The kitchen is closed. I, the cook of my household, am on strike.
Friends, when you are a grown person and your partner is the one who plans, shops for, and cooks the meals, please do not come home to a dish you have eaten several times without complaint and announce that you do not want that dish because you do not like one part of it.
In other words, don’t say this: “If you could just adjust the dish it would be fine… say, if you could just take the “parm” off of the chicken, that would be great. It’s not that hard, right?”
First, please consider that your partner is not your short order cook. Maybe it’s an easy pivot, but if the ingredient you’re objecting to is in the name, what you’re actually asking for is a different meal because that named ingredient is likely part of a cooking process… it’s not just a condiment. Sometimes that adjustment takes some thought… is it just the ingredient you don’t like, or is it the entire concept of the dish? Is it your expectation that your partner will suss out that distinction while making the meal?
Second, if you’re not into the dish that’s being offered, the time to mention it was right after you ate it the last time, especially if you’ve had the meal a few times before and haven’t ever mentioned that it’s not your cuppa. YMMV, but I can *almost* guarantee that nobody wants to feed you food you don’t want to eat. It’s much easier to take a meal out of the rotation than it is to shift stuff around right after you walk in the door. (Trust me when I say that the cooking partner does this kind of thing all the time to account for ingredient availability, seasonality, or personal preference.)
Third, please consider that your partner might not actually be all that into planning/shopping/cooking, but there are odd combinations of dietary restrictions in the household, and the division of labor works out more easily this way. (And somebody has to do it or we’ll eat too much cereal for dinner.)
The cooking partner, may, in fact, be looking for ways to simplify meals to free up some time. If you’re not into what’s being offered, maybe offer to take on some of the planning/shopping/cooking yourself, or offer to bring dinner home… or go out to eat!
I have a list of almost 50 meals I can make (including a few different pizza and dumpling variations). There is an active rotation of about 15 of them at any given time – that expands or contracts depending on how much time I have, the weather, and how interested I am in food at the moment.
For the record, I don’t mind cooking, particularly because I’m a pretty picky eater and I like knowing how to make what I like to eat… but I wouldn’t say I’m passionate about it.
I’m a utilitarian cook at best, so there are very real limitations to my skills, abilities, and interests in the kitchen. I compensate for this by trying lots of different recipes, so that there is some variety (you may see the same recipe fairly often, but it will come up every two or three weeks instead of every Tuesday), even when I’m in a bit of a rut.
What I am definitely not good at in the kitchen is pivoting on the fly. I can do it sometimes, but I don’t find it easy or fun. There are people in the world who are amazing at that sort of thing; I am not one of them. Taking that one step further, I don’t have the desire to put in the time or effort to try to become one of them.
Everyone is allowed to not like my food. I’m not offended by that, and hope that they’ll tell me so that I don’t try to feed them food they don’t like. It’s easy for me to take a meal off my list…
… but I have to know that you don’t like it…
… and it’s really bad timing to identify the issue when I’m about to feed you the food you don’t want to eat.
As I’m sure you’ve gathered, this isn’t a hypothetical situation. It’s how I ended up on strike in my own kitchen. But you know what? It’s the end of August. It’s hot. I think we’re perfectly fine to snack for the next week.
Carmen Yount 