Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Bechamel!

Bought aubergines because they were cheap. She who cannot be gracious said she'd make fritters from them. She didn't. She then said we could make moussaka. This of course being her use of "we" covering the past fifteen years, thus meaning "you". So eventually, when they were pretty bloody limp, I made moussaka. I looked up how to make it, checked ingredients and went out specifically for those that were missing (while happening also to fill in the holes I knew about, and the things she who is infuriating had said we needed having denied we needed anything). I then spent about four-and-a-half hours cooking.

After serving her her first words were "don't you know how to cook spring greens?"

This did not go done well. I didn't react as much as I could have, or was tempted to. Her reasoning for why they were so inedible that she ate them before having seconds of the moussaka was that I must never have watched her cook them, which given the last thing I remember her cooking in its entirely without having someone else around to help (and take over) was pasta salad when I was about nine, was very probably true but for the reasons she's assuming.

For the next couple of days she continued to completely miss any of the many points she could have alighted on, criticising me for attempting moussaka in the first place, despite her pretty much commanding me to do so, ditto for making bechamel when she would have had white sauce but "You haven't seen me make a white sauce", except she can't see the point in making a sauce of any description.

Basically the only reason this stopped was because she found new things to complain about, while writing me off as this erratic, fragile thing she's been having to tend to for months (firstly "tend"?, secondly they flow's been pretty much the other way, even when it might have been useful for it not to be).

Essentially we were two people in similar boats. I've been bailing out and making for shore, she's been sitting in hers shouting discouragements to me making sure I know where I have been going wrong by her rating.

Which is why it's so frustrating when I'm needled enough that I want to unleash a broadside on her but know it'll either sink her or more likely miss because she's already so low in the water that there's not much freeboard to aim at.

She did eventually thank me for cooking, but didn't compliment any of it, instead picking away at the fact I hadn't used a specific set of implements around in her childhood that aren't in the house to prepare the vegetable.

As she put it "I don't understand".

And all this from a woman who has never knowingly shut a cupboard and only rarely opens them.

Oh, and yes, the moussaka was nice, exceptionally so (nutmeg makes everything better).

And yes, as Little Miss Therapist pointed out it doesn't actually matter, except of course I can't really get my head round it not mattering (or as I just typed it matering. Herr Doktor Freud, bitte). It's just the embodiment of that via-Oppenheimer quote gets wearing.

That and I can't think of it as pleasant or a minor accomplishment (featuring la roux, not the musician) because I can't now extricate that from she who must maim (and yet it was really nice [mostly from here]).

Anyhoo,