Wednesday, February 1, 2012

My Kitchen: A Culinary Warzone

I'll cut to the chase - I suck at cooking. Having spent a large portion of my adulthood thus-far sharing apartments in a college-esque manner has pretty much left me with the ability to make a kick-ass bowl of Ramen Noodles (.25 cents for 32874690 mg. of sodium) or locate the takeout menu at 2:30 in the morning while drunk.

Unfortunately, there are so many Fat Cats a person can eat and as I got older I realized I couldn't exist off of Tostitos, peanut butter, cigarettes and wine without getting scurvy or some other horrible disease that would make my hair look lifeless. Or kill me.

 This mythical beast of a sandwich is known as a Fat Darryl. They are delicious and disgusting, all wrapped up as one in a gigantic hoagie.

It was around this time, in my late twenties, when I met ML, whose culinary tastes couldn't have possibly been further from mine if we tried. He's a vegetarian. I like my meat stuffed with meat. He thinks tofu is awesome. Tofu makes me violently projectile hurl.

Meal times were kind of strange for us because our habits differed. Neither of us are exemplary cooks (I'll grudgingly admit he's a better cook than I am but more on that later) so dinner was usually us nibbling on sandwiches or him cooking something vegetarian while I fried something delicious and bloody and once-alive.

It's a symbiotic eating relationship. Our kitchen is itty bitty but we've got the groove down by this point and have managed not to accidentally stab the other one while we're cooking (there were a few close calls).

 It's exactly like this but miniature and with more, "get the fuck out of my way" and potty humor.

Food fights are not that unusual either.

However, there is one thing that ML does that makes me, how shall we say, TOTALLY FUCKING STRAIGHT-UP HULKING ENGRAGED. No matter how much I try to designate a space for him vs. a space for me, he still somehow manages to use every counter top, utensil and goddamn pot and pan we own when he cooks.

 Our kitchen after ML made pizza. Fucking broccoli pizza...

Even if he's just making eggs.

So far, the only thing I've figured out that works is that I have to rub my raw meat all over whatever I want to use - cutting board, pan, etc. It's like the adult version of licking the last cupcake so your sibling won't eat it. Unfortunately, I usually forget about this because I'm knocked senseless by the disaster he makes in the kitchen and have only remembered to employ this strategy once or twice.

I just don't understand. When I cook, I take out exactly what I'm going to use, wash shit or put it in the dishwasher as I continue to cook and clean up after myself. ML is like a whirling dervish of ingredients and utensils when he cooks. He has zero concept of "clean as you go" and for-the-love-of-all-that-is-holy he leaves chunks of food and egg shells in the sink and then is totally baffled why I go apeshit because, duuuude, we don't have a garbage disposal. We've never had a garbage disposal. 

 How the kitchen looks when I'm cooking (not my kitchen, because this one has a nice dishwasher and mine is ghetto as all hell).

Anything that hits the kitchen floor apparently falls under a forcefield that renders it invisible to him but not to me.

I don't want to chalk this up to one of those "men vs. women" things but I have to wonder - is it? What possesses him to use four cutting boards to cut up one pepper and a zucchini? Is it because he has a dick or he's being a dick? I'm assuming the former because, honestly? ML is a pretty awesome guy.

Does anyone else's husband/boyfriend/person with a penis do this? And more importantly, if you remove his penis, will it stop?

Then again, if that's the only option, I think I'll deal with the cooking warfare.

19 comments:

  1. Cutting off the penis doesn't work because I'm just like ML. I chalk it up to cooking in food service in college and not having to wash the dishes. As far as I knew, the pots cleaned themselves

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  2. My 82 yr old father moved in with my 8 yr old daughter and me. Don't be discouraged but it does NOT get better with age.......
    If you are expecting to change him or maybe if he sees a clean kitchen that he'll get the hint... Nope.
    Surrender may be the only option

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  3. My husband is dirty in the kitchen (not in a good way either)So I've taken on the monumental task of making sure my two soft headed male children don't fall victim to their penis-havingness in the kitchen.

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  4. My husband will place is empty yogurt, ice cream, chipotle containers in the sink, instead of the trash container thats three feet over...it drives me nuts.

    The good thing is that he does clean the house (get out of his way when he does), laundry, make dinner and take care of our girls, effortlessly. Considering what some of my girlfriends deal with their husbands, I think I will keep him.

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  5. My 13 year old son leaves cups right on the edge of the sink or in the middle of a cutting board that I'm using. You know, wherever it is convenient to put it down. All the boys in my house drop things on the floor and don't seem to notice. It doesn't even have to be a little tiny crumb...it can be something big and they still don't notice. I'm trying to fix their handicap but it's hard.

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  6. My hubs loves to cook...and yes, his penis requires him to trash the kitchen in the process. He leaves all the cupboard doors open (apparently, opening/closing them repeatedly is "a waste of time")...he dumps EVERYTHING in our sink (food, shells, dishes, used towels, paper napkins...his flotsam overfloweth!) and both he & my sons are affected by the "if it fell down past the tip of my manly part, I csn no longer see or be responsible for it" syndrome...thus all items falling to the floor are the vags responsibility to retrieve. WHY????!!!????

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  7. I figured that last pic wasn't your kitchen when I saw the highchair ;) Um....I'm ML in the kitchen. That is all.

    xo J

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  8. My CDO makes me a clean as I cook girl. Also, I am a planner so before I do anything in the kitchen I sit down and map out which pots and pans to use and how to complete the meal making as little mess as possible so I don't have to spend the rest of the night cleaning. I won't sleep if there are dirty dishes in my sink...like I said, CDO to the extreme.

