In our relationship,  Justin and I don’t have many defining “roles.”  We share pretty much all of the responsibilities and don’t consign ourselves to traditional chores.   It’s part of what makes our relationship tick.   There are two areas of what you might call “household management” where we each have a clear cut “role.”  He cooks, I clean. Everything else – we do together.  It works and it works really well. 

Here’s the reason it works well for us.  Early early on in our relationship, we discovered his passion for cooking and my passion for cleanliness.  In part, this discovery was made when he visited me in Frostburg for Valentines Day and cooked a full meal while I cleaned up the kitchen behind him (this still happens).  Prior to that meal, my daily food intake consisted of an assortment of Lean Cuisine microwave meals  OR pasta and sauce, OR anything on the Sheetz MTO’s.  Folks, I cannot cook.  Well, that’s not true.  I can make the basics and I enjoy baking. I guess the truth is, I don’t like to cook and I flat out don’t care enough to muster up the patience that cooking requires.  Fortunately, however,  I met and married a man who LOVES to cook.  And he is good at it… really good.   His BBQ chicken pizza is hands-down my favorite pizza.  I’ll qualify that statement by also letting you know that pizza is my favorite food.  

Right after we moved in together, I tried to share the responsibility of cooking.  I think I was trying to convince myself that I had a latent feminine cooking gene.  It didn’t work.  Inevitability, I would slice open one of my fingers with knife or burn a wrist taking something out of the oven.  I set off the fire alarm and ruined countless  drip plans with overflowing pots.  Time after time, Justin would rush in and attempt to save the meal, protecting the food that we purchased with the pennies we were living on.  It got so bad, by the time we moved to Boston, I actually could feel him listening to me move around the kitchen, fumbling with the garlic press my sister gave us for Christmas, grinding my fingernails to a pulp on the micro- plane grater and balancing a cutting board precariously close to the edge of a counter such that it teetered back and forth with each slow “chop chop chop” that my impatient, inexperienced hands would make.  He would hover at the edge of the kitchen, no doubt internally wincing as he watched me attempt to complete any of these tasks.  ”Dori,” he would say, “be careful with that knife, I’m afraid you are going to hurt yourself.”  I would whip around, harshly replying,  ”I’m not 5, you know!” as the knife, cutting board and half chopped food particle came crashing down onto our perfectly clean, newly washed kitchen floor.  Oh, the rage!   more…