Sharing

I married a man whose idea of cooking was to buy prepackaged food at Wegmans and heat it up in the microwave.

Not that there is really anything wrong with that. But it's not cooking...it's reheating.

Two years ago I started a part-time job as a Dyson Demonstrator working weekends to help make ends meet.

It was a great gig. Not really hard, sometimes boring, but for the most part it was fun and I really enjoyed doing the job. I also had one of the best managers a person could ask for. She's no longer my manager, but I do get to call her friend.

While I was working that job I often did not get home before 7 o'clock in the evening on Saturdays and Sundays.

The guy who couldn't cook would wait for me to get home to cook dinner.

Needless to say, evenings with the children were a nightmare as they were hangry (hungry+angry) and I would become increasingly cranky at having to work on my feet all day and then have to cook dinner when I walked through the door.

I finally told him that it wasn't fair that I was put in this position and initially remedied it by bringing Costco pizza home with me.

He finally relented and started to learn to cook. Initially we ate a lot of grilled food. I seriously don't understand how someone can say they can't cook but can handle preparing food over an open flame but I digress... Hubby grows sweet corn in the summer and grilled corn with chicken or burgers and hot dogs were a staple.

Eventually his confidence increased and he began to get more creative. He even used Italian dressing and breadcrumbs on the chicken before grilling it and I have to say it was delicious!

As the summer came to a close he had to move his weekend cooking operation indoors.

We ate burned chicken.

Our kids are not very picky but even they wouldn't eat it.

I did not criticize but offered a couple of suggestions which he took like a man.

While all of this "learning to cook" stuff was going hubby also decided to teach himself how to bake bread. No one, least of all hubby, knows why he was suddenly obsessed with this idea.

He could barely cook chicken without making it black so please, by all means, take up one of the most difficult culinary skills of all!

What's next croissants? Oy vey!

If you've known me for anytime you'd know how much pride I take in both my kitchen and my cooking skills. I've invested countless hours in reading recipes and testing out techniques. I used to watch the cooking channel as if I were in school cramming for the final!

I turned my love of cakes into a full-time successful business that was bringing in pretty good money.

MY Kitchen was my empire! I was ruler.

The fact that I wasn't in it on Saturdays and Sundays made it no less mine!

I had lost all control.

He was putting things where they didn't belong.

I couldn't find the strainer.

Tools were not in the proper drawers.

I COULDN'T FIND MY STUFF!!!

I was pissed!

While lecturing the boys on sharing I was having a hissy fit because he hadn't put my measuring cups back in the right spot!

Hmmmmm.

Crap!

Now who needs to share?

I won't say that hubby has mastered the bread making but we no longer eat store-bought bread. All sandwich bread is home-made. He made a Challah at Christmas that was beyond amazing.

Christmas was just downright weird. It's the first time in my life I've ever given a man kitchen stuff. Pot holders, rolling pins and a peeler attachment for the Kitchen Aid.

It was like being in some alternate universe!

Seriously though, he's become an incredible cook who isn't afraid to try new things.

He has taught himself the art of canning. We have jars of applesauce, vegetable soup, turkey vegetable soup, pumpkin (home grown thank you very much), sauerkraut and the most amazing apple butter I've ever tasted.

As a result of his increased skill level (and his unwillingness to commit to memory the location of where things have been in the four years that we've lived in this house) we rearranged the kitchen...together!

I'm happy to report that we are still happily married :)

Having closed the cake business I no longer needed to have a number of items at my fingertips.

So we spent a weekend cleaning out and reorganizing the kitchen. He now has access to the mixers, the canning stuff and the measuring cups. I moved stuff that I hadn't used in a while and the cake stuff has been moved to the basement rather than upstairs where it was taking up precious cabinet space.

We even rearranged the furniture in the kitchen to open up the floor plan and the tops of the cabinets are now adorned with the fruits of hubby's canning efforts.

It's not just my kitchen anymore but I'm ok with that.

Hubby and I have always made a great team and balance each other out in fantastic ways: he is calm where I am haywire; he is quiet and I am well, not; I am an extrovert and he is an introvert. He is the yin to my yang but it works. It's us.

I have learned to share my kitchen and my stuff. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. In fact it's been a lot of fun.

Now if I could just get him obsessed with the laundry...