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Him
& Her:
He's the Missing Link
in the Food Chain
by Nancy and Dan Sapir
HE
SAYS: I've always been a meat and potatoes kind of guy. Throw a steak
on the grill, douse it with BBQ sauce, nuke a potato, slather on sour
cream and some butter and I couldn't be happier.
The problem is she hates the stuff I live by. She loathes chili and she
thinks pot roast is unimaginative. And I wish she'd make meatloaf the way
my mother did with hard boiled eggs in the middle. Every hunk had a slice
of egg in the middle. She says, "Get over it. Are you looking for
breakfast or dinner?"
Speaking of breakfast, I'm a fanatic for corned beef hash. Mix in fried
onions and a few slices of American cheese, throw on a couple of over-easys…
heaven. She calls it jungle rot. What does she make? She slaves over veal
piccatta, chicken marsala, sauerbraten and the like. She spices and
hammers the meat on the counter with some kind of mallet. That sauerbraten
gets marinated and sits soaking in the fridge for four days. She grates
ginger snaps and adds it to the brine. She thinks nothing of shredding up
red cabbage for pickling, and she hand grates potatoes for latkes. She
lights candles and sips wine from crystal glasses. I mean, what is all
that about? How can a person sit down and enjoy a meal that takes days to
prepare. She makes up these popovers that must use up a dozen eggs. What's
wrong with the supermarket bakery.. we've got two of them in Kingston.
I remember one time she made up these crepe things. What's with
strawberries with some kind of sweet cheese rolled up and fried in a pan?
I didn't know if it was dessert or a meal.
Why do women have to give you a big store list with about 50 ingredients
for making a meal that could be done easier with some ground beef,
hamburger rolls, and potato salad from the deli. You could wash it all
down with a Dr. Pepper and finish it off with a quart of Brigham's mocha
almond ice cream. Now that's living!
Things are no different with dessert. It's like a nuclear event took place
in the kitchen. Flour is everywhere. Food coloring bottles are emptied.
Coconut flies. She keeps 15 pounds of sugar on the counter at all times.
There are sparkly things everywhere along with various shaped cookie
cutters, cake pans and pie plates. Wouldn't it just be easier to pick out
a good box of Entenmenn's like Louisiana crunch cake or cherry cheese
strudel? These companies are in business to make life easier.
The potato is the most versatile vegetable in the world. You can bake
them, make French fries, or go mashed. That should be it. She bakes them,
scoops out the potato, adds a dozen things, stirs them up and sticks the
stuff back in the peel with some sauce over it. Why go through all that
trouble to put it all back from where you took it out in the first place.
You really shouldn't mess with a potato. They are basically fine in their
existing state. The same with meat. Either broil, bake, or grill. Back
when real men caught their meat or fish, they just hit it with fire. No
frills. That's how food was intended to be eaten. And it takes less time.
Imagine all the extra housework that could be done with the extra time.
Essentially, I'm just trying to make her more productive.
Let's look at this practically. Why stuffed peppers when you could have a
chopped sirloin burger. Why shrimp scampi when you can take out at Wayne's
Seafood? What's the point of eggs benedict when they now have those
wonderful frozen microwaveable breakfasts? In the final analysis, the
adage is correct: real men don't eat quiche. I don't even like the
name-quiche. When a food scares you, don't eat it. The truth is, I am
intimidated by many of her foods. I don't like it when the food sits on my
plate sneering at me. She says I don't have any joie de vive. That's okay
with me because I hot dog probably tastes better than that. Which reminds
me, I don't eat anything I can't say.
 SHE
SAYS: This man can't pass a fast
food restaurant without a loving look at the golden arches or a scraggly
chicken. He sticks his head out the window to catch a whiff of old grease
with the odd French fry incinerating in the fry basket.
During my many pregnancies I taught myself how to cook and bake thinking
that he'd be proud of me. How could I have predicted that when someone
asked him what he was having for dinner, he'd morosely say, "French
onion soup gratin, Caesar salad, lobster stuffed mushrooms, veal Oscar,
and lemon custard and phyllo with raspberry coulis." And his friends
would commiserate and say, "Why don't you come over here. We're
having Kraft mac and cheese with linguica, and ice pops for dessert."
Over the years I've learned how to get him to enjoy what I prepare by
giving food more basic names. For example, vichysoisse is potato and onion
soup. Beef Wellington is meat and a roll. Popovers are biscuits, God
forgive me, and poached salmon with dill sauce and duchesse potatoes are
fish and chips. It doesn't always work, but at least it gets him away from
Tucson Taco and the Royal Garden once in a while.
What I most resent is his reference to his mother's cooking, God rest her
soul. That woman's matzo balls could have been construction material, and
I'll never hear the end of her potato salad, soooo tasty with Miracle Whip
and mustard. Imagine that nightmare in yellow accompanied by the meatloaf
with the eggs glaring out from all that gray ground chuck and a side of
canned green beans overcooked to the color of an old Army vehicle. But
these are his happy memories and I have to respect that. So maybe I should
boil a few sneakers and serve them with pickled okra. He'd like that. He
has the digestive system of a shark. He starts his day at Daddy O's with
slabs of ham or bacon and fried eggs. At lunch it could be subs at
Sawtelle's, or a fried feast at the Charlie Horse. But after he eats
broiled chicken with a salad at home, he gets a stomachache and can't mow
the lawn or do any chores at all because my meal made him queasy.
This is one time when I'm just about ready to give up. I made his favorite
dessert, a large yellow three-layer cake with a filling of freshly whipped
cream and strawberries, frosted with whipped cream and topped with
chocolate shavings and chocolate covered strawberries and lightly drizzled
with bittersweet chocolate. He looked right at it and said, "Yeah,
but did you match up my socks?"
Maybe I'm not really giving up, but I sure am scaling down. Tonight we're
having fresh baked corn bread topped with ham and asparagus and crowned
with a creamy sharp cheddar cheese sauce. If I just tell him it's Cheez
Whiz, it'll be alright.
by Nancy and Dan Sapir
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