"guys always say they can cook, but it turns out to be nasty"

[Enrique]

Last edited Fri Aug 3, 2012, 06:37 PM - Edit history (1)

A woman said this to me at work once, it cracked me up, it still cracks me up.

She asked me if I cook, I told her yes because it's true, I cook every day. But she was skeptical and said "guys always say they can cook, but then they cook for you and it turns out to be nasty." The other women instantly agreed, and it made me laugh at the thought of them eating all the disgusting male-prepared food.

I wonder, have DU women had the same experience?

edit, with a story about my cooking a disgusting meal for Tammy Baldwin, which I haven't shared on DU because people like her so much here. But here goes: I was living at a cooperative house in Madison, WI, and I was scheduled to cook on the day Tammy Baldwin was stopping by for dinner, I believe she was running for the state legislature at the time. Everything went wrong. My cooking partner had some emergency at work so I was on my own. I had to work late as well, so I was rushed. We had little food, and our account at the store was in bad standing, so I had to improvise, which I did not know how to do. I ended up making this fettucini alfredo with a number of substitutions that were epic fails, and the end result could only be described as "nasty". But Tammy ate it like a true politician, did not even grimace at it like Mitt did with the cookies.

[Wait Wut]

1. Yes and no.

Some of the men in my life have been fantastic cooks, others couldn't find the oven unless you hid the beer in it. Y'know, 'cause ya gotta cook with the beer...always. For every...damn...thing.

[OriginalGeek]

3. that might be one of my problems

but i don't cook with it as much as drink it while cooking....

[Enrique]

5. really, beer?

is it that they really like beer, so they think everything is better with it?

[Wait Wut]

6. I guess.

My ex-husband would mix beer into hamburger meat and would sautee veggies in it. Actually, he'd use Guiness. I hate...I mean HATE...beer.

[OriginalGeek]

10. lol, that reminded me

one of my first jobs when I was in high school was at a small, family owned BBQ joint in Texas. My boss (the owner) used to get very frustrated with his brother who would show up at random times and start pouring beer into the BBQ sauce (we always seemed to have a pot of it cooking as we went through a LOT of it). He'd sneak in the kitchen and shush me and pop open a can and start pouring.

I always thought that the BBQ sauce was best on those days.

Maybe ya had to be there but it was hilarious to me when Mickey would chase his brother out of the kitchen trying to quietly yell at him...

[OriginalGeek]

2. I freely admit being a substandard cook

however my wife and daughter praise my cooking and eat it up heartily.


Because every meal I cook is one they didn't have to.



and because it's MY grill!

[Kali]

21. yep

the husband is pretty fair if not particularly imaginative (and uses far too much cooking oil when little to none is needed) but damn I am glad he is willing and does it because by the end of most days I sure as hell don't feel like doing it.

I would say he does 75 to 80% - all of the breakfasts (because it is his favorite and I rarely eat partake) and most evening meals. Lunch around here is grab a snack most of the time.

[OriginalGeek]

23. lol, one of my other problems

(besides drinking as I cook) is that I watch FoodTV network WAY too much and then I half remember things from different shows and try to mash them up into one dish that I sorta kinda understand but I'm sure will work...on rare occasions it actually does work...Hamburgers Wellington, enchilada lasagna and chicken fried steak being my specialties...

[Denninmi]

4. Sorry, but I can out-cook any woman I know.

Especially most of the ones in my family.

I'm a happy dude when I'm cooking.

[GoneOffShore]

7. Love to cook and do it well.

Can put together a tasty meal in half an hour.

Give me three hours and I'll do a 4 course dinner for 8 people, including desserts.

[FBaggins]

8. She was hitting on you

She wants an excuse to get you to invite over for a meal without having to worry about being turned down for a date if you weren't interested.

[Enrique]

12. i realized that later

she was thinking that I would want to prove her wrong, which never crossed my mind. So I missed my chance, some other guy we worked with won her heart, until her husband got out of jail.

[applegrove]

9. The men in my family are better cooks than the women. By far.

[lunatica]

11. My son is a wonderful cook!

And he experiments all the time which is great fun!

My ex had one good quality and that was that he could cook very well. Other than that he was a prick.

[eShirl]

13. the few times the men I've known could be bothered to cook

it was usually pretty good because they go to pains to procure high quality raw materials, then proceed not to screw up whatever they're making

[kimi]

14. It doesn't always turn out nasty - that was unfair.

Most of the time when a guy has cooked for me, it's been darn good. And most single guys I know like to cook, actually. The one I know who doesn't fills his cupboards with Dinty Moore, Kraft Mac N Cheese, canned pork & beans, canned soup - blech. (He's also very unhealthy & we always go out to eat - which I don't mind cause he's willing to spring for good restaurants.)

