Woman’s Domain
I have a love-hate relationship with my kitchen.
On the one hand, it’s mine or, at least, as close to mine as anything gets these days. Ryan tends to leave it alone so I govern it in any way I choose.
On the other hand, I don’t particularly love anything that the kitchen was made for using it for – dishes and cooking mainly and the messes left by said activity.
Dishes are messy and I always wind up wet with dishwater or get a fair amount on the floor. I also don’t love having to scrub until my fingers fall off. Ryan, as much as I love him, is hopeless when it comes to the fine art of rinsing dishes before putting them into the sink rather than letting them sit and become encrusting with what might have once been a sandwich or chicken strips or the-end-all-be-all of disgusting food remains RANCH DRESSING.
Now let’s talk about cooking. Some people are wonderful cooks and chefs. They do not need recipes and, if for some reasons they choose to use them, they deviate in a way that turns a simple meal into a piece of fucking art. I once knew a man with white carpet in his kitchen; he is one of those people. Let’s get this straight: I am not one of those people!
I don’t know how anyone can make food look like a masterpiece. My goal? Make it edible. I don’t know how anyone can finish baking or cooking with a spotless kitchen. My goal? Make it without any major catastrophes. And I certainly can’t keep myself looking like one of those 50s housewives by the time I’m done. My goal? Don’t sweat into the chicken too much.
Cooking demands far more time and energy than I want to give to something that I don’t naturally love. I am not a great chef because I lack 2 important qualities: desire for precision and patience. Coincidentally, this is also why I would make a bad sniper.
Precision, you ask? Yes, precision. Precisely. It’s not something I strive for. I like the feeling of a job well done if it’s a job I like to do not one I must do out of necessity or because someone else tells me to do it. Cooking is just one of those things. Even if I really desire the outcome – edible, even delicious food – the process is something I despise.
What’s the deal with patience? Unless it’s something I can put in the oven and forget about, I become agitated about the time and attention cooking demands. I don’t want to stand around “stirring occasionally” or watching for bubbles or thickening of paste or what-have-you. Even if I know that something needs constant attention I tend to get distracted by – oh – the internet and – wouldn’t you know it! – the food has become slightly charred.
So this attitude toward cooking generally means I do a sloppy job. I don’t tend to fully read through recipes which means I usually don’t get them quite right and don’t notice until it’s too late.
No, the food isn’t art and, yes the kitchen is a mess by the time I’m done which usually means more dishes that I’m not happy to do. It also results in careless accidents like, say, leaving the sugar bag over the burner where the vent pipe it for the oven and having it turn into a molten glob of sugar-lava on top of and inside my oven!
Remember how I don’t like scrubbing? I’m still working on that one. Coincidentally, those cookies were the best I ever made despite the fact that I thought they’d turn out horribly.
You’d think this fuck all attitude would make me the perfect candidate for playing Grand Theft Auto IV
In your own words, “you made a VERY grave error in calling” the kitchen a Woman’s Domain. Many of the best cooks in the world are MEN. Doesn’t it feel nice to have people you don’t know from squat leave a comment to pick apart your own opinion? I can’t express how much I appreciated waking up to yours!
It would feel nice if you had a sense of humour, which you don’t! Obviously, the point of these two posts was something completely different. You aimed for breast cancer awareness whereas I aimed to vent and entertain.