College looms, and we’ve been working on college skills: the obvious, such as living in sweats on minimal sleep, and the far-fetched, such as cooking.
Cooking does not come naturally to my precollege girl. During her formative years, she was deprived of the fundamentals. She has rarely known the empty fridge, cold stove and gnawing doubt: What can I conjure from nothing in no time?
She has been denied the opportunity to scavenge the cupboards and, goaded by hunger and ignorance, piece together a meal that’s truly awful. She has been driven from the kitchen by the constant industry, the crowded cooktop, the countless demands of “taste this” and “try that.”
When I step aside, she has developed a taste for the streamlined cuisine of the insatiably fit. In the morning, she blends kale and coconut water into sludge. In the evening, she stirs instant soup. In the student tradition, it demands no forethought, no recipe and sullies no more than one dish. The soup steams hot and wholesome, satisfying the solo cook.