neither option would get my mom off the phone much faster.
This phone interruption was brought to us by my granddad learning to cook. In his early seventies, my granddad decided to learn to cook. Not cook like just boil pasta and scramble eggs without burning a pan. More like, glazed meats and blanching his asparagus. According to all reports, he's good at it too.
Since Grams rotates relatively few recipes, most of which are variations of each other, it falls to Mama to help Granddad through new recipes. It has also fallen to my mother to be a sort of on-call consultant for any cooking supplies, tools, ingredients, or general knowledge. Multiple phone calls have to happen before a new recipe is tried or a new kitchen implement is purchased. Many of which occur during convenient moments like our dinner or in the middle of a movie.
At least it's more appetizing than some of my mentioning grandparents' other favorite topics, I suppose. Like the health of their GI systems.
