I Don’t Cook

Postaday for June 12th: Ingredients. What’s the one item in your kitchen you can’t possibly cook without? A spice, your grandma’s measuring cup, instant ramen — what’s your magic ingredient, and why?

My wife does all the cooking. She’s good at it, and she likes it. Sometimes she asks me to grill things. Sometimes she asks me to chop things. And/or put them in a pot. And sometimes stir. And sometimes add other ingredients. On occasion she’ll give me a recipe and ask me to prep it for her, or do the middle part, or finish it, or all three. Which I do, but, I don’t cook. She does all the cooking.

Usually I’m the one who goes to grocery store. My wife does all the meal planning, unless I do it— but it’s better when she does it, since she does all the cooking. She’ll send me to the store with a list, and on those occasions when I go without a list, or go without her asking me to go, I end up getting the kinds of things she needs to cook our meals.

That’s also how I handle it when she doesn’t have a meal planned, and I end up going to the store anyway, and bringing things home for her to cook. Or if I’m going to get a recipe started that she didn’t know about, since she winds up cooking it anyway. Or a recipe I follow all the way through. Still, she’s the cook.

The one item that gets me through all of this is Pandora. I put Pandora on the iPad or my mobile with a pair of headphones, or on the TV. I like to listen to mellow, minimalist music when I’m helping my wife when she does all the cooking. Today, for example, she’s going to be stuck in traffic, so I’m going to get everything ready for her.

At about five o’clock (we tend to eat early, go to bed early, get up early) I’ll put Pandora on the TV. A station based off a band called The Sound Defects (bands like Bonobo, Time Machine, Gramatik, Wax Tailor instrumentals, and so on). I’ll get some green peppers out so she can make stuffed peppers. I’ll cut the tops off and scoop out the insides.

I’ll brown some meat and chop some onions for her to add to the meat. If traffic is really bad (like it often is on a Friday) I’ll add the spices for her, shred some cheese. If she needs me to, I can put the meat combo into the pepper, and start the oven for her to bake them. Sometimes when she gets home she’s exhausted from the commute, so if need’s be, I can put the stuffed peppers into the oven. She might ask me to help her prepare them by checking to see if they’re nearly done. Then I can switch on the broiler, let them brown a bit, top them with the shredded cheese. I can do those things for her because she’s an amazing cook.

And since I don’t cook, it’s only fair that I do the dishes. She tells me this pretty much every time. But that’s okay because I’ve got that Pandora playing in the background.