Cooking and Food Fights with Home Partners

[Carrot Top]

Just wait till the baby comes, Chris. Then you can multiply the food fights in the kitchen....add on the cornmeal they pull from the cupboard to dump on the floor and play in....the garlic press which is used for playdough...the muffin tins which are used for crayon muffins....

[Toasted]

My husband suddenly realized about six months ago that he hates spinach. Fine, don't eat it! But don't freaking tell the kids about how disgusting it is because now they feel completely justified in refusing to eat it too! God, I am so pissed off about this. Other than this, we generally get along in the kitchen because he doesn't cook or clean up or put anything thing away ever. I know this makes him sound like a total jerk but he's great in all other ways- really!

[nessa]

We don't have any conflicts in the kitchen.

The kitchen is my domain, and he never ever cooks. Ok, once in 7 years. And I like it like that since he does tend towards the control freak side of things. Our kitchen would be a battleground if he pretended to know what to do in one. I know his culinary preferences so thats what I serve him. If I don't like it that way, I make mine differently. No big deal! He likes pot roast and potatoes, I don't so I'll make him what he likes and then have a stirfry or Indian. He doesn't interefere with my food choices. The down side is that I'm a VERY messy cook. VERY. I've been called messy Nessy most my life.

So he doesnt help clean up either, but will be rather voiciferous if the kitchen isnt clean. A small price to pay for getting to be the kitchen tyrant! There are very few people that I play well with in the kitchen.

[Jujubee]

Ah, yes... being helpful. In my house, this often takes the form of "cleaning up for you," as in,

Chris: "Where's the butter that I'm softening?"

Andrea: "Back in the fridge. I was cleaning up for you."

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My husband does this too! In my house, I cook, he cleans. If there's a lull in my active cooking time (maybe something has been set to simmer for a while before I put on finishing touches) he will go in and start loading the dishwasher or something like that. Unfortunately, it never occurs to him that the food in little bowls (chopped parley, garlic, shallots, or maybe a few chunks of butter for finishing a sauce) is not suppose to be thrown away. Grrr.

[Chris Amirault]

I wanted to provide an update on this:

Chris: "Why do you always leave your keys, wallet, newspaper, and other non-food crap on the cutting board?"

Andrea: "There's no room anywhere else in the kitchen."

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We've recently cleared space off on the bottom shelf of our kitchen thingamajiggie, which we use to store pots, bowls, steamers, a breadbox, mortars and pestles, and a few other things. This space is designated specifically for Andrea's stuff. Any takers on whether it'll get used or not?

[Jake]

I wanted to provide an update on this:

Chris: "Why do you always leave your keys, wallet, newspaper, and other non-food crap on the cutting board?"

Andrea: "There's no room anywhere else in the kitchen."

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We've recently cleared space off on the bottom shelf of our kitchen thingamajiggie, which we use to store pots, bowls, steamers, a breadbox, mortars and pestles, and a few other things. This space is designated specifically for Andrea's stuff. Any takers on whether it'll get used or not?

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Bonne chance! I have cleared/designated a number of spots for the SO, put out containers for change etc. all to little or no avail. Before prepping dinner most nights I remove keys, change, cash (ok, well that goes to the chef/ ) cell phone, sunglasses from the kitchen counters. Plural intended on counters, it's not like they're all put together in one place!

[highchef]

There is too much crap on my counters as is, but when dh comes home it's full of charts, cards, keys (I am sorry, no one on this earth has more keys than the key master himself than my own dear husband) and just crap.

His bitch: I leave the ovens on

My bitch: he shuts them off when I go to the bathroom and I have to reheat them.

don't assume. Hell, when the cake's frosted and the ovens are still on, then bitch.

My bitch: He leaves food out all night, and since he gets up at 5 and I get up at 6 he puts it in the fridge before I get up and claims to have done it after he ate when he got home. I started feeling the stuff to see if it was cold. busted his butt after a couple of cases of food poisioning. Our dogs eat very well.

