Men who cook

They were married for over 50 years. She cooked almost all the meals, with the rare camping exceptions. She had learned to make things he liked, and they ate well, well-balanced meals with sufficent variety to make dinner and lunch interesting.

Mom wasn't a gourmet cook, but she was a good, solid meal-maker. We seldom left the table hungry, and she had a way with a few things that was nothing short of a miracle, especially meatloaf and spaghetti. Considering that Dad won't eat anything with noticable garlic in it, the spaghetti thig WAS a miracle.

My grandmother, (Dad's side) was a wonderful cook, and a baker. She baked bread so fluffy and tasty and soft and yeasty... I've not found a recipe that matches what she could create in that big striped bowl of hers. Maybe I need to find a striped bowl.

Anyhow - Dad is now struggling to come up with meals on a daily basis since he has to do all the cooking himself. When I'm down there, I try to make "too much" so that he has frozen leftovers to microzap when I leave. At one point, I made him a lasagna (sans garlic!), a pot of senate bean soup and an entire double-recipe of chili. Froze it all in tupperware-esque containers, and he used them up over the course of probably 3 or 4 months, interspersed with his own new cooking skills.

Interestingly enough, Dad can make a mean apple pie, and is better at cooking fish than I am. I'm just plain BAD at cooking fish. But we talk about cooking a lot now, and the 1950's/1960's child inside me laughs at the thought of the "Daddy" doing the cooking. Ward Cleaver never cooked!!! (Except BBQ!)

When I went down to Fla last year I stopped in Tennessee to visit my friend "S" and her kids. "S" was in a play at the local community theater and it was their last night. After the show, they had a wrap party at the director's house (mansion...) and the director had put on a buffet spread for the cast and their guests. I was utterly amazed - home cooking, but freaking GOURMET home cooking. Tiny meatballs in savory sauce, stuffed mushrooms, slices of some kind of meat-in-pastry concoction, all smelling utterly heavenly and tasting even better.

I guess it is a bit sexist to think of men cooking as being odd - but my first initial "gut reaction" to any guy who manages to pull off non-BBQ cooking is to be surprised - and very, very positively impressed.

Upbringing? Some. Sexism? Maybe. The fact that my ex-husband needed a recipie for ice cubes? Probably.

545 days