Micromanagement: turnabout is fair play
December 29, 2014
Do you cook with your partner?
I read “How Cooking With My Boyfriend Showed Me Our Relationship Was Toxic” and in between shaking my head over the clearly slothful boyfriend who expected to be served and catered to, I realized, oh wait, PiC and I can’t cook together anymore.
You know I adore him, obviously, and this doesn’t affect our actual relationship, but we cannot be co-chefs.
He can be my sous chef, he’s all over the grocery shopping as necessary and the dishwashing as well, but otherwise, he gets the boot when I’m cooking. And likewise if he’s cooking, I just set out the ingredients for him, get out of the kitchen and do the clearing up after.
We just don’t work well together! He’s a backseat chef, questioning whether I should be doing or not doing something a certain way, which drives me nuts. I tell to “just shush and dice the onions. I don’t care what they look like as long as it’s cut up!” which drives him nuts.
See, for all that I’m a Type A in other things, the kitchen is where I get to be haphazard, laissez-faire and not really follow directions fully. Just like he defies the GPS’s recommendations, I routinely take only what I want from recipes and with a little guidance from Twitter, barrel along my happy way. That also means I don’t want to answer many questions that aren’t important to the taste. (To be fair, sometimes how a veggie is sliced actually does make a difference but never does the size of the minced garlic matter.)
He, on the other hand, and he needs structure and specifications, dammit! If he could get measurement requests down to the millimeter, he’d be in sous chef heaven.
Basically it came down to this: unlike other things about the house, neither of us could fundamentally compromise on our styles. So, out ye get, non-primary chef.
My firm rule about separation in the kitchen was an ongoing joke, mostly him ribbing me over my refusal to deal with his running commentary, until one day ….
We were having brunch with a dear friend who is, in many ways, just like him. So, as he tried to slice the bread, she was hanging over his shoulder scolding him for how much it was getting squished. As he started to fry up, she was at his elbow, surveying, heck, I don’t know, his spatula technique? She actually rattled him enough that he spilled some egg! He’s had his occasional kitchen snafus but never when there are witnesses. That’s also my area.
True to form, I sat in the other room working, chuckling over the hollering (mostly hers) and the fuming (mostly him).
Honestly, I thought the best part was that she didn’t know how irritating she was being. I was very wrong. The best part was actually later in the day when he turned to me and said: oh my God!
Didn’t even need context, I knew immediately what he meant. I started to laugh, and said, “Yeah. But it’s about time you got a dose of your own medicine.”
The look on his face was priceless. “NO WAY. That’s what it’s like?!?”
“YEEEEEP. This is why you stay out of my kitchen.”
“Oh. My God.”
“Yeah. Seriously. Stay out of my kitchen.”
I hope to be married someday to someone who tells me to get out of the kitchen and let them take the lead! 🙂 I’ll do the dishes. 🙂
Hear, hear! 🙂
I say that’s a perfectly fair trade!
If I try to cook Snork Maiden always keeps criticizing and telling me to do things differently. So, I don’t cook except to do some minor things to help her… So she cooks, and I clean…
Hah I couldn’t stand that either 😀
Oh I’m the guilty one in our relationship- he *thinks* he knows what he’s doing but then (for example) cuts carrots into coins instead of julienne for a dish where it makes a difference. Mostly through I can’t stand how long he takes and how much mess he makes as he works. He hates taking direction from me. I hate trying to give directions (I don’t know how much fruit I add, just until it looks right…) so yes, we stay the HELL out of each other’s kitchen and I eat dinner with my back to the cooking area so I can’t see any mess.
Hehe we may not all be the guilty ones but we all sure do have our opinions 🙂
I have a guy who does that to me at work (I’ve seen him do it to someone else). Sometimes, I just walk away. It’s ridiculous (and slightly amusing).
I’d have *much* less a sense of humor about it at work if someone had the nerve to do that to me. Then again, I don’t like anyone at work THAT much to put up with shenanigans 🙂
LOL! Same here – although my hubby is the one who gets upset if I am in the kitchen when he is cooking, I’m getting in his way. But he feels perfectly at ease getting in my way or telling me when I am not doing something “the right way”. It has been this way for last couple decades 😀 Of course he is the same way when I drive – I so prefer him asleep in the car.
Hah! Yes, backseat drivers, too, the lot of them 😀
Our biggest problem in the kitchen is, I like to keep things as clean as possible and, to some extent, clean as I go (we have always had tiny kitchens…). I always wind up annoying him when I’m trying to be helpful.
Oh yes I LOVE cleaning as I go – it’s what I do in between active cooking and waiting for something to simmer or whatever.
Haha! Love it. Mr. Frugalwoods is our exclusive chef–I don’t cook at all, so I’d say I have a pretty good deal going on :). We’re evenly divided in our chores/responsibilities and we actually rarely cross-over. We do pretty well on the stuff we do collaborate on, but I don’t think he’d appreciate having me in the kitchen 😉
Not a bad deal at all! I love cooking but I equally love eating when I didn’t cook. We’re great partners if the division of labor is VERY clear so can even manage in the kitchen if he’s being sous chef and I’m doing everything else but if I don’t NEED help … clear on out people! 😀