    The hubby on the other hand is exactly like ML - he uses every pan, pot, cutting board, knife to assemble the most simple of meals. And then he won't clean it up!!!! But this is where he one ups ML - The hubby claims our sink is too low and bending over while doing dishes makes his back hurt so bad that if he does dishes too often he would be putting his health in danger.

    I was out with my girls over the weekend and left him a fridge full of prepared meals. All he had to do is heat them up and put the dishes in the dishwasher. When I got home the dishes we in the sink caked in food!!!! I had to scrub them before they went in the dishwasher.

    So....to answer your question....this is a Man/Woman thing. I can't complain too much though. I got kicked out of our bathroom and now have to use the guest room one because my make-up and styling tools clutter the counter too much and he can't function and apparently I shed like a Wookie.

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  9. This is not just a man thing. My roommate does this. I haveno idea how one person can use so many dishes/pots/pans in one day. I am a clean as you go person also. I like to eat when I am done & not worry about cleaning up a shit ton of dirty dishes.

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  10. Obliviousness is a man thing for sure, but I can't complain about this one. Mr. XKR does the dishes after I cook, but on the rare occasion that he cooks (I actually enjoy it, so I don't give him the chance often), he doesn't make a huge mess.

    I'm a big believer that men can be trained. It takes time and about 392387492387492387529875298652965298659847 reminders, but it will eventually work, because you are inevitably more determined (read: stubborn) than he is. Just find something that motivates him. I'm sure you can think of *something.* Then relate the two. For example, at 11pm: "oh sorry, ML, I'm too exhausted to do THAT right now. You know, I worked a full day, resisted the urge to face punch several of my fellow commuters, and then had to clean up a dozen pots in the kitchen. [super sweet tone] Sorry!".

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  11. My kitchen has to be clean or it feels like bugs are crawling under my skin. Sadly, I do not have a dishwasher. I had wash everything as I go - and I have 2 teenager daughters.

    The boyfriend however, has a dishwasher. And he will still let those damn dirty dishes pile up in his sink until he is out of every cup, dish, spoon. Fucking kills me.

    Totally due to penis. But his penis more than makes up for it.

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  12. We tend to have a rowdy kitchen when we cook, and we both love to cook, so come dinner time, it's tornado alley. However, the rule is, as long as all dishes are clean or put in the dishwasher by bedtime, all is well. If I wake up to dirty dishes, I flip my shit. Why would I want to clean the second I wake up?! It's hard enough to get my ass out of bed to poop, what makes you think I want to clean things??? Hell fucking no.

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  13. I kind of like the idea of testing the "is it a penis problem?" theory but removal sounds dicey at best, and as I often say to Mr. Snarky, he is in possession of my only penis, so I need to make sure nothing happens to it...

    We have a small kitchen and it takes about three dishes scattered about to make the whole place look like a wreck. I think Mr. Snarky uses more dishes than that to chew a piece of gum.

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  14. Mr. VitR is a really great cook but the price is that he, like ML, dirties every fucking dish, pan, cutting board in the kitchen. He is getting better about cleaning as he goes but the thing that drives me batshit crazy is this: When he does the dishes he ALWAYS leaves about three dishes in the sink undone and does not wipe down the counters. I do not understand this. I am like many of you, my kitchen must be clean in order for sleep to come to me at night.

    My other pet peeve is he turns beer cans upside down in the sink instead of putting them in the recycling bin. When asked why he does this he replied he was letting the excess beer drain out. WTF? Just pour it out! Gah!

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  15. It's genetic, not sex based. My daughter and the ex create the same kitchen chaos. Even cooking a can of soup, she manages to leave the dirty can on one counter, the almost-but-not-quite-empty pan on the stove, and the bowl is usually in the living room. Or on the floor so the dog could lick it out.

    How hard is it to a) rinse the can and toss it in the recycle bin, environmental studies major? b)Rinse out the pan and put it in the dishwasher - or at least in the sink. Key word is RINSE. Dishes come out a lot cleaner if they haven't sat dirty for 3 days. c) ditto for the bowl.

    I am a total slob, but I can at least rinse out dishes. Why can't she?

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  16. Hubby is a mess in the kitchen. My biggest pet peeve (ironic pun) is that after rinsing out the cat food can he puts it in the dish rack to dry! What? You can't just stack it where I put the others to move to the recycle bin? Why does it have to dry? It is only going to be recycled and I really don't like mixing the cat food with the human dishes.

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  17. Ugh. I can't even begin to tell you how much this topic resonates with me...

    I love my hubs, I really do, but his kitchen skills suck big donkey balls. He loves to 'experiment', and in doing so he tends to use pretty much every single kitchen utensil known to humankind. That wouldn't be a problem if he only learned to CLEAN AS HE GOES ALONG!!!

    It's not like our kitchen is particularly large--far from it--and I always seem to manage to leave it pretty much free of debris

    However, I'm not entirely sure I want to put your theory to the test... My husband's peen is the only one I have! ;-)

    CC x

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  18. It has nothing to do with having a penis... This is exactly my wife and I..But reversed.... Like scary similar (re egg shells sitting in the sink rotting under a pile of unwashed dishes and strange crumbs under foot and all over the counter when I wake up and try to make coffee and end up being late for work because I can't stand the filth anymore). *sigh* If you find a cure for this disease will you please share it...or at least tell my wife to stop asking me "what that smell is".

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