Gourmet Tastebuds Looking for Chef

Brainy Boy is every good cook's dream. He will eat anything as long as it smells like food and he can't identify it. Routinely when I set dinner before him, he comments something like 'Mom, I just really prefer gourmet restaurant-type food." And he's not kidding. No PJB for him, no Chef Boyardee, no Easy Mac. He's all about shrimp scampi, homemade gnocchi (not frozen) and is dying to know what caviar tastes like. The problem is that I'm a functional meat & potatoes kind of cook. I'd love to be a throw-ingredients-together-to-make-an-awesome-dish girl, but I'm just not. I don't really know how to cook without burying my head in a cookbook, and I don't enjoy the whole process of putting it together either--kind of the same way I am with gardening.

I came up with the clever idea of letting Brainy Boy choose a meal a week that I would try, his choice. I pulled out my handy Kraft magazine that comes in the mail four times a year, and opened to the beautiful photos of finished dishes. I told Brainy Boy that it was his job to choose something for me to try, and on his night, he was to eat it with no complaining. He did that and I wrote down the corresponding ingredients and bought them. I had to do a little advance planning because Little Chic is absolutely on the opposite end of the spectrum in the food arena. PBJ is fine for her, she'll accept any type of hot dog and pasta with jarred sauce is about as gourmet as she'll get.

The menu of choice for tonight was 'Chicken Mushroom foil packets'. Basically it was prepared stuffing with chicken, ham, mushrooms, peas and mushroom soup layered and wrapped up in a foil packet and baked. Brainy Boy's and mine went according to the recipe, Little Chic and Hero Guy had the stuffing, chicken, ham and soup. You'd have thought I delivered a pot of gold to Brainy Boy and a rotten tomato to Little Chic. He devoured his dinner, proclaiming it 'phenomenal' several times over. Little Chic turned up her nose, explained that gourmet food isn't really down her alley, but asked since we were having a fancy dinner, did I have something a little more special to pour her grape soda into? I told her that although she had to eat her dinner, it was fine for her to use one of our fancy glasses to drink from.

She climbed to the top cabinet and took out a wine glass that we use on New Year's Eve to drink sparkling cider with the kids. She poured her grape soda inside and began to ask:

LC: "Why do they use big wine glasses and only pour a little wine in?"
ME: "I don't know. Maybe because they like having more chances to pour it out of the bottle."
LC: "Does it look like I'm really drinking wine?"
ME: "No, wine is redder, grape soda is more purple."
LC: "Can I get out the red food coloring?"
ME: "No."
LC: "Why?"
ME: "Because it will turn your poop a weird color."
LC: "I don't mind having weird-colored poop."
ME: "Drink your soda."

She began to sip, with pinky outstretched as far as it would go, and repeatedly poured teeny bits of soda into the glass after she drained it. The whole exchange struck me a bit, since Hero Guy and I are pretty much teetotallers but I humored her as she wondered if she should hold the glass by the cup or the stem.

I'm thinking I can handle this new arrangement though. I'll let Brainy Boy pick out a variety of new dishes to make him think he's eating gourmet and I'll be able to work on the table manners at the same time. I'm considering going to a hypnotist to reprogram my brain into donning a relaxed, enjoyable attitude every time I get out the paring knife. I'll probably need the zoning out because if he can arrange it, Brainy Boy will have us eating sushi and caviar in no time.