A man’s place is in the kitchen
What better way for fathers to provide for their families than actually putting food on the table, and not just earning the money to buy it?
I’ve never operated a dish washer – I am the dish washer.
I measure clean dishes done in “sinks” not loads. The daily dish-washing ritual in my house is a sani-soaking, sud-scrubbing, step-by-step process. The sink is filled with dishes and then I go do something (like laundry). Then I come back to wash them and fill the sink with more dishes. In the interim, the first set of dishes dry in the rack so that when I come back to do the second set, the first set is largely dry and can be put away. This process is repeated throughout the day, every day.
I don’t resent the quantity of dishes run through the non-automated system because I make most of them myself. The time between one sink and another is usually spent cooking. I cook until all the food in the fridge is used up, and then I go out and buy more. I’m not the only cook in the house, but I do buy all the groceries.
Shopping is a regrettable inconvenience to me and my wallet, so I avoid both in-person and online varieties like the plague. But since we all have to eat, I figure I’d best get good at Guy’s Grocery Games. The main reason I don’t like shopping is because I’m cheap. If everyone is buying something and I’m not, it feels like I’m making money, not just saving it. The cheapest thing you can do when it comes to food is cook it yourself. On the occasions when I do eat out, I try to order things I can’t easily cook at home. Why buy something that I can cook just as well for half the price?
Microwave ovens have never graced a kitchen of mine. It’s not that I don’t appreciate them. At teacher’s college, my physics professor used one to calculate the speed of light. She removed the fan from the microwave (and the pregnant teacher-to-be from our class) and nuked a marshmallow-topped dessert until you could see the hotspots char on the surface. The product of the distance between those hotspots and the frequency from the label on the back confirmed to us that light travels at three hundred million meters every second. I also appreciate the convenience and money-saving capability of chef mic, with its ability to transmit energy directly to food without first starting a fire or overloading a heating coil with electrons.
So, why do I avoid the microwave? Perhaps I simply fear the slow descent into frozen T.V. dinners or softened butter without the wait. How fat would I be if two sticks didn’t stare back at me from the counter for half the day before I can bake biscuits with them? Otherwise, it’d be donuts for breakfast, cookies for lunch, and cake for dinner.
I didn’t start to cook until college, and it wasn’t until into my 30’s that I began to bake. Once you start baking, you realize how easy cooking is by comparison. I admit I felt a little inadequate, not being proficient at baking; less so from the cultural expectation that men craft pastry like Buddy or Duff, than from the fact that I have a chemistry degree. What chemistry teacher worth his sodium chloride doesn’t know how to bake?
The vast majority of professional cooks - from short-order to Michelin Star - are men. Wait-staff, on the other hand, are usually waitresses (unless you’re employed by Downton Abby a hundred years ago). Why, then, is there this expectation upon countless wives to cook everything for their husbands? Sure, men who mine coal from dawn until dusk might expect a warm meal upon arriving home. But how many men nowadays toil the whole day long and don’t have any time to do some cooking? I look forward to working with my hands after teaching some calculus or General Relativity.
My wife, the more gifted at culinary arts, cooks when she wants to – not when she has to. By removing the expectation on her to cook, I’m freeing up her time to be the one thing I cannot be: the mother to our children. And what better way for fathers to provide for their families than actually putting food on the table, not just earning the money to buy it?
Guys don’t need a wrist watch anymore – there’s a clock on the stove. A good man knows his place is in the kitchen. That’s where he belongs.