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

[tutstar]

I care. I also have both.

[DBtoo]

I've never tried to cook Indian food, but I learned to cook some really good Iranian food from a co-worker. When my husband and I lived in Houston, we went to Indian restaurants every now and then. I think I liked it more than he did, although it does leave one with rather strong breath! But if he had his choice when eating out, he'd always go for the Mexican food.

To this day, when I hear Mexican music, I get temporary indigestion!

[Whilom]

Ask Oyunga what ugali is and you'll get a better picture of what passes for food in Nairobi.

[Don Myers]

"They, on the other hand, can't believe that most of these kids (young men and women) have no desire to learn how to cook the simplest meals. "

I suspect that these young men and women believe that is why they make pizza and fast food joints.

[strela]

Although she had many other fine qualities (including the ability to shoot 1-inch groups with a .45 at 50 yards), my ex couldn't cook to save her life. About the only edible thing she ever prepared for me was pot roast (and she still smoked up the house every time she seared it before putting it down to simmer).

I'm pretty good with the local cuisine (chicken-fried steak, stuffed pork chops, and roast beef and turkey). Nobody has died from my efforts in the kitchen yet. However, I can take an MRE and a couple of bottles of spice and make it taste like at least decent restaurant food, a skill that made me very popular on deployments.

I'm a lousy saucier though - I can't make gravy that tastes like anything other than library paste. I have to use the pouch or bottled stuff to make my chicken-fried steak fit to eat.

[Greeklawyer]

The long term solution is women who fail to learn to cook or unable to manage domestic skills will fail to be married or reproduce. For the small amount who have accessory babies in later life, the nanny will raise the child and her ingnorance will be bread out.

This will leave the following generations to be less intentionally ignorant.

Sharing is not a problem, this women of the 90's (decade of deciet) I do not cook attitude is unattractive. Fortunatly there are pleanty of women who are not ignorant, do honestly try, and feel no pride in intentional uselessness.

[AnAmericanMother]

Yeah, isn't that weird?

I have too many things I want to cook for days in the week. My solution is to go to the nice grocery store right around the corner and see what they have that's fresh. If the trout came in today, that's a good opportunity for sauteed or baked trout filets. If on the other hand the butcher is in the process of cutting up lamb chops, then a nice row of rib chops will bake up well in the oven with Paul Prudhomme's cajun seasoning and garlic rubbed all over it. Good home-made chili is not to be despised either. And so forth . . .

[AnAmericanMother]

I've never tasted Iranian cuisine. What is it like?

[splach78]

It really blows my mind when young women can't cook. It really isn't THAT hard. I had to teach myself because my mom, while she is a VERY good cook, never cooked. With our budget, I have to plan a menu for 2 weeks at a time, so I don't always have the luxury of going to the store and seeing what is fresh. :(

[mlmr]

My nine year old daughter can make chicken pot pie from scratch. My recipe. My thirteen year old bakes and decorates the family cakes. Both can pull together decent meals when motivated.

When I was first married a child-bride, I did not know how to turn on a stove or keep a house. My grandmother was concerned about me living in the rough of northern New England without any cooking or housekeeping skills. She planned on sending her housekeeper up for a couple of weeks to teach me the basic points of home management and cooking. You know, she sort of came along as a gift, like the 12 place settings of sterling that I also recieved when I married. Well, my husband and I were so church-mouse poor we could not have fed Gramma's housekeeper, never mind have the equipment and furnishings for a really well-appointed home.LOL

Did I tell you about the time I was subsistance farming and received a gold purse and a shimmery evening gown?

[Yeti]

I find recipe books useful for ideas, but feel perfectly free to modify as I go.

I agree. Some of my best stuff is derived from recipes I get from the internet and books.

[FITZ]

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

I think a lot of the same thing happens with men now ---men of my father's generation were more inclined to fix their own cars and knew more than to change a flat tire but today you see men calling for a mechanic to come rescue them as often as you see women do that.

[SauronOfMordor]

I'm Italian, wife is Russian-Jewish, she cooks Italian very well at this point. Fifteen years ago it was a different story. The point is, as with any skill it just takes practice and persistance to develop

[AnAmericanMother]

Yeah, I've been there too! (young college student and young married trying to get through law school on my husband's first job's pay . . . :-( )

I would spend a little bit of the weekly grocery money on fresh herbs in little pots, and grow them in a sunny spot in a tub or whatever earth is handy. I had all sorts of herbs on our little apartment "balcony" (it was about 12 inches wide). Fresh parsley in the pot roast or basil in the spaghetti sauce perks it up like you wouldn't believe.

[splach78]

You must not know that I kill any type of plant I touch! I will leave any type of gardening to my husband!

[A. Pole]

I guess I'm pretty lucky, my wife is upwardly mobile (she's a rising businesswoman in our small town) who can cook a gourmet meal perfectly.

Description of a good wife (Proverbs 31):
Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.
The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.
She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
She is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar.
She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.
She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.
She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.
She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night.
She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.
She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.
She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet.
She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.
Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land.
She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.
Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.
She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.
She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.
Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.
Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.

[DBtoo]

Iranian food is tasty and healthy. They eat a lot of basmati rice, which they cook with a bit of saffron. They also marinade and grill meats, such as barg, which is a steak fillet marinated with saffron and lemon or lime juice, and then grilled. They use a thick yogurt with chopped shallots as a side dish called must museer. What I like too and which I make pretty well, is a stewed chicken dish with tumeric, a touch of cinnamon, and these dried limes or lemons which look like dried up brown balls, which add a wonderful flavor. They are also into fresh greens and vegatables such as mints, cucumber, lettace and so forth.

I miss going to the restaurants (and I miss that fresh, hot pita bread that they serve with everything). My aunt in Houston went to a mideast grocery in Houston, and mailed me more of the dried up lemon balls. I perfer the lemon balls to the lime ones, although both are good.

[Orual]

I have finally come to the conclusion that domesticated, kitchen-savvy women of our mothers' generation are a dying breed.

[RnMomof7]

The long term solution is women who fail to learn to cook or unable to manage domestic skills will fail to be married or reproduce. For the small amount who have accessory babies in later life, the nanny will raise the child and her ingnorance will be bread out.

Think that will whip us out huh? LOL..note I am mom of 7

Women used to learn to cook from mom..mom is now out working, The problem will get worse not better.

I was raised by a working mom..my daughters were raised by working mom and they are working moms.

My sons are married to working wives and they all cook.One daughter is a greak cook..the other is married to a great cook..

Sorry to burst your bubble but the non cooking daughter has 3 daughters..all gifted..they will all have careers and they have no mom to teach them to cook..ahhhhhhhh one more generation:>)

BTW none of us ever served "fast food " meals .......or junk food. We just did not cook well :>)

[SauronOfMordor]

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

Looks like the kind of girl who won't settle for a less-than-VERY-prosperous guy -- who will do a trade-in on her in TEN years, not twenty-five.

My eldest daughter, at 13, is an excellent cook (as well as competent with rifle, pistol, and knife)