You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Women are Crazy. Men are Idiots : Cooking
I know many of the great cooks in the world stand to pee. I know that many of the most famous chef’s on TV have names like emeril and Wolfgang and Chef Gordon Ramsey.
I’m just not a man who feels comfortable in the kitchen.
I find it a little frightening. It’s combustible and questionable, kind of like a blow torch in a submarine.
Hand me a spatula and I don’t know whether to flip an egg or play badminton.
And there are great female chefs. There’s TV’s Rachel Ray and Julia Childs is the culinary queen. But other than that, the publicized world of cooking still seems to be dominated men. It would seem that the ladies have a Teflon coated glass ceiling where men ascend and women languish.
But that’s on TV. In the privacy of the American household, it’s undoubtedly chef mom who does most of the cooking. I bet it’s mom boiling corn on burner one, frying up sausage on burner two and making sure tater tots don’t burn in the oven below.
I appreciate you moms for doing this, always have. All my childhood memories of cooking involve a woman. Thanksgiving Turkey and Christmas Chateau Brion and fried chicken after a late soccer practice on a school night.
I don’t have any memories of men with meatballs or guys with goulash. It’s all women all the time.
Women just know how to cook. It’s the multi tasking ability that God gave them. Women can saute a chicken in the sauce pan, while bringing hot chocolate to a slow delicious boil while using their iphone to join the cook book of the month club.
I have no memories of my dad cooking, unless you consider paying the check at the Forge.
And that’s OK too. I’m just saying, it’s more than a task, it’s more than an art, I think there’s something primordial about it.
Think back to the days of the Woolly Mammoth. Who was running the cave?
Woman.
Who was out playing Saber Tooth Tiger roulette with a hickory stick in one hand and a loin cloth in the other?
Man.
Man clubbed the grub and dragged it back to the cave where woman immediately kissed him on his hairy face and grunted “Now get the hell out of my kitchen.”
That’s right. From the beginning of time, women have have controlled all the necessities of life.
SEX AND FOOD.
Maybe because men are stronger, we were pre-ordained to leave the cave and hunt. But I contend it’s also part of the ether of existence. In the swirling cosmic cloud of creation, God stood in his celestial kitchen and created a broth that would be seared into our DNA for all time.
Men are two parts this. Women are two parts that.
BAM!
God threw mankind in the oven and set us to broil while he went out and played Tennis with Allah and Buddha.
Now I know some of you women reading this say I can’t cook a ham sandwich. Some of you say “I hate to cook. Andy you are crazy and you have it wrong.”
I know that some of you men reading this say: AC I can bake a cupcake and flip an omelet all while singing the Fight song of my alma mater in a kitchen designed by Viking.
I get it. There are always exceptions to the cosmic plan.
I’m just saying; by and large, Women are better cooks. Men are better eaters.
There’s an old saying that women on the matrimonial prowl have known for years: The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. They don’t say that because man is known for his prodigious talents in the kitchen.
So I’m standing at the stove in my new home and I’m staring at it like it’s a border guard on the DMZ. The moment is cold and there is a harsh winter wind blowing in from the prison camp beyond the torture chamber to the north.
The Frigidaire guarding the DMZ of my kitchen is charcoal black and intimidating. Its angles are hard and its reflection allows me to see my own troubled face. Do I really look this intimidated by a metallic box that has the capacity to get hot?
The stove’s surface is slightly scratched letting me know that this unit is aged, perhaps cantankerous. Like any senior, it is set in its ways and it doesn’t care what setting I put the dial on. Low means whatever the hell Frigidaire feels like it is.
As I stare at this recalcitrant enemy of food preparation, I wonder where to start.
What will it let me cook? How far will it let me go before every smoke detector in the house begins buzzing like Cicadas set on fire.
I want to fry bacon and maybe scramble an egg.
Where is Chef Gordon Ramsey when I need him.
How many F bombs would this bombastic British FOX TV chef level at me as I stand here, staring into the demilitarized zone of cuisine.
I gaze at the stove. It stares at me. It is angry and it doesn’t like me. I see it squinting and readjusting its half smoked cigar.
Somewhere in the distance, the theme from the Good the Bad and the Ugly is whistling through the rafters.
The oven tosses its poncho over it’s left burner revealing a heating coil ready to flare.
I grip the frying pan in my hand, my trigger finger itching to go live.
“Screw you Oven,” I say with an icy stare. I see my reflection in the shiny black oven glass.
I am wearing sweat pants and clutching a frying pan and a carton of eggs. I look like a patient at the mental hospital. I quickly wonder if I should report myself as insane and talk myself down off this insidious culinary ledge.
It’s too late. The oven begins to hiss. I notice one of the circles turning a slight shade of orange.
Frigidaire has grown pissed I think to myself.
I move cautiously to the glow, drawn like my ancestors to the fire in the cave.
I slowly reach my hand toward the angry cooking cauldron. I slowly hover my hand over the burner, as if it was a small dog. I let the oven sniff my hand, to size me up, to know that I mean it no harm.
The circular burner turns a brighter shade of orange. I feel it’s warmth emanating outward.
“There you are big fella. Just relax. I’m not going to hurt you,” I say softly as I inch forward raising the frying pan in a non threatening gesture.
The stove makes a popping sound, perhaps a shout of protest, perhaps convection, it’s difficult to know in this trying time.
I slowly, carefully, gingerly place the frying pan on the glowing orange circle.
I step back and marvel at my accomplishment.
The craggedy old stove seems OK with this. Like a senior in Boca, it is resigned to sit by the shuffle board court of life and just let the clouds float by.
And it is with that I have completed the circle of culinary existence. I will melt butter. I will crack an egg. I will burn the egg. I will scorch the pan. I will eat the egg with no toast no bacon no sausage.
I am a man. I eat to live.
FOOD GOOD.
I understand hunting the food and bringing it back to the cave. I can even master the fire.
But the cooking?
COOKING BAD.
The cooking. That is one of the many wondrous delights that the heavens imparted on the crazier sex.
Next up.
The microwave. It looks kinda pissy too.
And that is crazy.™