But guys do tend to go with good ingredients & are willing to search for them. I know one guy who searched all over Phoenix for some obscure Oriental ingredient - he hit 4 or 5 Oriental markets in the process. He's visiting me later this month & I'm going to leave the cooking to him .

So, no, I haven't had the same experience at all.

[surrealAmerican]

15. This is no more true of men than it is of women.

Most people who say they can cook just aren't that good at it.

[Aerows]

19. So not true

People that can't cook to save their souls generally know it, and hate to do it anyway.

[shadowrider]

16. A mans guide to grilling

1) Have a beer
2) Light the grill
3) Have another beer
4) Put the steaks on the grill
5) Have another beer
6) Start talking football with the neighbor
7) Have another beer
8) Turn the steaks over
9) Have another beer
10) Have a cigarette and a beer
11) Throw out burned beyond recognition steaks
12) Order pizza

[NRaleighLiberal]

17. I am a most excellent cook....my wife, daughters and friends would agree!

Part of it, I think, is I am (well, was...retired) a chemist....spent much of my career mixing up noxious substances - cooking allows mixing together of heavenly substances!

What's cool is that the more you cook, taste, experience, the less you rely on cookbooks, and can do more improvisation and invention.

Oh how much fun a big central DU retreat/cook off would be!

[Bertha Venation]

26. "Oh how much fun a big central DU retreat/cook off would be!"

I'm not much of a cook, but I'll volunteer to be a judge . . .

[Aerows]

18. I'd eat

my Dad's cooking over my mother or my sister's any day. My brother-in-law could poison Jesus Christ just by boiling water and my sister could likely cause an evacuation just by making toast. NONE of them turn it down when I cook, though

[emilyg]

20. I've known men who

were excellent cooks.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

22. My ex was a pretty good cook. However, there was this one time

when I came home and found a plate of muffins on the table with a little paper flag stuck in one of them. The little paper flag had a hand-drawn skull and crossbones on it, which made me decide not to eat one until I had a chance to question the baker.

As it happened, he'd made a batch of muffins using baking soda instead of baking powder. They were vile.

[HopeHoops]

24. In '85 I made "saged chicken" for my girlfriend (now my wife).

You couldn't taste the chicken. It wasn't edible. She married me anyway.

[jmowreader]

32. Is this the dish that turned you into a vegetarian?

[HopeHoops]

41. You owe me a new keyboard.

No, but it probably could have. What turned us vegetarian was the book "Diet for a New America" by John Robbins, the heir to Baskin Robbins He went full vegan before writing the book and turned down the entire family fortune. That takes guts! He grew up with a swimming pool shaped like an ice cream cone. The book is about half health issues and half ethical issues. He's also a very talented writer.

[Bertha Venation]

25. My brother-in-law and spaghetti sauce

He was making the sauce with italian sausage, and he thought a good addition would be A-1 sauce. ???

[GaYellowDawg]

27. I would have just laughed, too.

I'm secure enough in my kitchen skills to laugh off a comment like that.

[zbdent]

28. Have a guy cook, have a woman bring it in ...

and when the detractors go on and on about how good the woman cooked, have the woman point out "I just brought it in. X cooked it."

[UTUSN]

29. A related comment, about dudes building things

A woman friend and I were in a small but snooty furniture store, and one of the two slick saleswomen perfunctorily escorted us around, sensing we weren't buying. When my friend admired something, I jokingly (boorishly) said, "With a few two by fours we guys can build that." And the woman said icily, "And we have to PRETEND TO LIKE IT!1" Bwah-hah!1

But about the cooking, luckily I sat my mother down in time and interviewed her about all her recipes, our family loves, "What ingredients. What do you do first. What do you do next." I got them all written down and have done them a fair number of times and have modified, yes IMPROVED a couple, and have had good results several times. My mother was excellent, but cooking was not her favorite activity, and one of her insights was that "You have to be in the (cooking) mood for things to turn out well."

She was ready to give credit to her other sisters or sisters-in-law when their particular dish was better than hers. She admired one in-law's beans and complained that hers were lacking. One day a new neighbor knocked on the door and asked her for a recipe for beans, and Mother said, "Honey, I just boil the (Hades) out of them!1"

[Kaleva]

30. Chronic diarrhea is the main reason politicians drop out early on races.

The weaker the digestive system, the less likely the candidate will be on the ballot come election day.

We are blessed in the US in knowing that our elected officials can survive on cockroaches and bread made of sawdust and dung if need be.

