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

[DBtoo]

That reminds me of my good friend I've had since I was 11. Her mom didn't cook, and neither did her grandmother. Her dad was a great cook though.

She is now grown and has children. One day a few years ago, I was at her house for dinner. I got to witness the whole thing. She took some chicken thighs out of the package, plucked them in a baking dish, without even washing them, not to mention the lack of any seasoning. In the meantime, she was boiling brocolli. 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.

I think some people just don't like to cook, and have no sense of cooking. However, many young women have grown up with busy parents and mothers who work, so they have grown up on fast food, and never learned to cook, unless they went out of their way to learn because they wanted to.

[DBtoo]

You are making me hungry. The few times I've eaten food cooked on a gas grill, it tasted better to me than food cooked over charcol. My husband likes to grill over wood, and he's good at it, but how I wish we would get a gas grill!!!

Mostly I cook though; I enjoy it, and I like good food!

[Greeklawyer]

It is a question of wanting to learn to cook.

Modern women can victimize all they want, it does not
take a PHD or advance knowlege to cook and not just open the
box. There are cooking classes. Reading a one page PAMPHLET on sanitary practices available from the various agriculture departments is unexcusable for someone who knows they lack knowledge.


I have never found intentional ignorance of domestic issues attractive in woman
(on any subject).

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."

[AnAmericanMother]

My mom can't cook, has never been able to cook. Her mother was a good (in the old fashioned plain German style) but very fussy cook who never allowed her into the kitchen. She married my dad, who is an outstanding cook, so she never learned. My dad was the youngest in a household full of girls (his dad died when he was only 10) and his sisters taught him to cook, plus he had that natural gift that just comes by grace or not at all. So why should my mom learn when she had a master chef already in the house? Fortunately, my sister and I learned at the shoulder of the master.

My basic rule for cooking in a household full of very busy people is to keep the ingredients very fresh and the very best quality available, the recipes simple, and add a few little touches of herbs or garnish to give it a little pizazz. As long as we're talking about salmon . . .

Atomic Fireball Salmon Marinade

1/2 cup good quality neutral oil (peanut is good)
plenty of minced garlic (2-3 cloves minimum, to taste)
4 TBS soy
4 TBS balsamic vinegar. If it's the real stuff, go easy
3-4 green onions, including the tops, trimmed & chopped
3 tsp brown sugar or molasses
1-2 tsp powdered ginger
2-3 tsp crushed Italian red pepper flakes
a pinch of cayenne or dash of pepper sauce if you REALLY like it hot
1 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp salt

Beat all together with a wire whisk, pour over the salmon in a GLASS dish, cover tightly with plastic wrap (NOT foil), and leave refrigerated overnight or at least 4 hours. Take it out, let it warm up a little, and throw it on the grill. Serve with a simple green salad and garlic bread (or make some bruschetti - sliced Italian bread grilled and then rubbed with a clove of garlic and drizzled with olive oil - on the edge of the grill while you're cooking the salmon).

[Greeklawyer]

fun only

[DBtoo]

My husband loves Mexican food. He would be happy to eat it 5 days a week. Experience has taught me that men in general seem to really go for Mexican food. They seem to handle the calories better too. I know I'm stereotyping here, but it's true!!

[AnAmericanMother]

Have you tried Indian food?

My husband will eat tandoori chicken and stuffed naan bread and lamb koorma until it comes out his ears. Lots of fluffy rice with saffron and raisins and what not too. I don't have a tandoori oven, but I follow Mahdur Jaffrey's idea of turning up the conventional oven as high as it will go and disjointing the chicken to make it cook faster (turn off the smoke alarm though!)

[Jim Noble]

Good cookin' lasts.

Them things don't.

[DBtoo]

Oops! charcol=charcoal

[dighton]

Tangwich, anyone?

[RnMomof7]

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.

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 !

[DBtoo]

I have some king salmon in my freezer that someone gave me a few days ago. They caught it fresh. That recipe sounds good, I think I will try that!! (My husband will do the grilling part, he's better at that than I am!) I also happen to have all those ingredients in my kitchen, even the sesame oil!

[RnMomof7]

You are the squash soup guy right? See #7

[DBtoo]

My friend is a very intelligent person, but is she ever a scary cook! I feel sorry for her husband and girls when it comes to food. No wonder the girls prefer to go out to eat!

[Yeti]

(I use a Carolina vinegar based sauce on it AFTER it is cooked, NOT during cooking, as is Carolina BBQ cooking tradition.)

Debating BBQ, and specifically South Carolina BBQ is grounds for immediate permanent banning on this forum, and rightly so.

Only after the cooking? You must mean North Carolina tradition.

[VermiciousKnid]

When I first got married, I could barely boil an egg. This was caused by my mother, who, while an excellent cook herself, always uttered these words to me while she was preparing dinner: "Get OUT of the kitchen! I'm trying to cook!" (Mommy was right; I was a bit of a clod as a child, as well as accident prone. It was probably safer for everyone involved if I WASN'T in the kitchen.)

And so, I entered wedded bliss blissfully ignorant of the culinary arts. Oh, I could do some things, like roast a chicken and make baked potatoes, but my repertoire was severely limited.

With a great deal of patience (and the loss of approximately 10 pounds), my husband and I learned to cook together. Now, eight years later, we can pull of darn near anything in the kitchen. We have fun doing it, and it gives us an opportunity to spend some time alone together. You see, one of things I most often here myself saying to MY kids is: "Get OUT of the kitchen! We're trying to cook!"

Regards,

[splach78]

My darling husband, bless his heart, can screw up Macaroni & Cheese. I think I will stick to the cooking in this family.

[Maceman]

Ask me again in twenty-five years when the bloom is off your rose, honey.

[splach78]

LOL I think I am advanced too. My friend's comment to me the other day was "How can you come up with something to cook every night of the week?" I just laugh.