I’m Grateful For My Husband’s Cooking & Think Gender Roles Make No Sense

Why do you care who made it, Dad?

Author’s photo montage of her husband’s home-cooked food. Top, L to R: 1) Homemade Pani Puri (Indian chaat) 2) Roasted bone marrow and snow crab, and 3) Bucatini with homemade Bolognese sauce and homemade bread. Bottom, L to R: 1) Bruschetta on homemade bread, 2) Kumamoto oysters with homemade mignonette sauce, and 3) homemade multi-course Thanksgiving meal for 25 relatives.

I am a lucky person. Friends and family remind me of that whenever they see what my husband has cooked for me. Whether we’re hosting a dinner party or posting a photo on social media, the food that emerges from his kitchen is incredible. He has a vast repertoire of dishes inspired by multiple cuisines from around the world, uses a number of interesting techniques (he likes to point out that he “sciences the s — out of it”), and is always looking for new boldly flavored dishes to make for us.

I used to enjoy cooking but the truth is I only did it because I love to eat. So when I started dating my now-husband and learned he loved to cook, I was happy to take a back seat in the kitchen. To me, cooking is just a means to eat. I don’t love the process of mincing garlic, rubbing the marinade into the chicken, or blending the sauce with a hand-held mixer. He actually finds cooking a form of stress relief.

Before we married, I used to cook mostly on the weekend when I had time to get all my ingredients ready and clean the kitchen afterward. Then I’d eat leftovers for most of the week and supplement with a Trader Joe’s frozen meal later in the week if I didn’t feel like cooking again during the week.