To be green with envy at women whose partners cook

[CinnamonBuns]

Not a TAAT but just read the veggie Christmas thread about the husband who cooks a three course meal from scratch

My partner has never even made me
a sandwich in 5 years :(

So pissed off at having to cook every fucking meal. If I say, no you're cooking tonight, he'll order a takeaway which I don't really like.

I didn't think it was a big deal when we were dating that he didn't cook but 5 years down the line I'm sick of it.

WAAAH!

You'd hate me Rag for lunch I have hot food too, usually leftovers from dinner mmmm

My mum and gran always said that cold food isn't good for the stomach and with this weather, there's nothing like a good stew or casserole to warm you up. I couldn't give me dcs cold dinner

Just had to step in and say that not all men who move in straight from their parents are useless. Or should I say untrainable?

DH moved in with me straight from his parents (and he most definitely did not have shiny shoes!). He couldn't do anything for himself, but he soon learned to!

Nowadays he's in charge of the laundry and I'm in charge of the cooking. Although he always cooks the 'glory' meals - Sunday roasts, and steak and chips, that sort of thing, or if we have people over. Plus he makes breakfast at the weekends. It's working out pretty well :)

Cinnamon
So, he got his timings wrong this evening : common with chicken
BUT
was the experience over all positive and made you giggle enough to get him to try another supper later in the week ?

I've not had hot lunches for over 35 years : I'm used to saving my intake for supper !

Well done for holding strong Cinnamon. Don't break. When's next?

(Also, who cooked the kid's tea??).

Talkin - do you only eat once a day?

artandco
On fast days I eat supper only
four days a week I have a small lunch or breakfast and then supper
I've not eaten 3 meals a day (other than when on holiday) in 20 years

Wow - I would prob wilt away if I did that..

Artandco
I'm used to it : and my TDEE is only 1500 calories on a non gym day
so tonight's toad in the hole, onion gravy and broccoli washed down with red wine (cheers DH and DS) was 2/3 of my intake

What is tdee?

Total Daily Energy Expenditure
ie the calorie needs of an individual, taking into account age, height, weight and exercise levels
thefastdiet.co.uk/how-many-calories-on-a-non-fast-day/

sadly it drops as you get older

yes I was also wondering about who cooked kids' dinner.

when DH is being in charge of a meal that means he definitely cooks for the the children

Talkin - mine is apparently just over 2000 calories. However that wouldn't be enough for me. If I eat around that I loose weight. I'm only 7stone 10 and can only maintain that at around 2800 calories a day, any less and like I said I loose weight. It's a pain as I'm never hungry but have to just eat lots!

Its hard to have sympathy if that is how he was before. However humans are ultimately reasonably creatures. Why don't you discuss with him about this issue? You are both adults in a relationship, you are both equals.

Five years is a really long time to wait for a sandwich....

Maybe no one has ever taught him to cook? Sometimes starting something new is just about getting a routine and getting comfortable with the idea.

Talkin - I would wilt too, I'm super skinny with high metab and need to eat or I turn into a rat bag!

The kids eat much earlier than P would be home, but he picked up a couple of 'annabel karmel' ready meals so I really didn't do any cooking today!

It was a good experience overall and I asked him what he's planning on making for Saturday, just so he knows this isn't a one off

so a good result over all, well done!

I do the vast majority of the cooking at our house. I've gone through periods when I tasked everyone with a cooking night and then just done the leftover nights myself. But somehow that always falls by the wayside (and I have only myself to blame). Now that my kids are grown and gone and the niece and nephew who lived with us their last two years of high school are also on their own and my husband has had to take a job across the country due to a layoff here and nothing else available (and I'm in the US, so across the country is a loooong way away!), I have to do more than just the cooking! I'm in charge of not only the cooking, cleaning and laundry (the latter two of which have always been shared between us), I also have to do the yard work, house repairs, car repairs, etc. I told my husband that I thought I had the better end of the stick when he's home as I would much rather cook than mow the yard when it is 90+ degrees F outside. He said now that he's doing his own cooking, he is convinced he has the best division of labor when he's home as he would rather do yard work in the heat than have to cook.

Ah, if you lived in the US there would be the perfect cure to this: take him to a diner and start pointing out the clientele. Because unlike in the movies, American diners are not actually filled with teenagers drinking milkshakes. They are all filled with sad old men. All hours of the day, every day of the year: lots and lots of sad old men eating a limited number of combinations of eggs and potatoes in rotation, every day. Reason being, they never learnt to cook and are helpless when their wives are out of the picture, so end up eating all three meals in a diner for the rest of their life. It's utterly depressing.

Actually this past weekend my partner and I were in a diner getting some coffee, and this poor old guy was getting really upset because he'd just found out they would be closing early on the day of Thanksgiving so he wouldn't be able to eat there in the evening. It was pretty heart-breaking. But a good way to drive home the point that far from being macho a man who doesn't have the basic knowledge and skills necessary to feed himself, is kind of pitiful...

So I don't really know anymore what the equivalent of a diner is back home in the UK: the pub maybe? A place where helpless old men go, who don't know how to take care of themselves. Where ever it is -- perhaps pointing out to him how genuinely pathetic it is that he doesn't have basic adult skills would be a start.

(fyi -- I feel the same about a guy who can't clean a house or look after his clothes. It seems almost like a social disability to be so utterly dependent on your mother/wife/girlfriends, no?)

missmorse - a greasy spoon probably. They served breakfast lunch and dinner.

I watched a programme in Spain where they were teaching widowed men how to cook basic things once.

Top-notch mansplaining up there!

No one taught me to cook, same with a lot of us here. I was able to learn, and even met people with penises who also taught themselves. It was even before the Internet, too. We leaned without YouTube or free recipes. Because, unless vector calculus or thermodynamics, it is not at all difficult.

How about a nice "Cookery for Men" course for Christmas?

Miss morse- probably a grease spoon as above.
A pub is usually a nice place with variety of ages and cliental. You do get some pubs with old men in early in morning, but generally pubs open around 11am -11pm and standard really depends on area. The pub closest to us is a gastro pub so does food at excellent standards, but isn't cheap either (£15-20 per meal of one course on average. More for certain ones)

You know that thread about what you would tell your 18 year old self? Well, I would tell my 18 year old self that despite 40 years of feminism, men still pull this crap and women still enable them. But I wouldn't believe myself.........

DP makes all of our meals (literally, apart from breakfast some weekends). I feel guilty about it but he's great at cooking, can make a lot of different dishes and I'm not very good at all. Sometimes we will make separate meals for dinner but if not, he does it all.
He does the majority of the housework too since his shifts are less chaotic than mine, and although he doesn't mind and quite likes doing it, I'm doing more these days because it feels a bit unfair to let him do everything.

Hak

that thread is about what your 18 year old self would tell you now.
and if you read this one you'll see that things have moved on in a positive direction.