[kentauros]

31. I would say that's true for the typical American male.

Maybe Canadian males, too, but I don't know about that

Just pay attention to how most men are depicted in American television ads for an idea. As much as I hate that "don't understand how kitchens work but just watch out when I'm on my grill!!11!" meme in advertising, I'm afraid it's also true. Too many of my male co-workers just aren't cooks, unless they're grillin'.

I tend to fault the schools in this lack of food-knowledge. I don't know what high schools are like today, but in the late-70s, "Home Economics" taught cooking among other home-life skills. However, it also wasn't a class for boys. Rather, I'd call it "Housewife & Daycare" training. Thankfully, I learned my various cooking and baking skills at home, in Boy Scouts, living on my own, and in college cooking/baking classes.

Good cooking requires that you have an interest in it of some kind. If you don't like to cook, then it's going to show in the results.

[harmonicon]

33. Of the three long-term girlfriends I've had as an adult...

two were absolutely terrible cooks. It was all I could do to try to come up with reasons for me to cook dinner, because it was far harder to lie about how their terrible cooking was ok. One of them was a good cook, and we'd probably each cook half the time.

Am I a great chef? No way, no how, but I can make a decent enough normal ol' meal.

[Recovered Repug]

34. Sometimes men will down play there cooking abilities

so the women in their lives won't ask them to cook any more. I would NEVER do such a thing of course.

[ohnoyoudidnt]

35. I am a great cook.

Mostly because when I'm invited to dinner and enjoy the meal I inquire about the recipe, or research recipes online and the reviews included. I follow the directions with slight modifications depending on the likes and or allergies of those being served.

Cooking is not difficult at all. It's just a matter of following instructions and a little common sense that there is some room for variation.

[mykpart]

36. Apples and oranges.

Men are good cooks when they can go to the store and buy everything they need to prepare a meal, and they don't have to worry about cost. When this happens, they are very creative and come up with very tasty meals.

Women, on the other hand, can come home from work and find almost nothing in the cupboard and/or refrigerator and yet manage to put a tasty, nutritious meal together using what she has on hand.

[sendero]

37. Well..

... I'm on my third and last marriage and I'm pretty sure each of my exes as well as my current wife would agree that I am a better cook than any of them.

The fact that I worked as a cook at a nice restaurant for a couple years as a teen might be the reason.

There are plenty of men that can cook but then I'm sure there are plenty that wouldn't know slop from cuisine.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

38. no, all the men i know who say they can cook are pretty good cooks

[Callalily]

39. My former boss is an excellent cook.

Twice we partnered up for an "iron chef" contest and won both times. My son-in-law as well as his father are wonderful cooks! My brother, hmmmm . . . not so much!

[Honeycombe8]

40. I've never heard a woman say this, or imply they think this. It's also not true.

But what I HAVE noticed about men cooking, and other women have commented on as well, is that when men cook, they make a lot of hoopla about it, they make a big mess, they expect a LOT of recognition for the taste and the act of cooking, and they aren't the ones to clean up the mess.

This does not apply to single men. It's usu. husbands. That's because if they rarely do the cooking, they make a big deal about it, and they want a lot of recognition and flattery about it, because they don't do it often. Whereas the wives, who cook daily...they got over the hoopla and the needing flattery years before. It's a daily chore, like making the beds.

This is not always the case. It was the case with my father, as it was with my ex-husband, and some other women have had similar experiences.

But the food tasted fine, as I recall.

[Patiod]

42. "Honey, 'Rosemary Chicken' isn't supposed to look like the branch of a pine tree"

Needless to say, Mr.Patiod has a heavy hand with the herbs and spices. His thinking is "more is better".

His idea of "cooking" is putting something in a pot, setting it on Low/Medium, and walking away for an hour (same with the grill). He doesn't have the patience to actually keep an eye on anything. So everything is overcooked. He's actually okay with the Crock Pot, because it works with his preferred cooking style.

He's the son of an Italian mother, whose pasta was pretty good, but her meat was always bone-dry and awful. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

[GreenPartyVoter]

43. My hubby is a far better cook than I am. I just open boxes and cans of things and heat them up. He

makes fancy stuff from scratch. Yum!

[SoDesuKa]

44. Blue Booties

Men are no more inept in the kitchen than women are bad drivers. Men who cook regularly get good at it, same as anything else. Gender has nothing to do with cooking.

[Cronkite]

45. What's so hard about cooking? 1) Cut slit over vegatable. 2) Place in microwave.......

Seriously though, I can cook edible food from scratch. I am not a "great" cook but I can manage in the kitchen.