One of our old Germans arrived a week or so ago. I think I mentioned here that I was going to pick him up from the airport. Now that a week has passed I feel the need to rant on about him. One of the defining things about Thomas is his ability to convert massive amounts of food into nervous energy. I don’t believe I have ever cooked a meal for him that he hasn’t loved. This is actually an endearing quality. The last time Thomas lived with us it was a lot more stressful as we had a full house of students and Thomas could be relied on to pretty much consume whatever came within range. This meant that if I cooked twice in an evening so that I had the next evenings supper sorted then you could guarantee that I would come home to find he’d eaten it all for 2nd lunch or pre-supper or something.
This time I have learned a little. I tell the black hole what he has to leave alone and I have plenty of cheap starchy snacks to feed his wurm between meals. It’s funny how you can pretty much split our foreign kids into two broad types. There are the ones who eat very little and try to live off Doritos. And the ones like Thomas and our last Brazilian John who will cheerfully act like human garbage disposal units. John once ate two large pizzas at a friend’s house at 4PM and popped up in his chair at 6:30PM to eat a full steak dinner. Then, at 11PM, I discovered him with his head inside my fridge looking for what he described as “something”.
Of course I am torn between what kinds of student I like the best. The mousey eater is easy to fill and cheap to maintain. The ones with the spare stomachs take such obvious pleasure in their food I am pretty certain I could put wax food out and they would smack their lips and dive in. That is great when I come home and have failed to spend that 15 minutes working out what the f*ck I am going to cook. In this case it is me looking mournfully into the freezer searching for inspiration amongst the frozen blueberries and freezer burned hamburger meat.
