The eye-rolling exploits of Zach McGill can be read in any order.
#Zach came home raving the other day about the foreign exchange student’s lunch. “Kozzeri,” or “coatery,” it was called, and it had looked amazingly yummy.
I researched the dish online. Koshari — Google helpfully corrected — was the national dish of Egypt. “Healthy, filling, and flavorful, koshari is a versatile dish that can be eaten throughout the day, equally suited to special occasions or routine meals.”
I asked Zach if he’d like to try it himself for lunch.
“For sure!” he said. “That’d be so much better than another salami sandwich.”
In fact, I’d been rotating salami, black forest ham, and whatever struck my fancy from the Boar’s Head deli case. (Most recently, Aloha Sunshine chicken: *Expertly coated with pineapple and hibiscus … each bite will transport you to Hawaiian culinary paradise.*) Karen called them red sammy days, pink sammy days, and Mommy-what-did-you-put-on-my-sammy? days.
This morning, I made the koshari. The blog recipe I’d found said it “came together in a snap” but did dirty a lot of pots. I should’ve read between the lines. Koshari is made up of lentils, rice, chickpeas, and a squat circular pasta called ditalini. It calls for two sauces, one tomato-based, one cumin and garlic. And it needs to be topped with fried onions.
I don’t know about you, but when I end up with four pots and two saucepans in the dirty side of my sink before 8 am, it’d better be Thanksgiving.
Still, I had it prepared and packed into Zach’s thermos in time for the bus.
(Free pro tip: fill thermos for 5 minutes with boiling water before spooning in hot food. It’ll hold temperature better.)
When Zach got home, I asked how algebra was going, and whether he had a new friend group taking shape this year. Then I asked about the koshari.
“Kosha-whaa?” he said.
“Koshari,” I repeated. “The Egyptian dish you saw the exchange student eating? That I faithfully reproduced this morning?”
I was stretching “faithfully.” I’d used canned chickpeas and fried onions from a shaker can.
“Gotcha!” Zach said. His expression brightened, then dulled, then twisted thoughtfully. “I actually traded that to Reggie. See, he had this Red Barron French bread pizza? It looked *so* good.”
My back teeth were grinding. As Zach sighed dreamily at the memory, the kitchen was briefly silent except for the dishwasher. I’d had to run it midday.
“Did Reggie enjoy the koshari, at least?” I asked.
Just when I thought my 14-year-old would disappear to his room with an indifferent shrug, he seemed to recognize my feelings.
“Oh, he loved it!” Zach said. “When I got the Tupperware back, it was, like, licked clean.”
I smiled.
Zach pivoted for the stairs. “Could you make it again tomorrow?”
My friend Jennie keeps her grocery list on her phone so she can add to it whenever a need comes up — she finishes off the hand soap refill bottle, etc. But I’m going a different way.
In an effort to encourage paper and pencil over electronics, I’ve pinned my shopping list to the fridge and invited everyone in the house to add their requests throughout the week.
Results have been mixed.
The first three days, nobody contributed to the list but me, despite my lengthy introductory remarks about its use and potential. I jotted *apples*, *oat ’n’ honey bars*, *string cheese*. I jotted *milk* even though it’s a given, the first thing I drop into my cart every shopping trip.
The fourth day, I got home from Boody Burn Boot Camp and was delighted to find an entry that hadn’t been there before I’d left.
*creamed corn*
Not an item I typically buy, but alright. If somebody was using my system as intended and wanted creamed corn, then creamed corn they would get.
I ran #Karen to dance class. I stopped by the county clerk’s office to pull court documents for a McGill Investigators case involving some disputed tree work. (Neighbor A liked the tree, Neighbor B — whose yard contained 55% of the trunk — didn’t.)
When I got back, another entry had been added.
*creamed corn*
Over the next two days, the number of *creamed corn* entries grew to seven. I finally asked Granny about it.
“Aw, did I put that down already?” she said, her deep-sunk eyes pinching at the list.
I showed her the duplicates.
She insisted, “That’s not my handwriting. Must’ve been the rugrats.”
I explained that Karen didn’t know cursive and Zach, the last time he’d been served creamed corn, had said, “Yeah, Mom, I actually didn’t order blown chunks.”
Granny made no comment on this, and said to buy a whole bunch if it was on special.
