When someone is in my kitchen I feel as though a stranger is rifling through my underwear drawer.

When my fiance makes dinner it is exactly as you described - he feels The Eye. I eventually sit back and relax, letting myself enjoy the meal, despite the few things I would have done different. I definitely judge my own cooking much more harshly.

Well said!

My husband makes a “birds in a nest” with hashbrowns for dinner every Thursday night. The kids think he is Bobby Flay

My big thing that makes me nuts is how when he cooks he explodes all over the kitchen. I “cook clean” and it makes me absolutely crazy to see him use 4 plates, 2 knives and God-knows-how-many bowls to make freaking “birds in a nest”.

The alpha cook in my kitchen usually demotes me to line cook. I chop, and chop and chop. The few times he allowed me to take over the flame have been met with criticism and laughter. But, he always eats the food except for that one risotto disaster, and I blame the vegetarian guests for that puktastic meal.

Although I am not a natural nor great cook, I have been surprised at being a better cook than most of the women I’ve dated. (I’m not bragging, honest.) I’d welcome an alpha-chef in the kitchen, but perhaps I only know how to find the women who turn up their noses at handling a knife.

Alas.

I do most of the cooking (and cleaning, ugh) in my apartment, while my boyfriend gets to reap the benefits. What I think would be a really romantic and relaxing dinner would be one that he has conceived from start to finish - planning, shopping, cooking, serving. But he usually only cooks to help me out, like grilling a steak that I marinated all day while I make the side dishes, or making fried eggs to go with the toast, bacon and tomato slices that I prepared for breakfast. When he tries to cook anything else, I’m like a backseat driver who can’t help criticizing/giving advice, and he has to shoo me out of the kitchen. And I have to ask - does your darling beloved do the dishes after you cook him dinner? I think it’s only fair, but I can’t get mine to spend even a few minutes cleaning up!!!

Brent, you’ve just given me an idea for a dating website: people would be paired according to culinary ability/aspirations. It would take the world by storm, don’t you think?

Megan, what makes Kostia’s kasha great? MFK Fisher used to put pheasant fat in hers…that’s pHeasant, not peasant…

Julia, sounds like you need to whip your boy into shape! Or move somewhere with a dishwasher, as we did. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve had one and it’s changed EVERYTHING.

My husband loves to cook, so when we first got married, I pictured the two of us in the kitchen, chopping and creating together. It never happens. We are both alpha cooks, so he banishes me from the room when he cooks. I try to get him to help me when I cook, but he usually disappears half way through a task and I can’t find him until the meal is on the table. Luckily, he loves my cooking, and I love his. We just can’t cook together.

Actually I am terrified of cooking fish even though I’ve been cooking for years (just for my home nothing fancy) but my husband does a fantastic job without a recipe every time. It drives me mad! So he only cooks when I’m craving a good salmon or sword fish.

I’m pretty much useless when it comes to cooking anything other than eggs and grilled cheese… lucky for me my boyfriend is far more talented and usually makes dinner. We met in college and albeit living in dorms with no access to anything but a microwave, he would make me a candle lit dinner at least once a month (usually salad and chicken pita sandwiches…) but it’s been a lot better since we moved into an apartment with a real kitchen; he’s constantly trying new recipes or finding ways to better what he already knows.

I am not entirely useless though… I am great at anything that requires baking, so I usually make dessert, or breakfast, or all that good snacking time in between The only interaction he and I have during those times is usually him coming over to ask if I need help and me giving him that evil look, then he usually curls up somewhere with a comic book. It works though.

And wow, I’ve never heard of the Chinese dish. Sounds . . . interesting?

Mine only cooks when he screws up majorly and leaves me in a huff. And the only dish he knows how to make is a salmon muniere. It’s delicious though, and it gets better every time.

Plus, it’s nice to see dinner ready on the table when you walk in, because you know that you won =)

I have an old post somewhere called ‘Danny Cooks’: my hubby attempting poached eggs. Need I say more? He’s the engineer, I’m the cook. It’s pretty black and white. My boys, on the other hand, will know their way around a kitchen and make some girl very happy.

Rachel,

It had been my understanding that the term “post-feminism” described a range of viewpoints in reaction to established feminist discourse–not by any means the obsolescence of feminist discourse itself as we enter a state of gender utopia. Then my boyfriend told me that the latter definition was by far the most common in contemporary American usage and that I was at least somewhat of a ninny.

If you think I should have refined my language, I think that’s fair. But I do object to your long list of rhetorical questions: while the answer to every which one is undoubtedly “no”, I do not agree that they each necessarily refer to a “feminist” issue.

I do wish you had written me an email, though in doing so, I suppose, you would have missed out on the chance to edify my small audience. I say this not because I won’t tolerate being criticized openly (the only comments I delete contain blatant advertisements or racial slurs), but because I find it extremely uncomfortable to make my views on certain topics–rape, say, or eating disorders–known in a forum that is clearly designed for rather different ones.