Macho Chef: Bathroom dreams

When my children are all grown up and heading off to college to follow their dreams of becoming professional video game players, I think I will be just a little sad, but that's to be expected.

Now Mrs. Chef is a different story. She'll be a mess for several weeks, falling into bouts of wracking sobs whenever she runs across an old gym sock stuffed behind the couch, realizes there are only two plates on the table or wakes up from a nightmare in the middle of the night and leaves a message on a son's cell phone to make sure a mugger really didn't murder him.

But for me, I look forward to a bathroom that is fit for human use.

When they were kids, bathing them was a hard-fought battle in which they would do anything they could to avoid applying soap and water to any patch of their skin. They seemed to think brushing their teeth should take about as much time as the goodbye kiss their mother would give them as they headed out to the elementary school bus.

But now that they are growing into those adolescent years, things are starting to change. They each are spending more time in the bathroom, and they are having a better acquaintance with simple hygiene products like shampoo and floss.

You would think as a child becomes older that he or she would be able to take care of simple things like picking up their old underwear from the floor of the bathroom rather than leaving it for a hapless mother or father to step on. I think I would probably shout a hosanna if I walked into the bathroom and didn't find a pile of towels molding in the corner. The really disgusting thing is the day they bring their gym bags home and dump all their sweaty PE outfits into the hamper. The odors that come from that particular pile of cloth will make you want to move it by pushing it around with a long stick.

But the worst part is the bathroom sink.

It's weird, I've watched them brush their teeth. They're not that rowdy, they don't shove each other around too much and I rarely hear shouting matches erupt from the bathroom as they are preparing for their bedtime.

But when you walk in afterward, it looks like somebody cut loose with a machine gun loaded with soggy bullets made of toothpaste. It's everywhere.

There's paste drying on the counter, the floor and the walls. Using what appears to be an entire tube of Colgate byproducts, they've managed to glue my razor to the dental floss, and the mirror looks as if someone was drinking a glass of milk when they heard the funniest joke on the freaking planet and spewed crusty bits of used toothpaste across the entire north wall.

So the thing I am looking forward to when the boys head off to college is a clean bathroom. Now Mrs. Chef will probably have some snarky remark about how I'm no cleaner than the two boys when it comes to maintaining that little room. She might have some caustic words about the crud left over after a man shaves, or the pile of unused soap slivers left over from the countless times I have reached blindly through the shower curtain to snag another box of Irish Spring, but that doesn't really bother me.

So when I start to feel a little sorry for myself after the kids move out, I think I will head to the bathroom just to remind myself that it was all worth it.

Breakfast Burritos

WHAT YOU NEED

2 eggs per person

2 flour tortillas per person

Shredded cheddar cheese

Frozen hash brown potatoes

2 slices bacon per person

sour cream

salsa

WHAT YOU DO

1. Cook the bacon

2. Cook the hashed browns according to the package.

2. Cook the bacon in a skillet.

3. Scramble the eggs.

4. Warm the tortillas in the microwave.

5. On each tortilla place 1/4 cup of scrambled egg, a slice of bacon, 1/4 cup of hash browns, 2 tablespoons of cheese, sour cream and salsa. Wrap it up and enjoy. Makes two burritos per person.