I used to feel guilty when other people made me dinner, and so I’d volunteer to help out. It took me a while to realize that this only a benefit to the chef if the volunteer actually has some idea how to prepare food.
It’s not like I don’t know my way around a kitchen. I happen to know that in most cases you can circumnavigate almost any kitchen and eventually locate a doorway that leads out to a room in which you can find the television. I was born with these instincts; some people train their entire lives to gain such a degree of culinary skill.
Why did I try to help out in the kitchen? I’m a feminist, although it’s a male version of feminism so you know it roughly translates to “It’s bad form to put your feet up on a woman’s back and tap out your cigar ash on her head.” In any event, it was enough to make me wander into the kitchen and try to help. For example, I always liked icing cakes as a kid. So if I saw a stew or a casserole, the old culinary instinct would kick in and I’d slather them with frosting. Or if I saw a soufflé that doesn’t seem perky enough, I’d jump up and down and shout “ARISE AND WAKEN, GREET THE NEW DAY.”
This all changed when I found out there’s no such thing as a “Good Samaritan” law for the kitchen. If you see a stranger in trouble and attempt to help out--for example, applying CPR--you’re protected from legal retaliation by the Good Samaritan law. This apparently does not hold true in the kitchen. If you interfere with food in progress and the chef does not approve of your creative direction, the chef has the legal right to sue you and also brain you with a Williams-Sonoma garlic mincer.
Things are much better now. I watch TV and then eat and the chef says “Thank you so much for helping out. What you did made everything go so much more smoothly.” And I say “It was nothing.” To which the response is always “Exactly. Thank you so, so much for doing absolutely nothing. Otherwise we wouldn’t be eating.”
... and television-watching dinner guests the world over were suddenly liberated, and a great cry went up : thank you greg!
what, that’s not in your book of revelations?
Do you tell that story on dates?
want some tips? bring something good that requires no cooking or preparation (in addition to wine). If I were you, I would bring nice cheese and bread. Or Trader Joe’s sells some yummy chocolate puddi
ng to which you can add spray whipped cream and cookies.
“Garlic mincer” sounds like a slur for a gay Italian guy.
“It’s bad form to put your feet up on a woman’s back and tap out your cigar ash on her head.”
good luck topping that one this year...I’ll be waiting and watching.
The bad form sentence had me spitting coffee - fuuunny!
since when do you smoke cigars?!
also? to me, helping out in the kitchen = i cook, you clean up. fair and square.
Hahaha, I’m just like you. I can’t cook at all, and I always hover in the kitchen, feeling helpless and feebly volunteering to help, before realizing that I’m just causing more trouble, and leaving to go sit in the living room and watch tv.
the best way to help…
is with dishes.
and by reciprocating.
I love to cook but that doesn’t mean Im much good at helping; I want to mince when they want me to julienne, or we argue about how to cut the butter in the piecrust, or somehow I alienate myself and everybody else.
Then when it’s time to do house maintenance work, to re-pipe a sink or design the deck or wire the house for computer overlord control, I kind of stand around a lot. I guess I’m looking for the spackle - the fix-it equivalent of frosting. mmmm, spackle....
Well, my father always makes dinner. I don’t think my mother made dinner for three years, even before I moved out.
And all the professional chefs are male, yet there’s a stereotype that women should do the cooking.
I’m a feminist, although it’s a male version of feminism so you know it roughly translates to “It’s bad form to put your feet up on a woman’s back and tap out your cigar ash on her head.”
Stamped “Approved”