The following day, I renewed my request for items to the kiddos. My packed lunches were getting monotonous and coming back half or a third eaten from school. I was wide-open to suggestions.
Karen marched stoutly to the fridge in the afternoon and scrawled, *Zippylocky bags.*
“Great!” I said and, checking the bags drawer, found we actually were out of the snack and sandwich sizes.
It wouldn’t help with lunch, but it was absolutely a successful use of the system.
Fourteen-year-old #Zach remained obdurate. His sole contribution was to turn all the o’s into gory eyeballs, sketching in menacing lids and dripping blood.
I asked, “Have you thought any more about art camp?”
He made a fizzing sound with his lips.
“So I’m about to hit the store,” I said. “If you don’t put anything down, you’re stuck with PB&J and apple slices all week.”
“I want Lunchables,” he said. “And Sprite. Reggie brings a can of Sprite for lunch.”
“Well, write that down.”
He added, *Sprite* and *Lunchables (prefer mini-hot dog ones)*.
I nodded cheerily at the entries, replaced the pen in its sleeve, and said, “You aren’t getting either. But thank you for using the system.”
He left to go skateboard, muttering about my lameness.
I gathered my purse and reusable bags from the coat closet, and tore the grocery list off its pad, exposing a fresh sheet.
In the living room, Granny was watching a judge show.
I asked her, “You’ll keep an eye on them?”
She waved her purple-veined hand dismissively. “Don’t buy the store brand. It’s not real cream. They use formaldehyde.”
I pledged not to.
Heading outside, I encountered Karen playing stuffed animals on the porch. Arrayed before a line of her twenty-odd favorites were baggies of gravel.
“Karen, honey,” I said. “What’s the story with the gravel?”
I’d bought fifty pounds of the stuff last year to fill in a trough woodchucks made near the foundation. It wasn’t cheap.
“The stuffies are doing sets!” she said.
“Sets? Like you practice in kindergarten?”
She nodded proudly. “And they’re getting really good at it.” Animating Froggy’s arms with her own hands, she raised his baggie of gravel. The stuffed frog’s black-marble eyes looked thoughtful, as though he were counting.
“I can see that.” I was doing my own counting, figuring up the cost of this playacting. “You couldn’t have demonstrated with a single bag?”
Karen looked at me like I’d just proposed we sleep on the roof.
I continued, “Okay, I’m off. Find Granny if you need something.”
Karen said she would.
I’d almost reached my car when she called, “Mommy, I thought of one more!”
I turned, mustering an attentive smile.
“We’re kind of low on toothpicks too,” she said. “You might wanna get more.”
I didn’t even ask.
I have a running dispute with #Zach, my 14 year old, about the merits of rice cakes. Yes, I realize they aren’t kale chips — bursting with vitamins and nutrients — but their ingredients are simple: brown rice. They’re low sodium. They pack up nice as a midday passing period snack.
Zach thinks they’re bland.
“Not if you spread peanut butter on them,” I said last night, strategizing for his first day of in-person class. “Or avocado. We could mix in lime juice, some cumin.”
“*Cumin*, Mom?”
“It’s a spice. It goes quite nicely with—”
“I *know* it’s a spice.” He flattened his face. “Duh. I just don’t wanna be standing at my locker mixing up cumin, all Bobby Flay in the middle of the hall.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I’ll prepare it all ahead of time. No problem.”
He rolled his eyes — but the next morning, when I slipped the Tupperware containing my improvised spiced-avocado-on-rice-cakes sandwich into his backpack, he let it stay.
“Thanks, I guess,” he said at the porch.
“You’re welcome,” I said, and watched him slip on his mask and trudge off up the block.
Three hours later, he was back on the porch.
“What happened?” I asked. My kindergartner, Karen, was still in school.
I couldn’t read Zach’s expression. Mild, but something taunting about the sway of his bangs.
“They sent me home,” he said.
“What? Why?” I set down the McGill Investigators case file I’d been working on to clutch his arm. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head. “Nah, I’m good. I dunno, my social studies teacher saw me eating those rice cakes? He asked how I liked them.”
“And?”
Zach slung his backpack off his shoulder, heading inside. “I told him they sucked, I couldn’t smell or taste ’em at all. It was weird. Usually I can taste my snack fine.”
I jammed my fists into my hips. “Zach. McGill …”
Got away to a New Jersey beach for S'mores tonight! Here was Zach's best.
