Crepery

Josh is trying to be more helpful with house-stuff, like cooking. I think his dad gave him a big talking-to the other day. He's emptied the kitchen garbage each night after dinner. And he hovers around the kitchen around dinner time each night. It seems like he wants to help but doesn't quite know what to do. He usually offers to set the table. I think when me and my sisters cook, we don't talk about what we're doing all that much. We just look at what the other person's doing and mostly know what to do next.

Sometimes Josh's help is helpful, like when he goes through the newspaper to cut out coupons or empties the garbage. Other times he tries but misses, like when he picks up random things on the dresser and asks me why it's there. Or when I've just walked in the door and he points out something that needs to be cleaned. Every time he does that it makes me want to throw something at his head.

After dinner tonight, while watching Master Chef I was doing homework at the table, and heard Josh banging around in the kitchen. I tilted my chair to the side to peek in and he was doing something with frying pans. When I asked, Josh said he was making crepes. Clearly he'd lost his mind - crepes are pretty delicate, so kind of hard to make.

Josh claimed he'd read up on it and knew what he was doing. I got kind of jealous - so nice that he's got plenty of time for random projects. Kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I switched seats so I had a better view of the kitchen - I wanted to watch.

He melted chocolate in a pan, sliced strawberries and bananas, and made whipped cream. At some point Danielle wandered over and sat down on the edge of my seat to watch also. A few times Josh ran out of the kitchen and asked to borrow my computer so he could look up details. Once he came out with a bowl of crepe batter and asked Danielle what she was doing. She hesitated in answering, and Josh handed her the bowl and told her, "Now you're stirring continuously." I don't know what recipe he got this information from - I could have sworn when my grandmother made crepes she made the batter hours earlier and if the butter separated, you could just whisk it back in with the batter.

We giggled each time Josh cursed as he cooked, and got fruit thrown at our heads for it. Twice I asked if help was needed, and twice I was turned down. Gotta hand it to him - the crepes came out really great. The only "bad" thing was that Josh got a little too whipped cream happy and made way too much. There were a lot of extra strawberries though, so I made an angel food cake to use them all up. Not exactly apples and honey, but definitely a sweet new year.