Jane dislikes her food when it’s too hot.

No.

That’s not correct.

When Jane’s food is too hot, she perceives it as a personal attack on her happiness and well being and holds me directly responsible for the offense.

Yes.

That’s more accurate.

While she howls and give me looks that would no doubt sear the meat from my own bones I try to explain to her, how this “cooking” thing works.

I try to tell her that in order to melt cheese that heat must be applied. I try to tell her that in order to eat that nice pig we raised we need to cook the meat. I try to tell her that we have to cook the meat so that the proteins in the muscles become denatured as that makes them more palatable and digestible. I try to tell her that cooking kills the cysts of parasites we would very much like not to contract as well as a number of bacteria we do our best to avoid. Most importantly I try to tell her that the very act of “cooking” implies that heat is being used and that heat is, by very definition – hot.

Then I try to tell her to just wait a minute and it’ll cool down enough to eat.

Then I try to tell her that it is cool enough to eat.

But when she pokes it with the end of her dainty finger she still finds it to be higher than her 98.6 degree body temperature she howls at me again- clearly I was trying to trick her into scorching her mouth with food that is certainly still, by her definition, “too hot!”

Eventually, because thermodynamics is a real thing, the food is no longer “too hot” to her sensitive touch and she eats a bite but by then…. you guessed it…

It’s too cold.