My family's eating neuroses, part 2

Do you also have such strange dreams during the corona lockdown?

Last night, I dreamt that we were standing in front of the emergency centre covered in blood but weren't allowed in because we weren't wearing face masks. Two nights earlier, I had one of my recurring nightmares over the years: all our family members were visiting and I had forgotten to do the shopping. I woke up with a jolt, propped myself up on my elbows and wiped my sweaty face. Then I remembered that it was lockdown. Relieved, I lay down again.

It's a nightmare, but also one of my favourite fantasies: a big table with my family sitting around it, talking and eating and drinking, and me in the kitchen cooking. There are a lot of us because both my wife's parents and mine are divorced and newly married. Then there are siblings and cousins, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law. So there are quite a few of us. And we're pretty well spread out in Europe; Helsinki, Gothenburg, Biel, Lübeck and so on. The idea of getting them all round one table would be a logistical miracle in itself - but what am I going to cook?

I described my nuclear family's eating neuroses last week, but they are really nothing compared to those of my extended family. My sister is a strict ovo-vegetarian, but she seems downright frivolous next to her husband, my brother-in-law. He cooks - very well - according to strict Ayurvedic guidelines, which are so fundamentalist that he offers to prepare something himself wherever he goes. Knowing that no one will meet his standards.

I've been working on a project to train my nephew to become an oyster connoisseur behind his parents' back for a few years now.

Their children are both fermented cabbage-starched vegetarians, even though I have been working on a project to train my nephew to become an oyster connoisseur behind his parents' backs for several years. I sit my wife's brother on the other side of the table. He spent his entire youth eating only cornflakes and still refuses to eat mushrooms. He likes eggs, but not boiled, scrambled or fried. Not raw either. I place his wife next to him, who eats everything without any problems, but incredibly slowly. When even the most stubborn guests turn to leave, she just takes a second bite of the starter. To cut a long story short: My generation of siblings is not entirely without siblings, and yet I'm sure they could be brought to a table without psychological help.

But now the doorbell rings and the parents' generation enters the parquet floor. A colourful, care-intensive bunch. I place my mother, an uncomplicated flexitarian, and her husband, an organic-conscious carnivore with a weakness for exotic wine-growing regions such as Palestine or Schleswig-Holstein, next to my mother-in-law, an indulgent omnivore. My father-in-law's wife, on the other hand, experiments with food intolerances, sometimes it's gluten, then tannin or sucrose. We pair her with my father, who has developed an expertise in preparing fish and meat (my sister and I like to think back to the rare times he cooked for us: we each got a steak and a whole tomato). His wife, my stepmother, is a Michelin-starred chef who cooks so elaborately that you feel you need several weeks' notice for such simple tasks as making her a sandwich. She is allowed to sit next to my father-in-law, who has the remarkable gift of taking pleasure in little things as if they were pieces of gold. He celebrates a ready-made rösti with a fried egg like a World Cup victory.

It really is my dream to gather all these people, who are so incredibly dear to me in all their diversity, around one table.

I just don't know what to cook.

Mikael Krogerus is an author and editor of «Magazin». The father of a daughter and a son lives with his family in Basel.

He now writes a column once a week on the topic of coronavirus.

More from Mikael Krogerus on the subject of corona:

• Kinder und Katzen sind die wahren Corona-Meister
  Die einzigen zwei Dinge, die ich bislang in dieser *** Corona-Krise gelernt habe, habe ich von meinen Kindern gelernt. Und von meinen Katzen.
  
• Deep Work? Mikael Krogerus übers Homeschooling
  Für den heimischen Fernunterricht holt sich Mikael Krogerus Hilfe aus dem Silicon Valley. 
• Oben kalt, unten verbrannt
  Mikael Krogerus überlegt, an was sich seine Familie erinnern wird nach dem Lockdown. Kleiner Tipp: Corona geht, wie die Liebe auch, irgendwie durch den Magen.