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...

A Pile of Rocks

My hubby has become obsessed with baking bread because of a pile of free rocks.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Go ahead, read it again, I'll wait :)

Now let me explain...

Late last fall a stone building located near his office was knocked down and a sign that said "Free" was posted on the rubble.

Hubby began bringing home the rocks with the intention of using them for landscaping purposes. Before long he had amassed a large pile of rocks in the backyard and had decided that he needed to do some research.

Hubby is accomplished on all of the trades, save for one: Masonry.

So he set out on the information highway called the internet and in addition to researching outdoor patios and fireplaces he found information on summer kitchens and outdoor bread ovens. Knowing nothing about bread or baking (or the kitchen) in general he decided that in order to properly build an oven he needed to know how to bake bread.

I thought he was kidding. I mean really, bread? Some of the most accomplished cooks I know don't make bread. It's time consuming and difficult and can result in something akin to a baked rock if done wrong.

It's taken me seven years to get him to understand that you bake bread but cook dinner and now he's just going to jump into baking bread?!

My mother-in-law is a fabulous cook and has never attempted bread. Some people just know better.

I guess the good thing about having little, to no, kitchen experience is that hubby didn't know enough to be afraid.

Hubby doesn't read for entertainment, he reads to learn something.

He can do this for hours if uninterrupted and can be so involved in his reading that the boys can be screaming around him and he is oblivious.

I am not criticizing, I am jealous, but I digress...

He read and read until he felt confident enough to make his first attempt at making bread but as we all know reading and doing are entirely different things.

I brought home pizza sauce and cheese...The whole rising thing didn't go as planned and his first attempt ended up making really good pizza dough.

He tried again and we got a loaf of something that was a mistake but very delicious. Another loaf of something that could be used for sandwiches and a third loaf that he added blueberries and walnuts to that was out of this world!

Having had some success he opted for some Amish Friendship bread as a starter. This is the stuff that you add things too over time and then divide it up to give to people you hate to make them add stuff to it for a week and then they can make bread.

This was good but the breads that come from using this starter are all sweet bread like banana, pumpkin, etc.

Hubby was still reading.

He discovered sourdough.

Sourdough starter is a massive undertaking that requires "feedings" twice daily for a week before it is ready to be used. Before feeding one has to dump half of the starter into the trash, add the and flour and then cover until the next feeding when the process is repeated.

You do this for a week.

It smells like beer but the bread tastes like heaven.

When the starter is really active it gives off a gas that blew the lid off the container while we were coloring Easter eggs and scared the daylights out of the entire family.

One day he called first thing in the morning to tell me that he'd forgotten to do the morning feeding and when I reached up to grab the container the lid was gone. Evidently the gas had blown the lid off sometime during the night and it took two days to find the lid!

Hubby has become obsessed and smells the starter multiple times a night...yeah I thought that was weird too.

The sourdough starter can be used for pancakes, conventional sourdough, regular bread and pretzels.

Yes, pretzels!

His first attempt at pretzels was so good that I can't wait for the next batch! Auntie Anne's has nothing on this hubby. Those pretzels were out of this world!!!

We have a great relationship with the Amish family that lives behind us. We frequently drop off treats for each other's families. He dropped off pretzels as a thank you for the pumpkin pie they gave to us.

The wife was so impressed that she came over just to tell us how much they all enjoyed them and that she was impressed with the flavor!

Huge props as that woman can cook like there is no tomorrow!

His obsession has progressed to making 100% organic bread. He is very proud of the fact that we are no longer buying bread from the store and that we now have a freezer full of bread that we can use for any number of things.

It's been fun to watch him evolve into a bread man. The man who could only cook eggs, fish and steak is now making some of the best and most difficult bread on the face of the earth and I couldn't be more proud.