Cursed Tongue: Kitchen Magnet of Disaster

Posted by CursedTongue on May 9, 2006

My husband loves cooking. For him, it’s stress-relief. He likes to choose a food, such as his latest culinary challenge, biscotti, and fiddle with the recipe until something I thought I’d only ever get from Starbuck’s emerges from the oven in gastronomic perfection. Once I even joined his quest to find the perfect pizza dough, and we ended up with exactly the same recipe I inherited from my parents.

This is not to say that his gourmet meddling is an exercise in futility. Now his biscotti are so good that my mother won’t let us step foot over the threshold on Mother’s Day unless we show up with a suitcase full of them. She added that if we wanted any biscotti, we would have to bring extra. Of course, my husband’s first batch was edible and tasted good (my goal when I cook). But he is content to wile away hours cooking, in the hopes that he’ll create yet another biscotti fiend.

I, on the other hand, am a kitchen catastrophe. Between my tendency to daydream and my habit of overreaching, almost any new meal is a set up for disaster. Even old favorites have a potential for being singed around the edges. I often wonder at my husband, who can stand attentively over a batch of hot fudge and leave the clean dishes in the dishwasher, refrain from filling the water pitcher in the fridge, and from de-mucking the vent over the stove. It never occurs to him that he can make pizza dough, run the espresso maker and chop veggies for dinner at the same time.

It doesn’t help that my husband is not only a hobbyist chef but also a food critic. It is difficult to come up with meals I’m capable of that don’t send my sweet husband to the cupboard for a big bowl of crunchy rice squares. He sets the bar high for picky eaters. The rules applying to his diet are more complicated than that of a no-carb vegan. When my father asked what he should avoid for Easter dinner I prepared a treatise on my husband’s eating habits, with a disclaimer that even following the guidelines doesn’t ensure that he will eat the meal, but if he decides he doesn’t like whatever is put before him, I was certain he would be happy to subsist on solid chocolate bunnies and jelly beans for the day.

When I cook my husband likes to enlighten me as to what I’m doing wrong. The other night he dispensed some piece of expert advice. I lifted my grease-coated wooden spoon defensively, and shot him a dirty look. Not a minute later he felt the urge to pass on another nugget of cooking wisdom and I yelled at him. He said, “You could just tell me you don’t want help.” And I explained that was the direct translation of the dirty look. I was cooking something I had cooked approximately 286 times before and as much as it might appear that was in need of help, I didn’t want any.

When I’m cooking it makes me nervous to have my husband anywhere near the kitchen. If he’s not in the room and I screw up, then I can fix it or start over without the shame of his chefly brilliance baring witness to my failure. Like last week, when I started the grill for the first time in nearly a year. I lit the coals in the chimney and I put the chimney on the food grate instead of the coal grate. I could have fixed that if I hadn’t sent him out to check on the coals.

Between the helpful advice, aversions to potatoes, and my own kitchen shortcomings combined into the systematic deflation of my cooking confidence. I am almost convinced that it would be better to eat instant pudding straight from the box than to ever cook another meal. I secretly fantasize about going on a prepackaged diet plan — not so much to lose weight, but so I won’t ever have to cook again. I think my only hope is a deep freeze. Then I could make four times the marinara with half of the sensation that the kitchen is hell on earth.

- Sarah Letnes

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