It does not. She’s a much better cook than when I was a kid while still being a terrible cook. But at least her idea of offering me dinner is no longer a defrosted turkey burger every night.

There were also the dreaded dinnertime words of my childhood: “This was an experiment.”

Because the “experiment” was usually something like, “the recipe called for two cups of sugar and that’s too much sugar, so I substituted cottage cheese.”