My bitch: he is never on time

solution: everyone eats when it's hot except him and he can help himself later..

problem: see above.

we've been married forever. It's just still so frickin' frustrating.

my advice to newlyweds..enjoy the sex.

[ellencho]

Awesome thread.

When the bf moved to first moved to Philly, one of the first things we cooked together was a breaded pan fried chicken breast cooked in a T-fal nonstick skillet his dad gave him. We managed to coat the chicken just fine, and get the first side of the chicken cooked in the oil, but he refused to add more oil, insisting that the temperature of the pan would change. Geez guy, how much oil were you planning on adding? So after this entire ordeal, one side of the chicken was perfectly cooked, the other side had a mix of burnt and toasted breadcrumbs. Blech.

Other things we fight about are him not soaking pots or forgetting that he had dirtied up pots, him using a knife to cut something open, and then throwing a perfectly clean knife into the sink and him using/eating food that I was saving for another purpose.

[Carrot Top]

Well. . .for you people with the problem that your (insert appropriate capital initials or defining-type name here ) leave stuff all over the countertops when they come home, there is always the solution of redirection, isn't there?

Just buy some of those velvet ropes they use to force people to stay in line at theatres and banks. Make sure they match the decor of your house, right color and texture and all. Hook 'em up before they get home in a path that leads directly to the spot where they are supposed to put their junk.

Do not allow unhooking of ropes till task is done.

Simple, no?

Behavioral technique. Just like rats. Or dogs or pigs, for that matter.

Edited September 11, 2005 by Carrot Top (log)

[highchef]

I didn't know where you were going with that velvet rope thing for a minute! If I could I'd have every single thing off my counters, but then they'd just jump to the kitchen table (which is crowded enough with my laptop).

[Marlene]

The island we built in our kitchen seems to have become the catch all dumping grounds for school books, bills, husband's keys etc. I'm constantly having to clear it off to use the surface for what I intended it for. Prepping. and we even have a desk behind the island that people can dump stuff on, but they never doo.

My biggest beef is that he never closes a kitchen cupboard door. One of these days, someone's going to walk right into one.

[Carrot Top]

I didn't know where you were going with that velvet rope thing for a minute!

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Well, dear. Let your imagination run free! Let it take you wherever you wish to go!

[lesfen]

My husband doesn't clean his plate. He'll leave blobs of sauces, veggie pieces, etc., on his plate and THEN he'll put it in the sink like that. My sibs and I were brought up using utencils with precision and if we couldn't get it with our utencils, sop it up with bread. Don't take more than you intend to eat and clean your plate. Those were the rules at our house and at grandma's house. I'm whining. If he would at least scrape what it doesn't eat into the trash... I don't know, it would probably still bug me.

[battleofthebulge]

Daily scenario:

I get home from work, having decided on a recipe, been to the supermarket and bought the groceries. I cook it and present it. He eats it. (His job for dinner is to light the candles.) Then, to be helpful, once we've finished, he moves the two plates all of three feet from the table top to the counter top. Even though the dishwasher is empty, he doesn't put the plates in the dishwasher. And the dirty pots? They don't even register on his radar as he potters off to the sofa, happy in the knowledge that he has done his bit.

So I get to stack the dishwasher and run it.

I *dread* to think what would happen if we ever have to live without the machine ...

Oh and he hates stewed fruit and thinks a great recipe is one that uses up as many leftover as possible. Quiche is his ultimate kitchen success. But we love each other dearly

Sarah

[Mottmott]

My wife and I have a deal. Whoever cooks, the other one does KP duty. I don't mind splitting it up like that, but dear lord, the woman uses every pan and bowl in the house. How can chicken and dumplings take 4 bowls, three pots, 2 cutting boards, and a baking pan?

And if I see her using the pizza cutter directly on the pizza stone agin, I'm going to throw it away... (the cutter, that is)

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I'm kicking this up because I just discovered that OXO has a plastic pizza cutter that is supposed not to damage nonstick surfaces. That might satisfy both of you.

