There's something unique about a man who really relishes cooking, even though three quarters of amateur and professional chefs-cum-cooks are men. Many would rather die than resign to the kitchen/furnace. Boiling a kettle for a cuppa is to some a course for health and safety. Smearing butter on toast is far too demanding to others. Preparing anything that would take more than a minute is to some more a forever assignment. These men live on takeaways or by crashing on their mates' abodes. Woe unto the latter if they have spouses who are good at cooking and take well to compliments- for effectively they open their houses to hotel equivalents.
But there is a rare breed of man that loves to cook, for a variety of individual reasons.
Often, this man will be comfortably confident, careered, commuted, coached and carefree. He doesn't have to be gay, but his tastes are what many a women die for. You will see him well groomed and trimmed, a pair of shoes pointing upwards at the tip, trouser ironed severely that he might spend the whole day standing not to crease it.
Yet, come Saturday morning and he is at the local supermarket pushing about a family-size trolley but shopping for one. His selections would put shop-o-holic women to shame. Instead of going for cans of beer and bachelor soups, he selects sauces and condiments. Instead of piling his trolley with stacks of pizza and microwave packs, he takes his time selecting varieties of flour, mince, T-bone chunks and sirloin chops. From there, he proceeds to the vegetable section where he methodically selects one apple instead of another, a tomato rejected for another, weighting a cabbage relative to another, cooking bananas, potatoes, parsnips, onions, lemons, and herbs that you might be forgiven to assume they are animate. He is a man who knows the pickled products from several East European countries, fish from the Mediterranean and fruits from Africa, spices from the Orient and vegetables from the Caribbean.
When such a man gets cooking, you would be far safer in Afghanistan than in his kitchen. It is his command post, and you standing by are interfering with operations in the battlefront. He will dive to the cupboard and emerge with a specific knife and chopping board. What follows that is a lightening chopping of onions and certain herbs you've never seen before. Meanwhile, a saucepan is ready with warm oil and the sizzling awakens your past. He has them all- George Foreman, slicers, dicers, sieves, crumblers, equipment that some restaurants would give their celebrity clientele for.
If you are his new woman, better watch out. For starters, your curves can never compare with his choices from the butcher. You loose first round however much you try to preen and pull in your unnecessary bits. A man who values his beef also values the curves he goes for for keeps. Your tortures in gyms and dieting won't do, honey. You are out after the first of his dipping and tasting. And against the starvations you endure fighting the curse of his very tempting chops, he will also test you the same to make sure that his investments go back to him- taxed and with VAT.
Woe unto you when it is your turn in the kitchen. You simply can't beat what his mummy does- period; and he doesn't mince with feelings. Try as much as you can, the reward is a testy nibble to your conjuring. He doesn't have to turn his nose at the smell of the soup you are obediently proffering, but his heart is already turned away.
That the way to a man's heart is via his tummy is very true both ways. However desperate for love, the possibility of living happily ever after with a poison ivy is enough to kill the ardour.
