I was watching a House Hunters show this morning while I finished my breakfast and as sometimes happens, the young woman looking for a house annoyed the living daylights out of me. She was a young lawyer who wanted to buy a home and she had half a million dollars to spend. Let that sink in a minute. HALF A MILLION dollars. [When I was her age I was happy to be able to pony up the rent every month for a tiny apartment in a not-terrible neighborhood.]
The young woman's list of what she wanted in a home was mind-boggling. The list included a Mediterranean-style home with "great curb appeal," all hardwood floors, plantation shutters, and "even though I don't cook I want a kitchen with white shaker style cabinets and new appliances."
If you don't cook, why do you even care what the kitchen looks like? I wondered. Then I remembered her first requirement for a house was "great curb appeal." So appearances matter to her A LOT. I hope life teaches her what's really important and she loses her shallowness one day and becomes a decent person. I wouldn't bet on it, though.
The show got me to thinking about cooks and cooking, and why some people refuse to cook. [Just to clarify, I'm talking about people cooking for themselves at home, not professional cooks in restaurants.]
I've known several married couples where the wife doesn't cook but the husband cooks. I think that's a great arrangement. Most men make excellent cooks. My brother loves to cook.
I am puzzled by women who take great pride in not cooking, though. Even if I didn't like to cook I would cook, because it's so much cheaper than eating out. I can make food generally better than what a lot of restaurants make, too, at this point in my life.
A few years ago I was working a contract paralegal assignment with a woman who was a paralegal, like me, and quite proud of the fact she couldn't cook anything. Her husband made good money but they must have spent a fortune on eating out. There's also the time factor. I pointed out that in taking 30-45 minutes every night to pick up takeout food or an hour or more to eat out, she was wasting a ton of time and money. I can put together an excellent meal in 30 minutes. (Rachel Ray didn't originate that idea.) I offered to teach this woman to cook a few simple but tasty dishes and she looked at me with disdain. "I'm not going to spend my life slaving away in a kitchen like a servant."
I was totally puzzled by that attitude. Then she told me when her daughter headed to college she got her a really nice apartment and paid for a maid to keep it clean. "How is she going to learn to cook and clean?" I asked the woman. "We sent her to college so she won't ever HAVE to cook or clean!" she retorted. Ah, then I understood. The woman was a snob.
I have come to understand that there is a great divide among women, between those of us who cook and those of us who don't cook. I think most women fall into one of these general categories:
Grandma -- This is a cook like my memaw, who could wring a chicken's neck and fry up the bird, along with homemade biscuits, fresh green beans, gravy, rice, fruit salad, and sweet tea. Her cakes were wonderful. She could cook on a wood-burning stove as well as a gas stove. When she learned to cook in the 1920's or 1930's no convenience foods existed, except perhaps what was in mason jars from last year's harvest. There are very few of these ladies left now, God Bless Them.
The 20th Century Cook -- This is a woman like my mother, who cooked 6-7 nights a week for more than thirty years because it was expected. My dad expected a hot meal, from scratch, on the table every night. He was pretty good about eating most things Mom cooked, although he would grumble about eating creamed beef on toast or quiche (which we had to call "cheese pie" so as not to offend him, after some asshat gave him a book called Real Men Don't Eat Quiche.) About once a week he would usually take Mom out to dinner and me and my brother would eat fish sticks or hot dogs or something easy. [To her credit, my mom married not knowing how to cook but set out to learn, and became a wonderful cook and collector of cookbooks. She would also make things like homemade manicotti that my grandmother would never have made.]
The 21st Century Cook -- A woman who likes to cook and takes pride in making a good meal, even though she may or may not cook a from-scratch meal 7 nights a week. (This is me. I cook about 3 nights a week and on the other nights we eat leftovers and/or sandwiches or takeout.)
The Proudly Not From Scratch Cook -- These women will fix something like frozen meatballs and store-bought spaghetti sauce and take pride in the fact they made the pasta (dumped it in the boiling water for ten minutes) "homemade." They really don't know how to cook but they see nothing wrong with pretending to cook. [Full disclosure: I like convenience foods as much as anyone else, on occasion, but I still find this type of cooking a bit disturbing, because processed foods contain so many chemicals.]
The Proud Non-Cook -- Some women, particularly career women who are doctors or lawyers, take great pride in NOT cooking. They make it clear they think it's beneath them, so they choose to not even attempt to cook. They can afford to eat out every night, or eat takeout. They like to boast about their lack of skill in the kitchen. [They don't realize that when they do that, women who enjoy cooking feel great pity for them..]
The Reluctant Cook -- Some women know how to follow a recipe and can produce a tasty meal, but they simply don't LIKE to do it. They won't add anything to the recipe to improve it. They want to be admired because they can produce something tasty if they have a good recipe. If the recipe is not good, of course, they blame it for the lack of appeal, not their lack of skill...
The Healthy Cook -- These women take great pride in producing "healthy" meals, that have no flavor and would cause a riot in a prison. They view cheese and butter as unhealthy and cook with just tiny amounts of canola oil. Bacon is unknown in their house. They pack their children's lunches with "healthy" foods and then wonder why the child is really thin and doesn't eat lunch. I view these women with great pity, because they were likely born without taste buds.
