Women Who Can't Cook

According my philosophy, and several near-death food poisoning experiences, I have finally come to the conclusion that domesticated, kitchen-savvy women of our mothers' generation are a dying breed.

Most young women today can't cook. I don't know whether to describe this as a national tragedy or the coming of age of the equality wars fought by feminists in the sixties and the seventies. Now before all you women come out and accuse me for the umpteenth time of male chauvinism, I would like to state for the record that my culinary skills are exceptional (even if I say so myself). I know I can cook and I believe most bachelors of my generation can and when I say cook, I not talking about making tea and eggs - the stereotype bachelor's staple. I am talking about a wholesome meal of chicken-in-coconut with rice or marinated beef that will have your mouth percolating with the complexity of half a dozen tastes and spices - a little mint here, a little ginger there, cardamom, garlic and spring onion somewhere - all conspiring to bring pleasure. If all this sounds like gibberish, you are one of those women new age men like myself intend to stay oceans away from.

This isn't about women cooking for us. That notion went out with the break dance. The bone of contention here is women who love good food but have a problem cooking it. So you end up on a staple diet of frizzled French fries, crusty pizzas and bubbling cokes. If you were weaned on healthy, fresh height-inducing dishes, a sudden switch to fast foods is simply tragic. At what point in our history did the microwave oven take over from the good old gas or electric burner? We are slowly being turned into ready-meal junkies and before long, you could find yourself seriously addicted to takeaways. This concept of ringing someone and having them trek around your house bearing a weighty load of pizza, Chinese meal or curry was the preserve of soccer junkies and remote control addicts.

Have you ever tried dating one of these modern, upwardly mobile, executive types? They still think the inability to work the corners of a saucepan to produce whole-meal, nutritious ugali is a sign of sophistication. So in its place, they spend the entire afternoon shopping for ingredients for glamorous sounding dishes like beef stroganoff, kedgeree and Wiener schnitzel. Eight hours later, you are presented with a large plate splattered with a botched-up recipe book prescription. It doesn't smell like anything you remotely recognise and she has labelled it some exotic name like 'a la Dolmio'‚ hoping you would be impressed. You get the lost puppy look so any thoughts of scooping the obviously unpalatable mixture over your shoulder through the window are banished. At the back of your mind, you mutter 'the things we do for love' as you take a spoonful. It balances on your tongue, mid way between your throat and your lips just as all the food poisoning headlines you read in this lifetime flash through your mind.

But she still has that tell-me-it-tastes-good look. You swallow with a little prayer and hope that your medical insurance cover is comprehensive. All I can say is that bravery has its limitations. Considering we were raised in the same times, I'm still amazed that a lot of women in my generation can't put together a simple basic meal for a bunch of guys without breaking into a sweat or breaking a nail. Who planted it into their heads that good food can only be found in a cookbook? I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I have just about had it with being used as a guinea pig for recipe-book tragedies. Whatever happened to basic meat and starch?

It is for that reason that I urge any forward thinking men to take over the cooking if they intend to enjoy their retirement benefits. We have to wrestle back the power to control our culinary destiny. Besides, the girls will think you are romantic, sensitive and different. The bottom-line, folks, is that no amount of loving is worth a plate of over-salted stew.

I speak out for the masses of unsuspecting men at the receiving end and I have had my fair share of near-death experiences. A lot of these women really don't realise what awful cooks they are until they try to impress some new man in their lives. It reminds me of a female buddy of mine. We will just call her Becky. Becky was a tom-boy; she used to hang around us for so long that we stopped thinking of her as a girl. During sports on satellite TV weekends, we did the cooking for obvious reasons. Becky had once felt brave enough to invite the boys over to her place to sample her version of the stir-fry signature dishes she had seen us whip up so many times before.

The attempt was so bad the dog wouldn't touch it. Needless to say, we decided never again to sample her cooking and always covered up by bringing takeaways or doing the cooking ourselves.

But Becky was the strong headed type and in spite of our counsel, she decided to take the quantum leap from boiling eggs to attempting a gourmet meal to impress her new catch. She wouldn't let us help her so we just stood aside and watched her cut the red wire so to speak. Becky decided to invest in a recipe book and picked out a dish called 'spicy Thai style ginger chicken'.

