Nikas Culinaria

Today I read the article “He Cooks. She Stews. It’s Love” in the New York Times (online edition) and it had me thinking. The premise of the article is that often times a couple will have an Alpha cook and a Beta cook.

We all know what alpha means, its a play off of the concept of the primary or alpha animal in a pack. For example, the alpha female wolf does most of the hunting while the lower cast females care for her offspring and never have any of their own.

Its a simple equation: Alpha = enforced dominance.

The author of this New York Times article, Katherine Wheelock, seems to have bought into this concept and interviews several couples as examples in support of this idea.

Her couples, high speed New Yorkers, married and divorced/separated, are heavily weighted with dysfunction in the kitchen.

Regarding the ideal we are “suppose” to reach for and how we fall short of it, Wheelock writes:

It was a nice fantasy while it lasted: rather than letting the lady of the house bear the constant burden of cooking dinner, the modern couple would share the work. Husbands would take an interest in casseroles. Wives would slap slabs of meat on the grill. They would read cookbooks and watch the Food Network together. The kitchen would be a peaceful domain equally ruled by two people.

For many couples, this never happened. Instead, wedged there in the kitchen together, they fell into a power dynamic just as unequal and emotionally fraught as the arrangement that puts the female half in a frilly apron. Instead of a partnership, some couples say that their relationship in the kitchen more closely resembles a tiny dictatorship.

This sounds so sad to me. I think that this dysfunctional dynamic may be a good barometer for a relationship that is headed in a difficult direction. The article goes on to say:

“If there’s a power struggle, it will come out in cooking together,” said Dr. Marion F. Solomon, a couples therapist in Los Angeles. “If a person feels that they’re not recognized for their abilities in other areas, they can start to resent the partner who takes control in the kitchen.”

Yikes, thats major life and interpersonal issues being projected onto the act of cooking.

If this happened instead to the act of cleaning toilets or flushing out the gutters or taking out the trash, it would not be so sad.

Cooking and feeding your family is an activity that is fundamental to the family unit. Power play around that is reckless and quite regretable.

So, yeah, the idea of lording it over your partner in the kitchen is loathesome to me. My first reaction was to say “I would never do that and my husband doesnt either”. My husband does most of the cooking because for years I commuted 4 hours a day and by the time I got home every day I simply could not stand up to cook let alone want to cook.

He has always done a wonderful job of whipping together what was available in the fridge and serving it up without it being a major “voila” moment. Our own special sort of discord has always been about the cleaning, ancillary to cooking but also important.

Hey, I never said I was perfect!

In our kitchen, if either of us start a cooking project, like making stock or that night’s supper, the other stays out of the way and leaves it to the initiating party. There is gratitude that food is made and appreciation of it’s value. I think I would be quite miserable if it were all about power and dominance.

How is it for you? I have put up a poll at the bottom of this post.

Vote if you like (its anonymous!) and lets see how others feel about the power in their kitchens.

I suspect that most of us normal-speed foodies are not so parsimonious with our cooking “power” and, lord, who has time for all of that anyways!

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