[Busboy]

Last Saturday Mrs. B and I had it out over pasta shape and thickness. I wanted the stuff translucent, and rolled out in perfect shapes on the ravioli mold, while she wanted to get all rusticated and hand cut slabs of pasta the thickness and size of horse blankets. I got the last laugh: we both made a batch, but her pasta didn't seal well, some of them coming apart in the boiling water. It was like winning a court case on a technicality, but I'll take it.

Once we had such a knock down-drag out over Thanksgiving dinner that the dozen-and-a-half guests in the other room were pounded into stunned silence. "Maybe you shouldn't take dinner so seriously," whispered my social worker friend, Teresa, perhaps fearing that we'd be her next clients. We patched it up pretty quick, though, once I agreed to do what she wanted.

And then there's the ongoing "grilling versus pan-roasting" of beef....

[takomabaker]

I LOVE this!!! A place to vent. The kitchen is SO volatile.

1. Hates fish and the smell of fish and seafood. Before we were together it was the mainstay of my diet (I grew up on the Gulf). Now I can only eat it if I cook it on the grill and eat it outside.

2. Wants to eat the same thing over and over and over again. Variety is NOT the spice of life. Same thing with restaurants. We eat at the same one over and over again until the thought of going back makes me gag.

3. Has to buy everything in bulk. If one is good, then 15 is better. There are only 2 of us, but we have 2 refrigerators full of food. Like, I get my cinnamon from Penzey's, but she insisted on buying a 1/4 pound food service bulk pack of McCormick's cinnamon at Costco. WHY? I don't like cheap cinnamon, we could never use that much even if I did like it before it went stale, and I have to find a place to store it until it gets too old and I can finally throw it out. It drives me CRAZY!! However...

4. She's a 6th generation New Yorker, so for her all surfaces are for storage. No such thing as clear surfaces. If you don't have to sit on it, sleep on it, or eat off of it, it's storage. And the car trunk is an extension of the apartment. I thought it was funny when we were dating and she used her car for storage of things she bought in bulk, especially at 2 AM in January when we had to go to the car to get toilet paper. Nothing like carrying 4 rolls of Charmin down a street in Queens half-dressed on a Friday night. Now that we have a house in the burbs, it's not amusing to have enough canned peaches for the Apocalypse in the trunk of the Honda.

5. The thing that drives me MOST crazy... she washes her hands and other dirty items in the kitchen sink. You wash dishes in the sink. You wash dirt off of your hands and clean garden tools in the bathroom or under the hose. Likewise for dishtowels and dish sponges. They are only to be used on dishes. Not for drying off the dog, or wiping something off your shoe, or cleaning up a spill from the floor. And if they are used for a non-dish purchase, they are discarded or washed before being used again. She acts like I'm an obsessive-compulsive about this, but it's just common sense!

Whoo! I feel SO much better now!!!

[Jake]

Once we had such a knock down-drag out over Thanksgiving dinner that the dozen-and-a-half guests in the other room were pounded into stunned silence.  "Maybe you shouldn't take dinner so seriously," whispered my social worker friend, Theresa, perhaps fearing that we'd be her next clients.  We patched it up pretty quick, though, once I agreed to do what she wanted.

And then there's the ongoing "grilling versus pan-roasting" of beef....

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OMG, I completely forgot about kitchen fights whilst entertaining!!

New Year's Eve dinner, four or five courses, I'm cooking for 8. Mr. J is not a bad cook, but is still learning and to be fair has no formal training. The main course is something he has never prepared, or seen prepared. He comes into the kitchen to "help" and proceeds to tell me he doesn't think I'm doing it right and giving instructions and increasing the flame on a couple burners "so people don't have to wait so long"! Have you ever tried to have a fight whispering?? Needless to say the sound of pots banging, the smell of burning sauce and my sweetly yelled "Get the f*&k out of my kitchen" left no doubt as to what was going on. All was patched up fine, but it did take me the better part of a bottle of wine to get that course on the table.