It was a seemly straightforward procedure she claimed. Cut up some chicken, stir-fry the rice in a pan, add some cream and spice and bingo! Or so she thought. First of all, we spent the better part of the morning combing the city for one of the missing essential ingredients - 2 sticks of lemon grass, (outer leaves removed, chopped). By the time we got back, she was frantic because she had less than two hours left before her date showed up. This minor set back in the preparation time and misunderstanding of how low the flame was supposed to burn meant that she had to get her make-up and hair done while still making sure that the ginger chicken was spicy and done. The chicken was eventually done all right. In fact so well done that by the time she had finished scrapping it off like toast, there was hardly any chicken left on the drum-sticks. Even the belated addition of a splash of mayonnaise could not save this culinary disaster.

But with a brave face she served the meal to the poor guy. He had a spoonful of it and his taste buds went into comatose. We concluded that he must have committed a few good deeds in this lifetime for he didn't die but as he secretly confessed later he would have thrown all over Becky's Sh40,000 Persian carpet.

A tip from Casanova's memoirs: The way to a woman's heart is through her stomach but don't ever forget to clean up her kitchen.

After listening to some of the customers at work, I'm convinced that some of the behavior problems we see with children come from not eating right. Frozen French toast in the morning, hot dog for lunch, and take out pizza for dinner. Lovely!

Not to mention all the health problems, as well. Have you ever seen as many grossly overweight children as the present? With their utter ignorance of health and nutrition, can you imagine what THEIR children are going to look like? Doctors will be busy!

Thanks the stuffed salmon recipe looks great.

Two things, these have to be small salmon as they only weigh 1.5 to 2kg. You would be better to have your butcher slice off that much of the salmon from the behind the gill plates going back. A king or silver can weigh 12 to thirty pound. I have cooked that big of a chunk. 12 pounds will feed 10 to twelve people.

Last but not least, the "whole" salmon must be cooked over indirect heat, where the charcoal is moved to the side and the salmon is laid over an area without any live charcoal below it. If salmon is laid over direct coals for 12 to 15 minutes per side, your salmon will look like and taste like the charcoal. I cook the salmon this size, indirect, for about 7 to 8 minutes per side depending on hot the outside temp and temp inside the Weber is.

I will probably try this on a cedar plank. You soak the cedar plank in water a few hours before. Place this salmon on the plank and then put the plank in indirect heat for about 12 to 15 minutes and not turn the salmon. Remove the plank and leave the salmon on the plank and let it set for 6 to 10 minutes. The salmon will then continue to slow cook. Then you can fillet the salmon right on the plank and serve to your hungry guests.

I just printed out the recipe, and we will do it! Thanks!

The little woman HAD to become a 'co-wage earner' in order to pay up the oppressive taxes used to pay the welfare wages of those who refuse to provide for themselves or their families. Having said that...my wife puts in her forty, and STILL provides excellent, healthy meals here at home. NO carcinogenic fast food in this house. LOTS of fruit and garden vegetables as well. Gardening also chews up lots of her time, but she pulls it off. I was lucky enough to find a woman who could get the job done.

You got it

I have always felt the drive to move women from home and hearth to paying job was one good way to 1st lower wages in the nation ( more potential bodies to fill a job lower the value of the job and thus force more women out to work ) and to promote abortion for the over population crowd and finally a way to collect additional taxes (marriage penalty)

It was a co operative social change that benefited the powerful

Now we see the fruits of that change..emotionally ill and out of control kids..

Yes taxes forced many women into jobs..but it was a co operative social change effort...

The worse tax of all is the marriage penalty tax.

Our oldest son makes good money and his wife had a high paying job. Grampa Dave tried to warn them about the marriage penalty tax.

They got hammered so hard, they decide that our DIL would be come a stay at home Mother when that time came.

They kept the same withholding rate after marriage as they had before marriage. As singles they got back a small refund each year.

Their marriage penalty taxes cost them close to $20,000 in extra taxes and under payment penalties in 11 months of marriage. That, started our DIL on the road to becoming a conservative. 9/11 made her a full conservative.

I wonder how many of you remember homecanning? Beside cooking from scratch, my mother canned a lot. Coming home from school in September the aroma of pickling spices filled the house. The basement shelves were filled with jars of tomatoes, different types of pickles, chowchow, redbeets, peaches and pears. Pizza from a store? Forget it! Mom made her own.

The chicken thighs came out of the oven after 15 minutes, while the brocolli had boiled for an hour. The meat was raw inside, and the brocolli was a pale mush. I declined my plate telling her I really wasn't hungry. Yuck

Oh WOW .. I am proud to say that I am not that bad .. Yuck is right

I don't cook either. Too much pressure. My husband is one of those people who just throw a bunch of things together and somehow it works out great.

