Our discussion in the thread on housecleaning led to several remarks about cooking and who does it.
So I thought I’d ask:
Folks? Who does the majority of cooking in your house? And how is it?
For us?
Married, 1.9 kids. 1930s era kitchen (God help me).
I do the vast majority of the cooking for us. Lady Chance, while several kinds of artist, absolutely hates cooking. I quote, “You spend all that time making it and then people just eat it! There’s nothing left!”
Me, I like cooking. While I don’t have a great repertoire I do truly enjoy it. And I experiment from time to time with new items. Steaks, pasta, tacos and enchiladas etc. I like to branch out from the traditional chicken and rice stuff.
But it’s all me. When Lady Chance is forced to cook (for whatever reason) it tends to be cold sandwiches and such. Minimal effort expended.
Amusing anecdote: My M-i-L came over for Kate’s 3 year birthday last year. As a present she gave her a little magnetic travelling home thing. Little magnetic people to stick to a two dimensional house to play with. Simple enough, right?
Kate picks up the daddy figure and sings out with: “I’m puttng the daddy in the kitchen! That’s where he belongs…making me dinner!”
jeevwoman probably does more cooking, simply because she gets home earlier to do it. But I definitely enjoy cooking more. When I cook, the dishes tend to be a little more involved and time-consuming, but I also try to make food with a view to freezing it and having it later on in the week. jeevwoman is more of the “let’s see what we can make with what we have” school, which generally ends up being pasta and red sauce, which she actually has no problem eating all the time.
The meals she cooks are meals I’ve taught her, and a couple “healthy alternatives” that she’ll put together from time to time.
Like you, I enjoy cooking. Instead of coming home and having a drink and reading the paper or having a drink and watching the tube, I have a drink while prepping the meal.
I have a lot of different meals I make. On Sundays, I like to make things that take all day. or at least all afternoon.
She does almost all of the clean-up, which I hate to do.
I do most of the cooking. There are a few dishes my husband makes; however, it usually takes him so long to pore over a recipe, then make it, that it’s a lot easier and we’re hungry for a far shorter time if I do it. He’s really meticulous, so he follows the recipe to the letter. And when he’s chopping vegetables, it has to be precise and perfectly done. Sometimes when he tries to help me in the kitchen, if I want him to keep me company but stay out of my way, I’ll have him chop the veggies because I know it’ll keep him occupied for quite a while.
I usually make Indian food a couple of times a week - generally it’s stuff like mater paneer (a pea & cheese curry with a tomato onion base - this is my husband’s signature and only dish, but sometimes I make it because it’s faster), rajmah (kidney beans), and lots of chinese food. On special occaisions, I’ll make coconut sambar. I love making sambars (they’re kind of like vegetable stew - you can make 'em as watery or thick as you like, though, and there are endless types of sambars you can make - some families are known only for their wonderful sambars), but they take so damn long to make. Anyway, I also make stuff like salmon, marinated tofu and other stuff. We usually stick to vegetarian with the occaisional fish or chicken thrown in, mostly because I’m too lazy to plan ahead enough to have a piece of chicken defrosted, and also because eating vegetarian the way I make it ensures that we’ll get several servings of veggies in per day.
I really enjoy doing the cooking, and my husband says it’s better than most restaurants’, but he could just be saying that so he doesn’t have to do it. But we do share in the chores - if I cook, he has to clean, and vice versa.
I do 100% of the cooking. The only thing he does is rinse the dishes (won’t put them in the dishwasher) and he’ll put leftovers in the fridge because he can’t stand to see stuff go to waste. Other than that, it’s my gig.
That’s OK…some day he’ll be wondering why I’m doing so much cooking with almonds…
On another note: I clean up after meals, too. Usually after dinner time comes bath time for the four year old and then to bed. So she goes off to do that while I’m cleaning up (putting stuff in the sink, giving the leftovers to the starving greyhounds, wiping the table, etc).
I’ve always enjoyed cooking, but my boyfriend LOVES to cook, and since he’s moved in with me, he’s learned several different ethnic styles (from cookbooks) and cooks 5 of 7 nights of the week, generally. One night is likely to be a joint effort (though I always offer to help when he’s cooking - he just doesn’t usually want help. He likes to do it all himself), and one night I cook alone. I wouldn’t mind cooking more often, but it makes him so happy to cook that I’m happy to let him cook as often as he wants to. Plus, it gives me more veg time. He’s a lot more likely to spend hours on a dish or a meal, he’s invented about 10 different kinds of soup over the last year (or devised his own recipes of existing soups and stews and chilis). I’m much more likely to put together whatever we have in the house into something interesting. And the kitchen isn’t nearly as messy after I’m done.