[racheld]

takomabaker:

re: #3---I understand the garden tools and shoe wipes, etc., but how far is your bathroom from the kitchen? I wash my hands many times during the course of preparing a meal, and cannot fathom how washing off flour or butter or scrubbing after handling chicken would besmirch your kitchen sink. How's that worse than washing stuff down the disposal? Don't you always sanitize your sink while/after cooking anyway?

That's a lotta steps to travel, when you could just wash your food-touched hands in the kitchen.

[highchef]

I think takomabaker is talking about things like washing the bottom of your shoes (dog poop) or cleaning tools like my hubby does and makes the whole sink/kitchen smell like gasoline. In his defense, he does not have a sink outside, but there is a hose that will do just fine to rinse off that thingamagig that he's been soaking in gasoline for a few hours. I cannot stand the smell of gas and/or oil in the kitchen. It plays havoc with my culinary muse if I've been lucky enough to get one....

[Campofiorin]

We don't really have conflicts except when one of us comes to help the other one and tries to rule (usually me since I do most of the cooking).

-Things she does that get me peved:

Leave on the counter unrinsed glasses of OJ or milk and plates or bowls that have Rice Krispies stuck to it.

-Leave her plate on the table and go do something else after a meal I just cooked leaving me cleaning up after her.

-Not knowing about seasoning food.

-Taking something in the cupboard and putting somewhere else in said cupboard making it a mess after a couple of weeks.

-Throwing expired stuff right away and not wanting to drink milk that will expire tomorrow.

-The garlic press...

Turning the handle of a pot when helping me, I'm a leftie.

Things I do that irritate her:

-Forgetting to clean the oven's surface.

-Not always cleaning the sink properly when I'm done cleaning the dishes.

-Leaving expired stuff in the fridge.

-Being to heavy on spicy stuff. What? I like my mexican food spicy!

[takomabaker]

takomabaker:

re:  #3---I understand the garden tools and shoe wipes, etc., but how far is your bathroom from the kitchen?  I wash my hands many times during the course of preparing a meal, and cannot fathom how washing off flour or butter or scrubbing after handling chicken would besmirch your kitchen sink.    How's that worse than washing stuff down the disposal?  Don't you always sanitize your sink while/after cooking anyway?

That's a lotta steps to travel, when you could just wash your food-touched hands in the kitchen.

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I agree with you. I wasn't talking about washing hands while cooking. I was talking about coming in from checking the oil in the car or fertilizing the tomatoes and washing hands in the kitchen sink. I don't like non-food related dirt in the kitchen sink, although I SUPPOSE that there isn't much difference between rinsing off a chicken and washing hands after gardening. It's just my take it on I guess.

[Wayne]

My second post to this thread is something I'd forgotten:

My wife and I would always have an arguement concerning resting meat

after roasting, grilling...etc... She insisted it had to be served/carved

immediatelly whereas I insisted it should be allowed to rest then served/

carved. This went on for a lon...g time until I suggested she could have

her way if she could find one cookbook in our rather large collection (or

public library) that did not advocate allowing meat to rest.

There were no more arguements

Cheers.

[JEL]

my wife's lack of good kitchen habits/skills made me crazy for a number of years, until our two daughters told her she really didn't need to cook any more.......

i have always done most of the cooking, but there were times, before the epiphany, that she would jump right in and crank out some of the worst shit in the world..........

her favorite was overcooked pasta........

coupled with the fact that she had no real interest in planning meals, or enjoyment of the preperation process, really made it a bad experience for her........

we found that by shopping together, planning a weeks worth of meals, knowing what's in the pantry, and working as a family about food, has made a big difference in both the quality of the food we eat, as well as, it's cost and convenience.........

our daughters are now learning the kitchen skills that i learned from my mother and grandmothers, we can prepare a meal for as few as two of us, or, 20-30 guests with relative ease, and everyone is happy and proud of how things are........

not a bad deal............

[sparrowgrass]

I am sooo glad I am not married any more.