The kids are alright

I think we are done now.

The local middle school cut Mandarin this year and because no amount of pleading would get them to restore it, Owen and his orphaned Mandarin classmates now take classes twice a week at someone’s house. As of a few days ago, our house. I didn’t know how I’d feel about this, but I love it.  There are two girls in the class and twelve boys, half of whom are enormous, the other half, elfin. They're unbelievably fun to watch. 

There's a tendency among some of my friends to grumble about how kids in this town don’t have manners. I don't think it's true and I really don't think it's true after hosting the Mandarin students. They're polite, they're just not naval cadet polite. I'd say they're imperfectly polite. Clearly no one has ever told them to answer “yes ma’am” or rapped them on the knuckles with a willow stick for not looking you in the eye when they say hello. But someone has taught them to say thank you and to take their dishes to the sink and to try to be considerate, whatever that means. You can see them trying to figure out the details for themselves. It’s hard! About 15 seconds after they possibly should have said please, you can see them thinking, oh, wait, maybe I should have said please. And they say please. Or if I try to take a dirty glass out of their hands to put it in the dishwasher, they hesitate. Do they let me? Or do they insist on doing it themselves? What are the rules? Maybe it’s the decline of civilization, but I find this touching in a way that impeccable manners learned by rote at age three are not. 

Since they come straight from school, a parent supplies a snack. Monday, a parent brought bananas and pretzels, which is what I would have brought as it is healthy and unobjectionable. This snack didn’t go fast. It didn’t go at all. But we had these store-bought cookies someone had given Isabel and Owen that had been sitting in the car, bag open, getting stale for a few days. I asked if anyone wanted one before I threw them away and in about 90 seconds the stale cookies were gone. Dumb, stale cookies trump bananas and pretzels.

Yesterday I put out granola bars and some banana bread I’d made using the uneaten bananas from Monday. Moderately popular. Only Owen got excited about the granola bars and I think there was one boy who really liked the banana bread. Stale cookies trump bananas, banana bread, pretzels and granola bars.

I was downstairs when I heard class ending so I came up to say good-bye to the teacher. I found four of the boys looming over the plate (like I said, imperfectly polite) on which sat the unappetizing remains of Owen’s John Gore birthday cake that I'd hidden in a corner of the kitchen.  The frosting was drying out and family members had been shaving off tiny pieces with butter knives for the last few days. Not a pretty cake. I heard one of the boys say, “Owen, why were you keeping the red velvet cake from us?” 

 “You don’t really want that do you?” I said. 

They really did. A feeding frenzy ensued. I got more compliments on that cake in five minutes than I’ve received on everything else I’ve baked for the last month. Frosted four-layer red velvet cake trumps all. 

Another boy came into the room and saw the cake, now just a shadow of its former self. He said, “You made banana bread AND a layer cake!” 

I said, “Oh, the layer cake is from Saturday, I didn’t just make it for this class.” God forbid anyone think I have time to custom bake Mandarin snacks, even though I do.

He said in wonderment, “Still, you made them.” 

Sweet kids. Good job, parents. 

I’m pretty much done with Smoke and Pickles. Monday night I cooked the piggy burgers which I loved because they were so easy and tasty. You make pork patties (flavored with hoisin sauce), fry them, put them on buns and dress with a sun-dried tomato ketchup that sounds hard, but takes about 5 minutes. The recipe makes way too much ketchup, of course, unless you want to use it on your sandwiches every day for the next month. 

Tuesday night I made lamb rice bowls which were tasty but not easy. You make a lamb meatloaf that involves pureeing your meat mixture until it becomes a repugnant paste and then packing this weird paste into a loaf pan, baking it, cutting the cooled meatloaf  into slices, frying the slices, and serving these on top of rice with a yogurt-tomato sauce. Tasted likes gyros. Owen did not like the rice bowl, but he was mistaken. It was delicious and I will never make it again

Last night, I served Lee’s spare ribs with sauerkraut and horseradish cream.  Lots of bones, lots of liquid, soupy sauerkraut, horseradish. Yuck. Not my thing at all, but maybe I was mistaken. Owen loved it and cleaned his plate.