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Post by jeremysgirl on Feb 13, 2024 13:01:30 GMT
I read this article in the NYTimes this morning and I thought it was very cute. I thought maybe you guys would enjoy talking about how our own partnerships impact our cooking. I Love You, But I Hate Your Cooking
I Love You, but I Hate Your Cooking
What happens when your better half is worse in the kitchen?
By Ella Quittner
Ella Quittner wishes her kitchen-shy husband would let her act as a helicopter chef every now and then.
When Marta Hurgin first met Lisa Wolford, she loved Ms. Wolford’s sharp legal mind, her sense of humor and her empathy toward animals. And Ms. Hurgin even accepted that Ms. Wolford’s favorite food was chicken, though, as a vegetarian, she couldn’t quite understand it. The two lawyers began to date, and soon, in pursuit of domestic bliss, they moved in together in rural New Hampshire.
And blissful it was — until Ms. Wolford began to volunteer for dinner duty. “It always had to be a really complicated recipe,” Ms. Hurgin, 37, said. “Like when she makes lasagna, somehow it involves individually boiling every lasagna sheet and laying them all over the countertop. I really do have to leave the kitchen.”
While Ms. Hurgin, who made most of the couple’s meals, was an efficient and intuitive cook who cleaned as she went, Ms. Wolford, 59, cooked as if she were being held at knifepoint. She would embark on harried trips to the store for ingredients she’d never use again, nervously adhere to each step of every recipe and dirty most of the pots and pans in the kitchen. Soon, it became clear: Ms. Hurgin loved her partner. But the way her partner cooked? Not so much.
The two are in good company — or bad, depending on how smoothly you think dinner at home should go. As domestic roles continue to evolve, a common dynamic has emerged: People in relationships may really, really get along, but in the kitchen, they cannot share the stovetop without losing their minds.
The kitchen presents a hotbed of culinary disputes and differences to navigate, up to three times a day: One partner scarfs down nonfat Greek yogurt, and nonfat Greek yogurt alone, in the pursuit of protein gains, while the other prefers cooking from Julia Child’s tome of elegant epicurean pleasure. One partner can’t stop quoting “The Bear” as he chops with more bluster than skill, while the other has line cook experience. One partner, as in the case of David Barto, might relish a perfectly cooked New York strip, while the other has sworn off red meat.
Mr. Barto, 65, who lives in Poway, Calif., “had a whole lifetime” with his gourmand wife, who died in 2022. Several months into a new relationship with someone who mostly consumes salad, he has had to adopt new ways of cooking. “She won’t even eat chicken thighs,” he said of his new partner.
And then there is the issue of control — and the back-seat cheffing it perpetuates. Like the sort that Alex Jung tries their best to curb when their partner borrows their KitchenAid mixer or endeavors to riff on cake recipes in their Ridgewood, Queens, home. “I have this tendency to get high and mighty about baked goods,” Mr. Jung, 30, said. “I need to let go of the reins a bit.”
Relationship therapists agree: Food fights tend to be a stand-in for deeper relational issues. “It’s not just about food,” said Orna Guralnik, a clinical psychologist in New York City who stars in the Showtime docu-series “Couples Therapy.” “It’s about your ideology of what a good life is.”
“When two people come together, they’re bringing together two cultures,” said Alexandra Solomon, a clinical psychologist and the author of the relationship self-help book “Love Every Day.” Their “big C” culture includes “ethnicity, geography of family of origin and legacy around foods they identify as comfort foods, celebration foods and taboo foods.”
“And they also come in with ‘little C’ culture,” she said. “Do you have the TV on while eating? Do you leave the dishes in the sink overnight? The idiosyncratic things their family did.”
“Big C” culture immediately reared its head when Michelle Lee moved in with her partner in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2022. Ms. Lee, 24, began cooking to channel nostalgia for the Korean flavors of her youth. But family holidays with her partner suddenly meant an immersion into what she calls “white Canadiana” food, like the orange salad — Jell-O, cottage cheese, Cool Whip, crushed pineapple and mandarins — that he requested she make for Thanksgiving.
When Paasha Motamedi and Sofia Greer moved in together in Brooklyn Heights, a more unusual squabble arose within a few months: Mr. Motamedi, a poet and painter, got into baking bread “really hard, really quickly.” He’d bike through several neighborhoods to the now-closed Gristmill in Park Slope for freshly milled heritage flour blends and leave “little bits of dough everywhere,” including in the bathroom. He soon turned the refrigerator into a losing game of Tetris, with many large containers of dough bulk-fermenting at a time.