"Char is the key. All four sides, that ash that just melts into your tongue ... and Mom, if you ruin my buzz and talk about carcinogens, I'm never wearing sunscreen again." #ZachQuote
For #dinnerTonight, I navigated a standoff between my 74-year-old grandmother and 14-year-old son. #Eunice has rightly recognized that we’re marching through pantry supplies in an effort to space out trips to the grocery store.
“Know what you ought to use up?” she said this morning. “That cream of mushroom. It’s coming due.”
I tipped my head to one side. “Maybe a casserole.”
Her eyes lit up. “The stroganoff, make the stroganoff!”
Zach, cruising through the kitchen with his skateboard, heard us.
“No stroganoff,” he said. “I refuse to eat glob.”
“It’s not glop,” I said, though the dish can be a bit thick when I use canned soup instead of making a roux. “I suppose I could do Swedish meatballs instead.”
He made a pained face. “Ugh. Glop with meat.”
At this point, Eunice grew exasperated. “You millennials, what’re we supposed to eat? Huh? Tofu and dandelions?” She turned to me. “Make the stroganoff, Molly. It’s delicious!”
I faced Zach, who I don’t think qualifies as a millennial. Granny lumps everybody under forty-five into that pejorative bucket.
“I do have this new recipe I was hoping to try,” I said to them both. “It takes cream of mushroom” — Zach’s eyes began their trademark roll — “but it’s also got chicken and cheese. I can toss in some jalapenos too.”
Zach and Granny eyed each other. He said, “*Fine*.”
She said, “Could you sprinkle fried onions on top?”
“Grandmother…” I said warningly.
“Oh, fine,” she said. “Fine. Make the danged thing. I’ll just pick the peppers out.”
#zachQuote
Distance learning agrees with Zach — to an unnerving degree.
“I *love* Zoom,” he was raving to me and Karen. "Did you know you can change your background?"
He explained how he'd participated in today’s algebra class from the outer rings of Saturn.
“You did?" Karen said. "How? I wanna try!"
"Oh, I don't think so," I said. Her teacher has enough trouble keeping 27 kindergartners focused without advanced videochat features. To Zach: "How was Mr. Zweirke's lesson?"
My 14-year-old shrugged. "I guess he showed us the quadruple equation."
“Quadratric," I corrected.
“Nah, pretty sure it was quadruple.” Zach bugged his eyes. "And you can, like, chat? On the side to your friends, it's awesome…”
Karen was completely transfixed. She could've been hearing secret instructions for turning broccoli into cotton candy.
I cut in, "If you don't master the material, you won't be ready for geometry next year."
"If there even *is* a next year," Zach said.
This spooked Karen. "What if there's no next year, Mommy? What if—”
"There's going to be a next year," I said. "Your brother is being slightly dramatic."
Zach spluttered his lips.
“Listen," I said, "this is a weird time. In your life, in mine. In *history.* It's okay if we muddle through some. But it's also an opportunity."
Karen's head tilted. Zach sat lower in his chair.
I continued, “We're lucky — other people are sick, and we have time on our hands. Time to slow down and regroup. Let's try our best, okay?”
Karen nodded with a stiff lip.
#Zach said, "Whatever.”
But then he seemed to think, and continued, “If I don't do Saturn tomorrow, I'll have to clean up my room.”
I pushed my shirt sleeves up my forearms. "No sweat, I'll get the laundry. Stuff on the ground clean or dirty?"
He said dirty, and I got us moving before the momentum was lost.
A lot can happen with 14-year-old eyes in their first waking moments.
#Zach came downstairs looking bleary, then he saw the snow.
"No school?" he asked, bright and eager.
Then he noticed I had the griddle out for pancakes instead of our typical cereal-and-apple-slices weekday breakfast.
"Oh." His eyes changed from hungry to that bewildered flux of the previous week. "Do I still have to do three algebra worksheets today?"
I smiled, setting a glass of OJ at his place. "Yes. But at least you can sled during lunch break."
#ZachQuote "Mom, our last squares of toilet paper, seriously? How come you didn't stock up? Don't you watch social media *at all?*"
Me, attempting patience: "Top of the tank. Literally, forty inches away."
Another one-pot dinner from #nytcooking! Honey mustard sausage with yummy caramelized brussels. #ZachQuote: "This one's actually good, Mom. Are you doing, like, meal prep kits?"