Cooking Lessons

 

                We have a very clear delineation of labour in our house—Mark holds the cat, I pill the cat; I hold the rabbit, Mark clears his butt; I prune, Mark processes compost; I cook, Mark washes the dishes. The divisions work well and save considerable argument, until one of us falls ill and takes to the couch. Usually I can fill in for Mark for a couple of days (I know how to do all of his chores but the taxes, and they can wait) but he can’t cook dinner without a lot of fuss, questioning, swearing, and crashing around.

                It is my fault. When we first met, he was not strong on any household skills, although, after a nasty night encounter with cockroaches in Texas, he understood why you needed to wash the dishes every day. I started teaching him how to cook from scratch early on. We talked about how to hold the knife, how to use a whisk with a firm wrist, and how to tell if something was done in the oven. I even made him a cookbook, divided into sections, where I copied recipes from my cookbooks and note cards, so that all of the information was in one place. He made progress. He taught himself how to make hot and sour soup and stewed beef in wine and thought about doing the same thing to some chicken. And then, we stopped.

                He says it was because I expected him to wash the dishes after cooking, rather than trading off the chore. I think it was because he moved into my kitchen and I am kitchen turfy. The truth is somewhere in between. So here we are, thirty years on, and he is not a confident cook. When I am not around, he can rummage in the fridge and cook a couple of eggs, heat up the leftovers, stem or roast some veg. He’s not above the co-op’s salad bar on a busy night. When I broke my arm, he was a decent prep cook, chopping veg and slicing the bread until I could bend my elbow again. He wants to do well, so he asks lots of questions.

                And so here we are. I had a cold last week that took out my brain for about twelve hours which spanned dinner. The options: order out, have Mark make something, which is often loud, or make dinner myself.  Last summer, I canned two dozen jars of tomato sauce just for these nights. Chop an onion, boil the spaghetti, and warm the tomatoes. Dinner. We can talk about cooking lessons later.