I do more of the dishes, but he does them a couple of times a week. And sometimes I wash, he dries (we don’t have a dishwasher and our dishrack is the only size that will fit on our nearly absence of counter space).
We take turns. I was the one with the cooking skills, however limited. She came from a family of people for whom food was something you went out to get, or called to have it delivered. The horror stories I’ve heard about food her mother made and expected them to eat are just incredible! My wife says her previous boyfriend’s mother had to show her how to boil water.
So I taught my wife how to do the stuff I know how to do, in exchange for her never asking me to eat a bowl of raw, julienned carrots with garlic and vinegar and a splash of hot oil, ever again. It was just about all she knew how to make, six years ago! (People eat that stuff?)
We each have our strong suits. I do steak, she does chicken. I do sandwiches (I am apparently the king of sandwich makers), she does pork chops. I do bacon, eggs, home fries and toast, she does Mexican. Like that. Neither of us knows how to make gravy, though, or how to bake. There was just some stuff I didn’t get to ask my mom before she passed away.
" “You spend all that time making it and then people just eat it! There’s nothing left!”"
She’s obviously cooking too few portions.
1990s semi-spacious kitchen/laundry room. Married, one toddler.
We alternate cooking; we shop together and try to plan meals either of us could cook without too much trouble, or with some shouted assistance from the other room.
So far, I prepare all of the toddler’s meals (sliced steamed veggies and fruits mixed into veggie and fruit purees) but we’re moving towards more table food for the tot and easier to consume food that we make that he can eat (curried chicken but with steamed veggies on the side that even the toddler can eat).
Took a while for us to get to that point as we both are picky eaters and our kitchen is only big enough for one ego at at time.
The Lovely and Talented Mrs. Shodan does it during the week, and I do it on the weekends. Since we have leftovers once or twice a week, and I cook in bigger batches than she does, it winds up almost 50-50.
I like cooking. One of the joys of life is seeing people you love eat food you made. I do a lot of French dishes, since I got started cooking by watching the inimitable Julia Child on PBS. We used to race home from work on Fridays to watch “Dinner at Julia’s” when we were first married. I saw this bizarre woman chopping and sauteeing wildly, and figured if a person like that could be a famous cook, how hard could it be? So I tackled coq au vin, because it has an intimidating French name, and it turned out well. Then we joined a gourmet club, where we have been cooking together for twenty years or more, and now I do it for fun.
A winter afternoon, with the stew simmering on the stove and the rolls baking and the radio on. And my wife deciding if we want the Merlot or the Chateau neuf de Pape.
She does almost all of it, because I have a hard time boiling water. If I’m making several dishes they’ll only be finished at remotely the same time by accident. Usually we’ll be eating a side dish while we’re waiting for the entree to finish cooking, and I don’t exactly produce taste sensations either. She, on the other hand, is a natural.
About the only thing I get tapped to do is tomato sauce, or stuff that needs to be grilled. Anything else is probably over my head.
Cooking causes major grief in our household. We’re both good cooks. We both share the work equally. The problem is we’re both awful at planning meals in advance, so we’re constantly faced with the situation of being tired and hungry after work with the same lack of options we had the night before. It’s pretty sad – we like to think of ourselves as capable people, but you have to question that when you find yourself eating yogurt, watermelon and Oreos for dinner.
When we actually force ourselves to plan some meals in advance, we do great. On the rare occasions that one of us does more of the cooking, the other usually does all the clean-up. So equality is definitely not a problem. We help equally, and we’re equally lazy. In fact, we might have a bit too much equality…
I do the majority (she works late on Wed. and Thurs. and I ALWAYS have dinner waiting for her), but it is a pretty close split. We both like to cook so we share the duties. If I cook, I clean as I go so there’s no mess at the end. I haven’t gotten that habit instilled in her yet, but we’re working on it.
As to dishes, whoever doesn’t cook rinses the dishes and puts them in the dishwasher.
We use dinner-prep and clean-up time to talk about the day’s events and plan the rest of the week.
We also make lunches for the next day while we’re making dinner. Saves time and headache.
