The coming season is the time of the year when more cooking is done than at any other time. I have always liked to cook, but would never spend hours laboring over some culinary masterpiece like some mothers do. I knew that once it hit the table it was gonzo, and the only comment I would get is "What's for dessert?"
Kids only like a meal that is easy to eat, so it can be gone in two mouthfuls. My kids also liked food to be separated on their plates, with nary a pea on the potatoes. When I didn't get a favorable comment on my cooking, they not only got a pea in their potatoes, but a bug in their ear. I was at a dinner once when a guest refused to eat because the food wasn't in the right order on the plate. She insisted the potatoes should be at 12 o'clock; the meat at 3 o'clock; and the vegetables at 6 o'clock. If I were the hostess, it wouldn't have been long before her time had run out.
Another guest I heard of refused to drink her ice tea because the lemon adorning the glass was "too flipsy". She waved it back and forth to prove her point. They say when life gives you lemons you are supposed to make lemonade, not trouble.
I like small intimate dinners with the family and one or two guests who know how to behave. Then I can sit back, take a deep breath, and relax, praying all the time that the kids don't put their elbows in the salad; play catch with the meatballs; or drink out of the fingerbowls. We have lost more guests that way.
There are a number of ways to become instantly popular with friends, family, and acquaintances. One is to write a best seller; another, win the Powerball; and the third, (and often the most effective) is to purchase a summer camp. With such a purchase one quickly finds he has not only obtained property, but hordes of unexpected (and unwelcome) guests.At one time while living in Massachusetts, my parents owned a camp in Maine. It was before the days of the Maine turnpike, and it was necessary to drive for six hours to get to their cabin on a lake.
One Sunday afternoon a co-worker of my father's, with wife and two kids in tow, showed up on the doorstep, and explained "they were just out for a ride." (They probably were the kind who would drive to the Artic for a Polar Bar).
Needless to say, there was much scurrying around, not only to feed, but to house the freeloading foursome because they had purposely arrived too late to complete the ride home the same day.
My mother and father should have taken a page from the book of some friends of ours who own a lovely summer home ten miles from their residence. Gullibility wasn't part of their sales contract.
Envisioning summers of uninterupted weekends, they came up with a plan to thwart visiting vultures who would arrive in late afternoon, just in time for dinner, or so they thought. Dinnertime came and went without the opening of a refrigerator, or the whirl of a can opener. Food not only isn't served, it isn't even mentioned. Finally at 9:00 p.m. dinner is prepared, but by that time the ravenous visitors have fled to the nearest fast-food reataurant. Needless to say, our friends don't get many repeaters.
Other ideas might include our friends' suddden desire to paint the cabin (with assistance from the guests of course); conversation about an expected backup of the septic system; or a subtle hint that the family dog has suddenly started foaming at the mouth. Unwelcome "drop-ins" would find that spending time at the sunny shore of a lake involves more than one way of getting burned.
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