Women Who Can't Cook

Daily Nation (Nairobi) ^ | June 29, 2002 | Oyunga Pala

[Shermy]

I have one standing dating rule, 'When it comes to cooking, never let a dot.com woman come anywhere close to the kitchen, unless she wants to do the dishes'.

By Oyunga Pala

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.

pala.o@jay.net

[mlmr]

LOL!! Grandma sounds like a character.

She was. I miss her more with every passing year.

[muggs]

So, yes, I understand about women who cannot cook. I've ALWAYS been one of them. So was my mom and her mother before her. It's a proud family tradition. Stick that in your microwave and nuke it!

I feel so much better knowing I'm not the only woman on FR that can't cook. My mom can't either.

[Rate_Determining_Step]

Beef Saag, please! Ohhhhhh...

[Rate_Determining_Step]

I've got it made. My wife is not only a good cook, but beautiful as well. I've got it made. :)

But, we do have the standard deal. She cooks most stuff. I like to cook, but she has a better temperment for it and usually shoos me outta the kitchen. Worse, when I do cook, she has to participate. For those trying to do their own thing in the kitchen, this doesn't work.

But, there is flip side to this as well. As a guy, I find waaay too many dudes who can't turn a wrench. I fix the cars. A 66 Mustang doesn't count. My dog can fix a car of that era. It's a dude's dudy to know how to fix a modern, fuel injected, computer controlled car. I also mow the lawn, fix stuff on house. And fix/upgrade the computers.

[strela]

Cornstarch, eh?

!

Thank you.

[tubebender]

"I'm also a big believer in butter for baking. If you're going to bake something, use butter; don't waste all your time and other good ingredients by using margarine. It's an inferior product and you can tell when you eat it. Again, I don't eat cookies every day, but when I bake, I want it to taste good."

My wife won't use any thing but butter in the 50 to 60 dozen cookies she bakes every week for our customers at our business. She does use margerine in one recipe for some reason. She NEVER taste any of the cookies she bakes. (but I do)

One of the secrets of a competent cook is to have every thing done at the right time.

[LaineyDee]

My best friend and I were discussing this very topic recently. I come from the more traditional "Southern Cooking" background. Over the years, I've adjusted it to low-fat, low-salt by adding herbs and spices to keep the best flavors possible. Hubby is Italian, so I've learned to make his favorite dishes as well.

I taught both my kids to cook from an early age... by making them help "Mama" in the kitchen. All of us are busy professionals now... but we manage to cook great meals, jelly fruits and grow small gardens. We can't stand to eat out alot or (ick) buy frozen dinners. I have to agree that most women I know, have been sucked into the fast food lane. Sad, isn't it?

[infowarrior]

Your training, and philosophies in the kitchen match my own. My mother taught me thus, even at an early age, much like you. Mrs infowarrior is a fine cook, but limited largely in the dishes of her native country, Peru. Almost all other cooking styles are done by yours truly...

the infowarrior

[strela]

I wonder how many of you remember homecanning?

Remember it? I was intimately involved with it :)

My mother put up about 50 quarts of green beans, tomatoes, corn, pickled beets, and other veggies as well as 100 half-pints of grape jelly just about every year. What we didn't eat went to friends who started called months before wondering when she was going to make them some jelly, or into the tornado shelter as emergency rations.

I say "involved" because she used the Mustang grapes that grow wild along the roads here in this part of Texas to make her jelly, and I was the one who got shanghaied to go grape-picking every year in July when she got a hankering to start canning. My truck also got pressed into service buying bushels of veggies at the farmers markets before canning day.

Important safety tip: DO NOT be tempted to eat Mustang grapes raw. They will literally strip the hide off the inside of your mouth if you eat enough, a fact I learned from hard experience once.

The house was almost unliveable when Mom started canning - she turned off the A/C because it made the finished product cool down too quickly. It was like living in a sauna for 2 days as her two big pressure cookers and various pots and pans with boiling water ran day and night. She scrubbed and boiled jars, lids, and rings, washed veggies and grapes in a big tub, mashed the grapes into juice, then added boxes and boxes of Sure Jell to this big blue gloppy mix and poured everything into jars and put them into the pressure cookers.

The finished product was certainly delicious though. Store-bought snap beans and blackeyed peas can't touch the home-canned variety. And Mom's grape jelly put anything made by Welches to shame.

Today, I saw bunches of grapes along the side of the road and had to wonder what kind of wine they would make.

[Lurker]

Yep. Mix a couple of tablespoons of cornstarch in some cold water until it is dissolved.

Then use that mixture to thicken your gravy.

It works faster than flour, and you don't get that raw bread dough flavor.

L

[nutmeg]

bump