Credit or blame...

Credit or blame...

The other evening I was talking with several couple-type friends about my musings about cooking for fuel or pleasure, and one of the women asked "So why did you learn to cook when none of our husbands can even boil water?"

Oops. Careful!

I don't think I'm that unusual, but as I looked around the room I realized that she was probably right: the other guys in the room probably didn't spend a whole lot of time in the kitchen.

My instincts about not standing out in a crowd kicked in and I made appropriate mumbling noises and tried to change the subject.

But blending instinct aside, the truth of the matter is that I'm either not sharp enough or honest enough to give the real answer off the top of my head.

But I've been thinking about it, and here is the real answer:

You can blame my mom for starters. She was the only female in our family of 5 and she always said she'd be damned (ok, those weren't her words, but that is what she meant) if her sons didn't know how to iron a shirt, clean the toilet, and cook a little bit. "Your wives will thank me someday," she'd say. Maybe.

I don't remember that she actually gave me cooking lessons (except how to follow the duncan hines cake mix instructions). Probably more importantly she insisted that my father cook one night a week sometime after she started back to work full time.

So you can blame my dad for the next bit. He actually took her seriously. We used to tease him mercilessly because for at least a full year the only meal he could make was what he called Swiss Steak, which was basically a roasted hunk of meat smothered in some kind of gravy and cooked for about three hours. I think it came with boiled potatoes, and probably soggy canned green beans. But he branched out from there and by the time he retired he was into all kinds of interesting stuff. (He used to say he never met a noodle he didn't like.) Ever curious, I'm pretty sure he was the one who actually figured out how to make yogurt. And keep in mind this was decades before the Internet and you could search for that kind of information with Google and get the answers in 3 seconds.

So it didn't seem unusual at all to me that my stbx (gotta love that term) expected me to carry my weight in the kitchen. So I guess you can blame her for the next part. Or me. It seemed normal. (Someday maybe I'll come back to that idea.)

Which gets me to the blame or credit thing... they're really just flip sides of the same coin. I'm glad I cook. I enjoy cooking. And I'm not that bad at it (as long as you don't compare me someone like, say, JJ). So it isn't blame as much as it is credit. So thanks Mom, Dad and my stbx.

And while you're at it, wish my Mom happy birthday tomorrow.

Oh - and let me be the last to wish you a happy new year.