Michel Boucher wrote:

> [kitchen horrors excised]
>
> I have a medium-sized non-stick frying pan that my wife has been
> instructed to use when she feels the urge to cook herself something.
> She is not allowed to use my knives or my pans or my bowls or my pots
> (and I say mine because I bought them with my money, not household
> money). To her credit, she went and bought an IKEA 5$ set of knives
> for herself which of course now end up everywhere in the kitchen. On
> the down side, she insists on using the spaghetti fork to serve salads
> (instead of the salad servers I bought) and trying to cut bread with
> her cheapo IKEA knives, while using the bread knife to slice meat or
> spread peanut butter...you get the idea. And *she* took Home Ec
> classes in school while I had to take shop. You'd think an economist
> would be able to get a clue...

The only reason I forbade her from using my good non stick pans is that,
despite repeated instruction not to use them on high heat, she has gone
ahead and done so and ruined them. Our stainless pats and pans also came
with instructions not to leave them on high. She cooks like she drivers,
foot on the floor or on the brake. I tried pointing out that there is heat
level adjustment on the stove, from high to low. Once a pot is boiling it
can be turned down low enough to maintain a boil without wasting as power
and endangering the pots and their contents.


> My main gripe is that I have a specific area where I work (between the
> stove, the fridge and the sink). This is also where everyone else will
> come and drop everything they can, empty beer bottles, dirty dishes and
> cutlery, dirty cups, bags of nuts, teapots, empty coffee pots...not all
> at once, but in sizeable groupings. Cleaning up for every meal is an
> uphill frikkin battle and somehow the annoyance of it is not ever
> registered as a bad thing. To make matters worse, the dishwasher (a
> roll-up unit) sits between the stove and the fridge (there really is no
> other place to put in when it's not in use) and is often open when I
> start supper which means that if I don't think about closing it, I can
> bang myself on the door, as the many bruises on my shins attest.

Kitchen incompatibility is a common problem. My biggest problem is her
deciding to empty the dishwasher while I am cooking. I always figured that
that sort of thing should be done some time after a meal, not as you are
preparing the next one. Yeah, yeah, shame on me for not checking it and
emptying it myself before I started cooking, but I was usually out at work
all day and stupidly assumed that it had been done. The worst is when I am
picking up a hot pan or pot to drain it or put it somewhere and she
suddenly scoots in behind me.

My coping strategy has been to assign her tasks. I will get her to get
things out of the panty or the fridge, both of which are on the other side
of the kitchen. She resents being my errand runner, but it keeps her out of
the way.

I realized a long time ago that I work better alone in the kitchen,
especially when we are entertaining. Since she has problems organizing,
timing and multi tasking, I almost always do cooking for company. She was
banned from the kitchen on those occasions because of a stunt she pulled on
me once. I had a roast of beef in the oven and had everything under
control. I like to let the roast rest for 15-20 minutes before carving. The
beef was progressing nicely and I figured it was time to put on the
potatoes, and about 10 minutes after I started them I would take the roast
out of the oven. When I went into the kitchen to do that I discovered that
the beans were already cooking. Maybe it was a test of my composure to see
if I would freak out in front of the guests. Hell, if she had an
uncontrollable urge to start on of the vegetables, she should have done the
potatoes.



> Should we ever be so conspicuously bourgeois as to feel compelled to
> own a house, I will have a separate guest kitchen set up with a small
> stove and some cheapo implements and a sink. The non-cooks (and that's
> every female in our family) will not be allowed in the kitchen proper
> to cook.

You need to buy a house that has been owned by an immigrant family with the
requisite "Italian kitchen". :-)


> This week she's abroad at a conference. The kitchen is still fairly
> tidy and the only thing in my work area is what I put there myself.

I can't throw stones about mess, because I am not good at cleaning up. I
can live with my mess. It's other people's mess that I have trouble with.