The beloved cook is on the left. The problematic non-cook is on the right.
The Non-Cook Manifesto
Third Installment
August, 2011
Third Installment
August, 2011
WORKING DEFINITION OF THE TERM NON-COOK
A non-cook is a person who does not think of herself or himself as a cook.
SWITCHING TO THE FIRST PERSON FOR A
MOMENT, OR MAYBE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE
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It seems inadvisable to continue – to write another non-cook word or take another non-cook bite – without examining certain non-cook feelings about the non-cook/cook dynamic.
This manifesto being what it is, the non-cook/cook dynamic will be described from the point of view of the non-cook, based on the feelings of the non-cook. If it were to be described from the point of view of the cook based on the feelings of the cook, it would not be knowledgeable. It would be totally guessing. Furthermore, it seems that it is not really useful (knowledgeable?) at this stage to examine the feelings of the non-cook in general. No. What is most useful is to be specific. So I would now like to switch for a moment – or maybe for the rest of my life? – to the first person. I would like to examine the non-cook/cook dynamic in which I am most intimately implicated, the one between myself and my beloved husband, the cook who is closest and most important to me. After all, I did not even realize that I was a non-cook until I began to see myself in relation to him. I would like to say how I feel about a certain aspect of the non-cook/cook roles in our household. This is risky. I confess, I am a little afraid. What if I say something he, the cook, doesn’t like? What if I say something difficult to hear or challenging? This would be bad. Yet it is certain to happen! Some of my feelings are not glorious but small, cantankerous, and irrational. Overcomplicated? Picky? Paranoid? If I acknowledge the existence of these feelings – if I go so far as to detail these feelings – then what will happen?? He might get mad. Mad is ok. Mad is something people get when other people say things they don’t like. But he might get mad and upset and hurt and then he might stop cooking. This would be a disaster. This would be a disaster because then I would have nothing good to eat. But it would also be a disaster because I feel that it would make him sad not to cook; he seems to love it so. How could I live with being responsible for keeping him from doing what he loves to do? This is a good question. Would I actually have been responsible for him not cooking? Or would I only have been responsible for making him mad? Responsibility for the cook’s potential not cooking behavior aside, there’s this: cooking is clearly one of the ways he shows his love, so if he were to stop cooking, what would this imply…? The cooking equals love equation is disturbing for that very reason: what does it imply? What’s more, though the cooking might sometimes, somehow, in some way equal the love, they are also – simultaneously – two separate things. So you can think of them as equivalents, but you can also think of them as addends. And if you ask me, if you add the cook’s cooking and a cook’s love together, you get something way greater than the sum of the parts – you get a super duper powerful alpha force, which could be used to take over the world. Or control the household. Or anyway definitely seal the deal on major say-so in the kitchen, which is a strategic advantage both logistically and emotionally. He who is in charge of the kitchen is running a whole lot more than the dishwasher. Woe to the poor unfortunate non-cook who chances to unwittingly undermine the cook or make some kind of ill advised grab for power such as not being hungry! Dry black bread and water for you! But more likely: something delicious regardless, something yummy to the core, something that you cannot resist after all, something to seal the cook’s supremacy, because it’s no accident that he’s the one who is the cook, and he’s not going to lower his standards just because of your bad behavior, bad reasons, or initial refusal to be cooked for. Maybe I better hold it right there. Maybe I should say no more. Maybe I shouldn’t risk upsetting anyone (him!) by mentioning things like power, control, and strange equations involving food and love. Maybe it isn’t worth it. But what about the feelings? Suppose part of the human effort to evolve is the examination of feelings? And what if the suppression of N-C feelings, mixed with the poisonous guilt and shame associated with being a N-C, becomes a kind of low-grade toxin, a toxin that is surely very bad for the appetite. And so I repeat my theme: Woe to the poor unfortunate non-cook who is not eating yet lives in the household of a cook! Double woe to the non-cook who doesn’t feel like eating that. And if you don’t feel like eating it because you don’t like it…I fear for you (me!): hell hath no fury like a cook whose food has been left on the plate. Back to cooking equals love: If indeed cooking equals love and you are not accepting the food, what does that imply…? Rejection! Only what if cooking doesn’t always equal love – what if this is a fallacy, or a case of mistaken identity? What if cooking is sometimes the body double of love? A stand-in. An imposter. What if the cooking is hanging around claiming to be the love when actually --- actually --- it is just the cooking, plain and simple (or fancy, or French, or vegan, or raw, or whatever). Suppose the cooking is having an identity crisis while the love is happily off somewhere else. Maybe the love is waiting for everybody to finish eating and come to bed! Here, there will be no case of mistaken identity or body doubles! And by the same token, what if not wanting to eat does not equal rejection? What if not wanting to eat is only in disguise as rejection while any actual rejection (of love, you see, of love) is on vacation someplace in Europe, eating some other food, probably in a restaurant, not thinking at all of my beloved husband and myself, and actually planning to stay abroad for a long time, hanging around with other rejection and speaking multiple languages. Then we have a very different dynamic. Then, we do not have love and the rejection of love. Instead, we have very good food cooked with love and we have someone who loves the cook but doesn’t feel like eating right now. Or fine, doesn’t feel like eating that right now. Or ok, isn’t going to eat that ever. But in any case, hello big enormous energy efficient refrigerator! Ok, I think that covers it --- covers it lightly, true, but covers it. Better quit now, I think, since a sinking feeling has lodged itself in the pit of my stomach, where food would be if I were not an unregenerate meal skipper: Maybe I shouldn’t be saying anything that makes me look bad. Non-cooks have bad enough reputations as it is. Now here I am confessing that I’m a non-cook, which is practically like boasting that I’m a non-cook, and now here I am discussing the underbelly of food as love, saying an unorthodox thing about what the non-cook owes the cook in the way of food consumption, and failing to stick to the non-cook/cook dynamic of my own household on top of it! I think I generalized more than once! And where the heck are my manners? After all, next to the cook, I am a totally undeserving so and so who hasn’t even managed to make a decent breakfast in months, whose food is a joke, who’s attitude is unremittingly defeatist: what’s the point of trying when no one in their right mind would prefer my food, anyway? It is impossible to avoid the jealous resentment that must follow: Why does the standard always, always, always have to be so high? Could be better not to ask this question. Could be better not to develop this line of inquiry. After all, I’m supposed to be speaking from the point of view of the non-cook, based on the feelings of the non-cook, and let’s face it full on: What in the world do I know about standards, when it comes to cooking? And I think I really better stop there. Except for one thing. I didn’t forget, I was saving it for the end: here are the other, the non-unmentionable, the glorious things I feel about my beloved husband in his role as the cook: Gratitude
Admiration (as in the groupie/rock star dynamic) Awe (as is the audience/Olympic figure skater dynamic) Love associated with need Love associated with want Love associated with love |