13 April 2016

K-Kiwi and Kidney Beans

#AtoZChallenge
Kiwi and kidney beans.  These have only two things in common-the letter K and my son.  Not that he really loves either of them.  They’re two things he’s experimented with.  He musta heard bout kiwi and when we saw one at the store, we bought it.

My number one son likes to try new things.  He brings home new stuff from town and hands them to me, expecting me to help him figure out how to work them.  And most times, we get it figured out.  Like the kiwi which he bought for a while, then quit, just a phase.

The kidney beans were something we’d always used when making chili.  That’s mostly what we use it for….  Weell, the only thing we used it for-chili.  When my son discovered that there were beans other than kidney beans, he brought them home.  Even reading the directions on the package didn’t always make it clear what we were supposed to do with such things as lima beans, black eyed peas and lentils.  What the heck was a lentil?

Then, whilst shopping at the store 120 miles away, we discovered canned chili with some other kind of bean.  And refried beans.  Yep, they made the trip home with my son whereupon he handed the cans over to me.  I failed to keep my expression from revealing itself to him.

“You heat it up!”

Son just stood there with his hand out, can jiggling in it, like he was anxious to get rid of it.

“No, you brought it home.”

Can shook a bit in a slo-mo kind of way.

“There’s a can opener in the kitchen.”

Can moves a bit faster. His eyes settle on mine.  I stare right back at him.  He waggles the can again.  I am determined not to give in.  His lower lip starts to move.  I look away.  He knows I’m about to give in.  I heave a sigh, making sure it is the long suffering sigh of the much put upon mother.  He smiles when I finally grab the can and head to the kitchen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I broke down and heated up the new fangled chili he brought home.  Course, we couldn’t let Gramma see it.  She had her own idea what chili was supposed to be and it most certainly didn’t match ours.  She liked it like soup, watery soup.  Now that I think about it, I think mayhap it was so she could put a lot of crackers in the soup.  And my sons and I didn’t use that many crackers, so we preferred the thicker chili.  And we had to hurry up and eat the chili because this particular chili didn’t have kidney beans.

I managed to get the stuff cleaned up before Mom woke up.

“Oh?  What did you eat?”

“Nothing.”

Gives me the beady eye, whereupon Son quietly shuts his door.