Julie sat on the stool with her elbows on the kitchen bar. "I totally want to be in the Peace Corps like you one day, Aunt Angie." Her aunt was standing beside her with both palms down on the countertop.

"After you finish college," Tami insisted as she turned on the stove in the adjacent open kitchen.

"After you make your first half a million," Eric said, grabbing an apple from a bowl of fruit that was sitting on the bar and tossing the Golden Delicious in the air and catching it. "My baby sister here lives on Ramen noodles."

"You know I would never touch Ramen noodles," Angie replied. "I eat only meals cooked from scratch from whole, organic foods."

Tami looked down into the pot she was stirring and then over at Angie.

"Except when I'm a guest at someone's house!" Angie hastened. "Then I happily eat whatever I'm served. And you're a great cook, Tami."

"You've never eaten my cooking," Tami observed as she tapped the spoon against the rim to clean off the excess before laying it on the counter. When Tami graduated from high school, Angela was just in fourth grade. After marrying Eric, Tami saw her sister-in-law on the occasional holiday or family visit, but once Angie herself went to college, the girl basically fell off the charts. She e-mailed and called her brother, but today was the first time she'd set foot in Texas in years.

"Well I'm just assuming, Tami," Angie said, "because you're great at everything you do."

Tami smiled. "I see smooth tongues run in the family."

Angie turned her head toward Julie. "I live simply, but I don't live on Ramen noodles, whatever your father claims."

"I'm totally into organic foods too," Julie said. "I can't get Dad to spend the money though."

"All foods are organic by definition," Eric said. "I don't eat rocks."

Julie let out an exasperated sigh. "You know what I mean, Dad."

Angie looked over the counter at Eric, who was now polishing the apple against his sleeve. "It wouldn't kill you to buy local, though," she said.

"I hear they eat organic baby seal over in Lithuania," he replied. "I'm told they club it to death right in front of the mother. They say the trauma makes it especially tender and delicious. Have you had any yet? You've been there what, two years now?"

"I was in Latvia, not Lithuania," Angie answered. "I go to Nambia next."

"Aren't you done with your Peace Corps sentence?" Eric asked just before he took a bite of the apple.

Tami walked around the bar and began setting the table.

"I'm going with Doctors without Borders this time," Angie answered. "As a nurse. You know, finally putting that nursing degree to use the way Dad keeps saying I should."

Eric chuckled. "Well I don't think that's what he had in mind."

As Tami passed back into the kitchen and began taking the bread out of the oven, Angie said to Eric, "Are you just going to let her do all the work? Seriously, you're just going to stand there and let your wife wait on you?"

"She likes to wait on me."

Tami gave Eric a slow glare but then said to Angie, "I actually don't mind cooking for my family. It's not like Eric doesn't work all day and then some. Just because we have somewhat traditional roles doesn't mean I'm subjugated."

Eric winced in his sister's direction, and Angie said, "Geez, Tami, I didn't mean to insult you. I was just teasing my brother."

"You didn't insult me," she insisted.

"You kind of sounded insulted, Mom," Julie told her. "A little bit."

"A little bit," Eric agreed, and then bit into his apple again.