What’s your Mac and Cheese?

Just when I started to like my kid again, he commenced with The Screeching again. Folks, I’ve got my own personal Shrieking Shack going on here. We’re just missing The Dark Lord - but give Arun enough time, I am sure he'll be stepping up to the plate on that one soon enough. The part of me that is fascinated with language development thinks it really cool to hear him experimenting with the different volumes, pitches and octaves of The Screeching. To boot, he gets this incredibly adorable impish grin on his face while he’s doing it. However, the part of me that hates loud noises thinks it would be really cool to put him in the basement for awhile. Seriously - I HATE loud noises. The only loud noise I like is music blasting when I am ALONE in the car. If I am trying to hold any sort of conversation, forget it. I blame it on my dysfunctional eustachian tube - I’m like a little old lady now when there is background noise. Yes, yes - I have had many people warn me about the Noisy Toys coming my way now that I have a kid, but seriously, if the toy is annoying, it’s going to Goodwill. My family has been warned. There is a reason why we have maxed out the Fisher Price Ocean Wonders theme here in the Rancid le manse - the noise those toys make are not irritating. Actually, I am starting to dig the bubbly calypso music.

Anyway, my friend R and her daughter K are coming over for lunch today and I am MUY excited. I love cooking for people that appreciate something different. Frankly, X just doesn’t get excited over my curries anymore because we eat them all the time. I think normal families eat things like mac/cheese, steak, hamburgers, spaghetti, right? If I am wrong, correct me, but that is my stereotype of what American families eat. My own family? When my parents were married I remember a lot of Mexican food and pork chops (my dad would make the refried beans from scratch - YUM). After my parents divorced, I remember a lot of sandwiches scraped together with mostly bread and condiments. My mother hated cooking and when she left my dad, that was the end of her culinary pretenses. My dad and step-mom do cook, but it is usually some sort of roast (I don’t think my step-mom really enjoys cooking, either). Therefore, when I went to college, Asshole #1 taught me how to cook and this is why I don’t really know many American dishes. X and I eat a TON of fish curry and eggs. If we cook at home, these are our 2 dishes that often solve the Food Fight of “What’s for dinner?”. If we do takeout, it's usually Thai. If I do decide to put forth the effort into a meal, I’ll make a chicken curry, a keema (with ground turkey, though), a thoren of some sort, chickpeas or dhal. Also, don’t get me wrong, I love a good, juicy chicken n’ noodles or even a creamy tuna casserole. However, I would have a better chance of getting X to eat a live chicken. Once in a while, I can coax X to eat some Mexican and Pizza (two of my VERY favorite food groups), but it is few and far between. So, curries and Thai takeout it is.

In other news, I feel the Funk waning a bit so hopefully I will be in the mood to write more next week.