“And then the pizza baking started,” Mr. Motamedi, 34, said. “And that was a whole other thing.”
“One day, I came home and lifted up the bed covers to take a nap on a Sunday,” said Ms. Greer, 32. “There were literally bowls of dough with towels over them under the comforter. I was like, ‘Bro, no.’ I couldn’t even be mad, though. I was like, ‘At least something’s rising in this bed.’”
The breaking point came when Mr. Motamedi started a fire while trying to make a cornbread with duck fat and orange gastrique for a friend’s dinner party. “I looked at her through the smoky haze in the apartment and said, ‘Do I still make it?’” he said. Ms. Greer emphatically said no. They brought wine to dinner instead.
They have since broken up, though they remain close friends. Mr. Motamedi has carried hard-won lessons about how to be thoughtful when he cooks or bakes for his new partner. Recently, he made her pizza. “I got sauce on the walls,” he said. “But I wiped it as I was cooking. I did learn.”
For the writer Molly Roden Winter, 51, a mutual dislike of cooking in her relationship led to an unexpected discovery after she and her husband decided to open their marriage. Ethical non-monogamy not only expanded Ms. Roden Winter’s emotional and sexual life; it also allowed her to feel cared for in a way she did not at home.
“There are so many ways to be intimate with another person,” said Ms. Roden Winter, whose boyfriend goes out of his way to find gluten-free crackers that suit her dietary needs when he prepares charcuterie boards for her visits. “Sex is one of them, but eating is very intimate. It’s a thing that sometimes feels like a bigger deal in a way that can be surprising.”
Dr. Solomon said that communicating — preferably not when an argument is fresh — is paramount for couples who wish to overcome their kitchen woes. “The nice thing about cooking is that couples can work on making tweaks,” she said. “We have days and weeks and months and years to refine how we do this.”
For Mr. Barto, aging made him more patient and accepting of his partner’s preferences. “You no longer have the option of saying, ‘I can change that person, because we’re only 22,’” he said. “I’m trying to fit into what her life is, and have her fit into what my life is. If you like them, you like all of them, and that includes some things that aren’t perfect.”
Ms. Hurgin and Ms. Wolford, the lawyers, said an open dialogue has certainly proved useful.
“We’ve reached an understanding which involves having a sense of humor about our differences,” Ms. Hurgin said.
To her credit, Ms. Wolford has made a concerted effort to learn to clean as she goes. But she still can’t quit those panicked trips to the store for bags of nigella seeds and pomegranate syrup she’ll use a single tablespoon of — and never touch again.
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Post by Linda on Feb 13, 2024 14:47:29 GMT
that was an interesting read - thank you jeremysgirlI've always been the cook in our family - and the grocery shopper - and our menus reflect that. DH grew up mainly on convenience food and frozen dinners - he was feeding himself and his not-much younger nieces at a young age - and really doesn't know how to cook beyond that other than eggs. I feel fortunate that he'll eat just about anything I cook - even the experiments that didn't turn out as good as hoped. The worst criticism he'll give is to ask that a certain dish doesn't show too often. Now that we almost have an empty nest - he's helping more in the kitchen with chopping vegetables, shredding cheese, stirring etc...and I've learnt to bite my tongue about how very slow and meticulous he is about it. But if for some reason I'm not cooking (I'm away or sick), his default is eating out or takeaway - or a bowl of cereal. Flip side of that is that he's fine with simple dinners - bread, cheese, and fruit, sandwiches, soup... |
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Post by peasapie on Feb 13, 2024 15:31:34 GMT
Funny article, thanks! My husband doesn’t cook. At all. He grew up in a house where not much cooking was happening either and lived in Manhattan on takeout for most of his adult life. I am responsible for meal planning, food shopping, and cooking. He will help if I give him specific task. “Cut that in strips.”
I appreciate when someone else cooks anything at all.
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scrappyesq
Pearl Clutcher
You have always been a part of the heist. You're only mad now because you don't like your cut.
Posts: 4,063 
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Post by scrappyesq on Feb 13, 2024 16:24:59 GMT
It's so funny....ex-dh was a terrible cook and I refused to have him in the kitchen at all if I was cooking. Major holidays, basic every day whatever meal it was I took care of everything from prep to clean up.
McD, on the other hand, is a dream to cook with. From our first day long date when we cooked for the Super Bowl last year up until today. No matter what it is we can do it and have fun. Most times he insists on the clean up. Our only issue is that he loves to heat up my Le Creuset pots empty on high heat. It's rage inducing, and I spend a lot of time lowering burners while his back is turned. Which he waits for me to walk away and turns them back up, lol. It just flows with us, that's the only way I can think to describe it.
