They’ve Got Skills

I’ve been watching my grandkids cook this summer. And they’ve got skills.

Some make crêpes and bread and strawberry trifle. Others concoct Boba tea and smoothies. One serves up spicy noodles that he eats with chopsticks. Another Alaskan cod with cabbage. Yet another roasts salmon with cinnamon-flavored sweet potatoes. This kid also buys his own seasonings and hides them away, out of general use. 

We took a couple of grandkids on a trip this summer, staying in a cottage with a kitchenette. They preferred to be in charge of the breakfast skillet, wanting to ensure scrambled eggs with just the right amount of fluff and bacon fried to the perfect crisp.

Our grandchildren run Instant Pots, air fryers, panini makers, and grills. But they draw the line at my humble, trusty crockpot. Maybe this is because there’s a certain luxury in their cooking. Rather than feeding a family three times a day, their forays into the kitchen are usually, prompted by personal hunger or by the urge to create. For whatever motive, I’m glad they’re learning to cook.

Though not without mishap.

After all, their bodies are growing so fast, their brains can’t always calculate just how to move in space. No wonder they trip over their own feet. And no surprise that they misjudge the strength of their hands.

In my kitchen this summer, I saw two such fast-growing hands grip opposite sides of a new bag of flour. The hands jerked. Flour first hit the ceiling and then descended like fine snow into our hair, over my glasses, across the counter, and into the cracks of the wooden floor.

The next day, another set of hands assumed the same grip, this time with a package of pasta.  

“You might want . . .” is all I had time to say before the noodles cascaded across the kitchen floor.

I opened my mouth again. But before I spoke, I thought of another kitchen floor, a commercial kitchen in a retirement center, where I once worked when I was the age some of my grandchildren.

In the rush of the dinner hour, the head cook handed me a garnished, family-style platter of chicken, potatoes, and roasted vegetables.

“Take these,” she said, “to Table 5.”

Something happened. Maybe I pulled the platter too forcefully from her hands. Or maybe I was daydreaming about last night’s date. Whatever, hot food avalanched down my apron and across the kitchen floor into the path of the Table 6 waiter, who slipped.

What I remember best is that the head cook didn’t say a word. Her lips may have tightened, but she managed to keep silence.  

And so did I. Which is good. Sometimes to gain a skill, you’ve got to make a mess.