More Than Everything (Family 3)

“You’re right,” I conceded. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

He pulled up to the grocery store. “Grab the list,” he said. “Let’s get what we need and hurry home. We don’t have that much time to get everything ready.”

We hustled into the store and grabbed all the ingredients on the list. Most of them were easy to find, but we walked the entire store three times looking for lentils and still came up empty-handed.

“I think we need to ask someone,” Adan finally conceded.

“You’re probably right,” I agreed.

We took another unsuccessful lap around the store.

“That guy in the red polo shirt works here,” Adan pointed out, apparently and inexplicably thinking I’d miss the giant store logo on the man’s shirt. “Go ask him.”

“You go ask him,” I responded.

We walked down every aisle for the fifth time.

“We’re wasting time,” I said.

“We can ask together,” Adan suggested as a compromise.

Asking the question and being walked over to the shelf holding the lentils took all of a minute.

“We must have walked right by these half a dozen times,” Adan grumbled.

“At least.”

“Next time you should ask so we don’t waste any time.”

“Yup.” I nodded. “You should.”

He looked at me and grunted.

I cupped the back of his neck and squeezed it affectionately. “Let’s go home and make dinner.”

AS IT turned out, making dinner wasn’t as easy as we’d expected.

We overcooked the lentils the first time.

“Why is the pot smoking?” Adan asked.

I rushed over to the stove, grabbed the lid, then dropped it and shouted, “Ow! Hot. Hot. Hot.” I stuck my fingers in my mouth and shuffled from foot to foot.

“Quit being a baby,” Adan said. He came over and looked into the pot. “It’s all black and crusty.” He darted his gaze toward me. “Is it supposed to be crusty?”

I walked over and stood next to him, shoulder to shoulder. We both looked into the pot. “I don’t think so. Maybe we didn’t use enough water.”

“We have more, right?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled around the fingers still in my mouth.

“Get some ice,” he said as he reached for the handles on the sides of the pot. “I’ll scrape this into the sink and we can try ag—” The pot crashed to floor. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Adan hopped around and shook his hands. “That’s hot!”

I grabbed a couple of towels, dropped ice on them, and handed one to Adan. “We suck.”

He nodded, put his fingers on either side of the cold towel, and said, “Seriously.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “Let’s try this again.”

We had moderately better luck with the lentils the second time around. They weren’t burnt, but they did seem pretty watery.

“Is it supposed to look like soup?” Adan asked as he stared into the pot.

“I don’t know.” I was standing next to him looking down. “The recipe didn’t say.”

“Huh, well, maybe we should drain out that water.”

“Good idea.” I got the oven mitts we’d discovered in one of the drawers and carried the pot over to the sink.

“Uh, Adan?” I asked as I held the pot over the sink.

“Yeah?”

“How am I supposed to drain the water without all the lentils coming out?”

He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow in what I described as his “I’m thinking” look.

“Maybe we can hold the lid over it and tip it. That way just the water will leak out.”

“Good idea.” I nodded. “Get the lid.”

Adan put the lid on the pot and held it in place as I tipped the pot to the side. It worked at first—the water drizzled out of the edge—but when I had to increase the angle of the pot to get to the water on the bottom, the lentils hit the lid, Adan lost his grip, and the entire contents toppled out.

“Shit!” I yelled.

“Goddamnit!” Adan shouted.

“Scoop it up before it goes down the drain! Scoop it up!”

I set the pot down and both of us reached for the lentils and put as much of them as we could retrieve back into the pot.

“You think that’ll be enough?” Adan asked, sounding a little breathless after all that excitement.

“I hope so, because we don’t have any more we can make.”

“Okay,” Adan sighed. “Get the rest of the stuff and pour it in here so we can mix it all up.”

“I think we’re supposed to let it cool first.”

“We don’t have time.”

I handed Adan the bowl we’d used to hold all the other ingredients and he poured it into the pot.

“Is that everything?” he asked.

“Umm, let me get the paper.” I looked at the now stained recipe and said, “We need to add a beaten egg and a diced onion.”

Adan got the eggs out of the fridge while I looked for a cutting board.

“Just one egg?” he asked as he held it next to the pot.

“Yeah. But you’re supposed to beat it first.”

“I’ll just stir it once it’s in here. We have enough to clean up without getting more shit dirty for no reason.”