I do most of the cooking, and my wife does most of the rest. I enjoy it more, cook in a variety of ethnic styles, and experiment more. While I look at cook books, I just treat them as a source of ideas, and basically cook without recipes and without exact measurements – which works because I don’t cook stuff like bread or cakes where you need exact measures.
Whoever’s home first does the cooking during the week though we usually get home at roughly the same time unless he’s out playing football, squash, golf…
So when one of us has started and the other comes in they just roll up their sleeves and join in.
On Saturdays we either get lazy takeaway food or else cook something nice and usually this will be some speciality of one of ours that we’re cooking for the other. When it’s slow food or something that involves use of the oven he tends to cook more. I prefer cooking fast one pot food on the hob with lots of herbs and spices and vegetables.
If we’re doing it together usually one chops and the other cooks. I prefer to cook than chop so in this situation it’s usually me that cooks.
We do dishes together (one drying) most of the time unless the other person isn’t around. So it’s pretty fair and if one person is doing a little more of their fair share one week and drops hints the other will usually try to make up for it the next week or by cleaning some other part of the house or something. We’re both equally lazy (I’m slightly tidier though) so our house isn’t always ‘visitor ready’ though this doesn’t bother him. But it’s not that bad either.
We REALLY could do with a diswasher though and it’s in the plans (though will involve moving washing machine out into an outhouse to fit the dishwasher in our little kitchen :rolleyes: )
We are both very good cooks, so it gets split fairly evenly. It is rare that one of us does the whole meal. Usually the planning and main dish are done by one, and the other makes the salad, side dishes, etc. We both clean up, but the wife actually likes doing the dishes, so I do the pots and she does the rest. Like others, we grill often, and that is the responsibility of me, the Man. Open fire is where I shine. If it promises to be a nice weekend and I don’t have a debate tournament to go to, I’ll fire up the smoker and cook up a brisket or ribs or half a pig. Then we eat some, freeze the rest, and have leftovers for the next month!
We both like cooking large batches of stuff, so a Seal-a-Meal and a freezer are essential to our lifestyle.
I’m a bloke (none, but watch space) and I cook something like 99/100 times. Mrs hawthorne has her moments in the kitchen, but doesn’t like shopping, lacks patience (she set a wooden spoon on fire making risotto), never was an improvisor and doesn’t find it as enjoyable as I do. And she’s a damn good customer. Works well. I can do Italian, Malay, French, Thai and Vietnamese on my day. Having been to India recently, I have to say proper Indian and Sri Lankan aren’t quite the go.
I’m a SAHM, and DangerDad rarely gets home before 6.30, so I do the vast majority of the cooking, because I like to eat dinner before 8pm. Also, I’m a good cook, and he needs to learn more. I go through spurts of enthusiasm, so one night I’m trying new recipes, and another night we’re having frozen ravioli. I’m pretty good at cooking in bulk, too. I collect new recipes, and mostly enjoy cooking–I also like baking and dipping my own chocolates.
DangerDad has one really excellent dish, which he makes about once a month. Yum. He also does all the Saturday-morning cooking of French toast or pancakes. In these areas, he is better than I am. Otherwise, if I’m not home to make dinner, they open a can of soup or something.
He’s a very exact person and has a hard time with the fuzzy nature of cooking, while I just throw stuff together and see what happens. He can’t stand doing that until he’s done the recipe several times.
I do 99.9% of the cooking in the house. Probably even more. On the nights when I don’t feel like cooking, we either order in, go out, or “scavenge” - leftovers, canned food, etc.
Mr. Athena can cook - he’s demonstrated it to me one or two times. But he’s more happy when I just do it all. Of course, he usually stands around making sure I do it right. “Is that enough pasta?” “Yes, dear, it’s the same amount of pasta I make every single time I make pasta for us.” “Wouldn’t that be better with more cilantro?” “Yes, dear, it would, but cilantro takes forever to chop and I’m sick of chopping it so that’s what we get.” “Shouldn’t that be cooked a little longer?” “No, dear, it’ll be overdone if I cook it longer.” etc. etc. etc.
When we first got together, I’d do both the cooking AND the cleanup, but somewhere in the past couple of years he’s figured out that it’s not quite fair for me to do both, so he helps out a lot more now. And he’s cute, so I let him get away with doing whatever he wants anyway.
Open fire is where I shine. If it promises to be a nice weekend and I don’t have a debate tournament to go to, I’ll fire up the smoker and cook up a brisket or ribs or half a pig. Then we eat some, freeze the rest, and have leftovers for the next month!