Oh I can cook .. I'm just not a gourmet cook

And yes my kiddies will only eat Kraft Mac n Cheese also .. LOL

The heat in the marinade depends on how much of the cayenne or hot sauce you put in.

If you leave out cayenne or hot sauce, the marinade is spicy but not objectionably so. The cracked red Italian pepper is the fairly large red peppercorns with the dull white inner skin that you find on the table in Italian restaurants. It is not really hot, just zingy (I do NOT like really hot stuff). I usually cook the marinade without the cayenne, and it's just right. My husband says, "If it doesn't make me break a sweat, it's not hot enough," but I just hand him the hot sauce bottle and tell him to help himself.

If you're one of those people with a taste for hot stuff, add cayenne just a pinch at a time, or just a shake of the hot sauce bottle (I use Bull or Durkee's hot sauce) and taste it with your little finger. The cayenne takes a second or two to hit your tongue. I'd go easy on it, myself, unless you have an asbestos-lined mouth.

The day the little woman became a co wage earner. if the guys want "healthy foods " I suggest they take a cooking class..mom is too busy !

We decided near the beginning that I was going to work full-time, she was going to handle the kids and house full-time, and our standard of living would be determined by my paycheck, rather than a desired-standard-of-living determining the number of paychecks.

Makes life easier

Your childern will bless you for that some day !

My daughter is a social worker as is her husband. They make little money even with both of them full time.

But they looked at the families they work with and decided they did not want their family to be part of the stats you see today. She went part time and works her hours around him (and grandma) .

This has meant a real cutback in their standard of living to say the least.

So she asked her 7year old daughter how she saw her life. My grandaughter thought they were "almost" rich (they are FAR from it) . But that is one rich little girl, mom is almost always there. They do beach days and picnics and after dark walks..no cable TV but lots of books and library trips...they are VERY rich little girls!

Well, my sweetie is of Mexican descent, and he used to hang out with his grnadmas when it was chow time, so he can cook all the best recipes!

I know a lot of men who like Mexican food too, and I think it's because it is spicy.

If a woman can not be bothered to improve herself for her family over one small issue, what else will she not be bothered? All the small "can be bothered"'s add up until people say "we just grew apart."

Oh please! Don't you think two adult people can agree on a suitable lifestyle for themselves? Maybe I'll start cooking when my husband learns to put his dirty laundry in the laundry room and his beer cans in the trash.

Good thing we don't tend to get worked up over those "small things".

I don't usually do anything fancy either. How hard is it to peel, boil and mash some potatoes, cook a pork chop, cook some broccoli and throw together a salad? You could even use salad in a bag if you're desperate for time.

Oh, this kind of cooking I can do. I have trouble knowing when broccoli is done though, I always take it off too early. And I can make Very Good chicken enchiladas because my mother taught me that.

But being limited, food gets very boring and I cannot improvise well.

Could I recommend an excellent cookbook for expanding from basics into a little more adventurous cooking?

Try the "Joy of Cooking" by Rombauer and Becker. An earlier edition from a junk shop would be even better than the current one.

The authors assume that the reader knows nothing about cooking, and they have organized the book around chapters dealing with basic "how to" - how to pick a cut of meat, how to know when veggies are done, general rules for cake baking, etc. Each chapter on beef, lamb, poultry, veggies, and so forth begins with the general rules on cooking and preparation. They even tell you when it is "safest" to improvise, and there's a whole section on substitutions.

It is my dad's favorite cookbook (he still has his 1936 edition) and mine, too.

My ma and dad made their own tomato sauce every year.

Us too. In fact, we'll start doing that in about a month. We get a bunch of fresh, ripe tomatoes at the farmer's market and can enough sauce for the year.

They'd have sooner consumed rocks than anything in a jar.

EXACTLY. Some of that stuff is so bad!

That's not to say that we don't love Del Taco or El Pollo Loco, from time to time though. ;-)

I had a physician friend from Guatemala who introduced me to El Pollo Loco. I like it.

My sweetie cooks excellent Mexican dishes and I cook the excellent Italian dishes, so we eat good all the time.

It is nice when both of you can cook. I like to cook, but not every night. One good thing I can say about my ex, he was a good cook. We ate well too:-)

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