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Post by jeremysgirl on Feb 13, 2024 17:05:48 GMT
Now that we almost have an empty nest - he's helping more in the kitchen with chopping vegetables, shredding cheese, stirring etc...and I've learnt to bite my tongue about how very slow and meticulous he is about it. I am slow in the kitchen too. I enjoy cooking so I really take my time with it. Gone are the day when I was in an office until 5 pm and then had hungry kids waiting on me to throw together something fast and bland. Lol! Now that we are empty nesters, I take my time and enjoy the process. Now that we almost have an empty nest - he's helping more in the kitchen with chopping vegetables, shredding cheese, stirring etc...and I've learnt to bite my tongue about how very slow and meticulous he is about it. But if for some reason I'm not cooking (I'm away or sick), his default is eating out or takeaway - or a bowl of cereal. Flip side of that is that he's fine with simple dinners - bread, cheese, and fruit, sandwiches, soup... The good news about Jeremy too, is that even though he's not nearly as adventurous an eater as I am, he has no problem making himself something to eat if he doesn't like what I'm cooking. It will be frozen, processed crap. But he never complains. I secretly think he'd be fine eating that stuff every single day if I stopped cooking. It just flows with us, that's the only way I can think to describe it. This is kind of nice. I have come to think of cooking as "me" time but maybe if my partner was as into it as I am, I'd like doing that with him too. |
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sueg
Prolific Pea
Posts: 8,572
Location: Munich
Apr 12, 2016 12:51:01 GMT
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Post by sueg on Feb 13, 2024 17:20:54 GMT
My DH loves to cook, and is generally in charge of meals on the weekend. He grew up with a very traditional, Irish mother, whose cooking repertoire was quite limited and he wasn’t a very adventurous eater.When we started dating, even eating basic Italian food, like my mum’s spaghetti was a new thing for him. Then he started travelling and eating out more with his work, and now eats just about anything and wants to try to cook new things too.
Our system is easy - the cook had the kitchen and the other one doesn’t interfere, unless requested because too much is happening at once - like stirring gravy while the roast is being carved. Dishes get stacked into the dishwasher at the end - cleanup tends to be shared.
Both my sons also are decent cooks. Older DS is more basic, as he is catering to kids who prefer it simple, while younger DS is the type to invite a large group of friends around and cook a themed 3 course dinner.
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keithurbanlovinpea
Pearl Clutcher
Flowing with the go...
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Post by keithurbanlovinpea on Feb 13, 2024 17:21:51 GMT
My ex didn't/couldn't cook except for grilling. He was definitely a "take out each ingredient one at a time, use all the pots and pans, make a mess" kind of person. I hated having him in the kitchen with me when I was cooking because he was either not really helping but rather hindering me, or he would talk incessantly and get a little butt-hurt when I wouldn't answer or engage right away even though it was obvious I was in the thick of some part of the prep/cooking. His very presence elevated my anxiety and he finally stopped hanging out in there when I was trying to cook. My current likes to cook a lot, and we share the kitchen well, mostly supporting each other with prep like chopping and such, or doing the dishes for the person doing the heavy cooking portion. He's a little messy, but he makes up for it in other ways in the kitchen, so like scrappyesq said, we just flow well. |
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Post by jeremysgirl on Feb 13, 2024 18:09:55 GMT
Both my sons also are decent cooks. Older DS is more basic, as he is catering to kids who prefer it simple, while younger DS is the type to invite a large group of friends around and cook a themed 3 course dinner. This is so great you've taught them both to cook. Your DH set a good example. |
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Post by dewryce on Feb 13, 2024 23:49:27 GMT
DH is our chef. Occasionally, I’m his sous chef. When he is in the mood to cook he uses the mis en place concept all the way which is great and I love, but he also dirties every dish and surface we have. It drives me insane. So when I’m up for being sous chef besides helping out here and there with the cooking I’m running around doing clean up. Works well for both of us and we have fun. I have to say I disagree with the “if you like someone you like all of them” concept. Malarkey. I love him to pieces, warts and all. But I don’t like the way he makes a larger mess than needed with everything he does and he does not pick up after himself. To be fair, that has greatly improved. And I do find some of his incompetencies (for lack of a better word) slightly adorable/charming because they make him, him. But actually like that about him? Nope. As we like to say “you drive me crazy, but you’re my you drive me crazy.”  |
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