electric mist

on the cooking...

You know, on the entry below, a couple of you were saying to enjoy him cooking, which I do, but I have to tell about the epiphany.

See, I loathe cooking. Hate it, hate it, hate it, and just in case there's any doubt, I really hate it. I get bored, wander off to the office to just jot a note about something and forty minutes later, there's billowing smoke from the kitchen and we're heading for take-out. (My oldest son had a standing rule that whenever I'd call him to bring home a loaf of bread or hamburger buns, he'd buy two of whatever I'd asked for. Because he knew I was going to get distracted and burn the first round. And I'd bristle and feel kinda like I should be offended, except that I would generally forget what was going on in the kitchen, wander off and damned if I didn't burn the first round.)

But. When Carl and I were first married and the boys were young, it seemed like it ought to be up to me to cook. You know, those pesky kids actually expected to eat. And while Carl and I owned the construction business right from the start, I was the one able to be home, (doing the bids / calls / bookkeeping), but he was the one out, keeping long hours, so shouldering the cooking burden seemed only fair.

Except.

Every single time he'd walk in and whatever was cooking, he'd start messing with it. He'd add a little this, stir a little that, reconfigure a little something else and he was quite good at it. Whatever he cooked was five star. The man could walk in and I was making plain old ham sandwiches, and the next thing I know, he's taken out the mushrooms, the green onions, the butter, and he's sautéing them with god-knows-what-else, then adding two or three kinds of meats, then toasting the bread in the grill with a little butter, then layering it all into a sandwich with four kinds of cheese and tomatoes and an hour later (of course, after the kids had gnawed off their elbows, they were so hungry), we'd have mouth-watering sandwiches that tasted better than anything from a restaurant. I'm not kidding, if we had been able to figure out how to run a restaurant, it would have been his dream job, he loves it so much. Only, every time he'd pull that stunt, it was when I had been trying to cook, and not doing too badly at it, and he was moving me out of the way, or nudging the spoon out of my hands and generally taking over the kitchen, which really annoyed the hell out of me. I mean, how dare he! Take over the cooking! And be all annoyingly happy doing it! He's not even miserable like me! He's not suffering! He's enjoying it!

And then an epiphany struck me like a pot upside the head.

It was like, "Hey, stupid. He's having fun. You love to eat. Let him cook!"

I think it only took me five or six years to have that epiphany. (I never claimed to be smart.) At any rate, we made a deal early on... he would cook as much as he wanted and I would eat it.

I want you to know I even held a straight face when we made that deal. I didn't dance around with a victory lap or anything.

Oh, I generally do all of the cleaning, which can be a disaster sometimes (but apparently not quite as bad as whatever it was he'd done in the previous entry), and I don't mind. No, really, I don't. Because man, we're talking amazing food, always available, in the fridge or freezer for extras.

And believe me, he knows that he is greatly appreciated.

Posted by toni at December 13, 2004 02:18 PM