After 8 years of marriage, I’m teaching my husband how to cook.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
We often had friends over for dinner. I planned the meals, then shopped and prepped for hours . Jay offered to help, but I relegated him to toasting crostini and setting up cheese boards while I ran circles around him doing everything else—a Tasmanian devil deriving grim satisfaction from my ability to get things done. We hosted epic dinners: legs of lamb on the grill, a dozen mezze, trays of sweets, and cheeses paired with jams I’d made from figs I grew on our deck.
I’d suggest he add oil to a hot pan, and he’d drizzle a few drops, wincing at my restaurant-y ways of pouring a full glug into the pan. I told him to season his vinaigrette with salt, and he asked me how much.He stared at me, unblinking. Jay doesn’t trust that he knows what it means to “salt to taste”; he needs numbers and measurements, not a suggestion to just go with it. In physics and math, you write a proof to show that the rules don’t work.