God bless men who cook

I admire a man who cooks, and the fortunate woman who has such a fellow around the house. Any mother who teaches her sons to cook is a credit to her gender and a great benefactor to future daughters-in-law.


The Cuban school principal who lives across the way from us does all the cooking, breakfast and dinner. If I'm around at mealtime he insists I join them, whether it's a breakfast shake of bananas and strawberries or dinner of roast pork (no, I'm not going to tell him I'm vegetarian). He brings home huge chunks of meat and cuts them up himself, to make more than one meal for his family of six, and his recipes are usually based on Cuban cuisine. I teasingly asked him once when he was going to open a restaurant, and he replied with all seriousness that he's just looking for the right building site.


A couple is staying next door while their house is being remodeled, and he's the official cook in that home too. She says when they married he told her that her cooking wasn't up to snuff, so he got the job. They're not saying who made that decision, but they both seem satisfied with it.

I've seen my son cook, and it made me so proud, though he didn't learn it from me. Guess he picked it up from a girlfriend. 

Capt Cookie does it again... Oatmeal raisin tonight

Although the Capt doesn't often cook meals,  at least once a week he bakes cookies. So far he's mastered oatmeal-raisin, lemon-coconut, ginger molasses with crystallized ginger (even crystallized the ginger!) and peanut butter. I can't decide which I like best. I try to limit my gorging to right when they come out of the oven, and avoid them after that.


If I'm not in a rush, I find myself enjoying the whole chopping, stirring, combining, recipe-consulting process. But as any cook will tell you, doing it day after day wears down the imagination. After a while I run out of ideas and lose the incentive to find new ones. Yet when we eat out we usually (with a few exceptions) agree we could have a better dinner at home for a lot less. 

It's probably good to think of the cooking process as an art, but only when it's viewed as one of those ephemeral arts, like Tibetan sand painting, created to be demolished. And if a meal turns out to be a major masterpiece, I could always take a photo, couldn't I?