While researching heros' names (item 51) I discovered that the greatest male
cooks can pour orange juice, operate a toaster and coffee maker, barbecue
large chunks of dead cow, fix salad, spread pb and j on sliced bread if they
are single parents, take the kiddies to McDonalds and the heroine to an
out-of-the-way restaurant where they know the owner, choose the right wine,
order gourmet pizza, and hire the perfect housekeeper-cook-nanny.  Heroines
specialize in baking chocolate chip cookies and apple pies.  This is the same
fantasy world where ex-spouses have conveniently been hit by a car, fatally,
or have permanently abandoned the children.  What is men's culinary role in
the real world?  Do single men either eat in restaurants or stick something
in the microwave?  Are there househusbands who do most of the cooking?  How
do gay couples split the cooking or don't they cook?  Are there egalitarian
households where both members cook the same amount, or does one person usually
end up doing more or being in charge?  Who does the shopping?  Are men now
learning to cook while growing up, or do they learn later from roommates or
cookbooks?  Are there foods that men never cook (apple pies?) or foods that
they are always expected to cook (barbecue)?  Do men bake bread
non-professionally?  

25 responses total.

I take a sandwich to work every day in my lunch.  I make all the bread
in a machine.  Other than Grex walks, family wanting to eat out, and
similar social situations, I only eat out (or order out) about 4 times
a year.  I don't do TV dinners or deli food either.  The microwave is
good for certain veggies, baked spuds, cooked cereal, and warming milk
to make bread.  I live alone, so forget fancy dishes and most anything
that doesn't leftover well.  I've mostly learned to cook on my own, and
don't hesitate to do stuff like made-from-scratch baked beans or Oreo
crumb crust chocolate cream pies.

What is your recipe for making Oreo crumbs from scratch?
My grandfather was a baker and a good cook.  He cooked all through both his
marriages.  My mother was a good student and not required to help with the
housework because she was 'studying' (well, there was a book in her hands).
My father's mother was a professional cook.  His father died young.  My father
was a good cook and tried to teach my mother.  My mother was not a good cook,
but was in charge of the cooking. My parents both worked so my brother and
I did the shopping and cooking, at least in high school.  I taught myself to
cook from housemates and lots of mistakes.  Currently, my partner and I share
the cooking but not entirely equally.  I make faster decisions so decide what
to cook, and I also work at home so cook supper while working.  He cooks if
I am too busy working or am simply tired of cooking, or makes popcorn if there
is nothing cooked or cookable around.  He will attempt to cook pretty much
anything but we are not doing sugar, so no cookies any more.  Tofu (from
scratch), tortillas (from whole corn), even cheese.  My partner's explanation
of why women do more of the cooking is that they are fussier about what they
eat.  My explanation of why women are more likely to cook breakfast is that
men take so much longer to get up and get dressed.

A bag of Oreo cookies and a big hammer.  :)

Dad has to be *really* sick not to have breakfast on the table by the
time mom drags herself out for that first cup of coffee.

Well, I can't cook worth beans, really.  I enjoy it, but I lack of time to
learn how properly.  

Are kids of either sex being taught to cook nowadays?  Is cooking something
l ike language, that you have to learn by a certain age or not at all?  I have
one friend who is 67 and keeps claiming he wants to learn to cook, but it is
just talk.  He 'cooks' by opening cans of soup and puring them over rice, or
eats what his partner cooks, which is mostly meat, fat, and sugar, even though
he claims he wants to eat healthy vegetarian food.  What percentage of men
in different age groups know how to cook withiout using prepared foods?

A good way to make sure your kids of either gender know how to cook is to
let them start when they are young.  As for men and whether they cook or not,
there are men of both types observed.  A male friend who could not cook at
all resorted to eating out for three weeks when his wife was out of town on
a business trip.  But another male friend has been cooking and living on his
own for several years now.  So there are people in both camps.

I know one couple where the woman does little of the cooking because she is
a workaholic and comes home late.  Her husband and a male roommate or two do
the cooking. IS this common?  (Hey Slinkie, does the -ie signify female?) 
She washes the dishes because she is fussier about that aspect.  A CHinese
male roommate was an excellent cook, having had to learn when he was 'sent
to the countryside' as a teenagure during the cultural revolution, but forgot
how to cook when his wife arrived.  I learned a lot from both of them.  There
does not seem to be any stigma against men cooking in China nonprofessionally,
even though they rarely live alone unless in dormitories with a cafeteria.
In Yugoslavia on the other hand, one friend's mother bouht a dishwasher when
she had to go away for a couple of weeks, because the four men were unable
to wash dishes.  I have no idea what they ate.  A Nigerian friend cooked all
his food and always wanted company when eating, as did an Egyptian neighbor
living next door to me and three roommates, who he would always invite over
just to taste the soup, and then serve a whole dinner.  Are there countries
where men do at least half the cooking regularly, at least when single?  An
American  friend teaching in Sudan said his Sudanese (or was it Egyptian)
roommate cooked for both of them.

My parents started the cooking on us kids early, although as a born engineer
I was already interested.  Eventually each kid (3 in the family) had to cook
dinner one night a week.

These days I tend to make a lot of spaghetti and other fast-assembly meals.
I have a bread machine.  I did work as a cook for a year, but I rarely do
anything ambitious anymore.  I bake granola for my breakfasts.

When you cooked dinner, did you also plan it or just follow instructions? 
My brother and I were never allowed to choose what or how to cook.  As soon
as I left home (and the dorm) I learned to cook vegetarian and stopped
boiling all the vegetables.  Jim said his mother let him cook anything he
wanted, and then washed up afterwards as encouragement.  'A lot of pizza!'

Re:#7 I've only seen it spelled as "slinkie" Is there another spelling?

My mother and father taught both my brother and I to cook from a young age.
He and I have always known how to make things from scratch, and I *never* ate
microwave meals until I started working at places with twenty minute lunch
breaks.  My roommate, Kevin, can make anything out of nothing, and he often
surprises me with an omelette or chicken and pasta.  I think it all depends
on your upbringing and/or ambitions.  I don't think women are necessarily
*better* cooks than men...  It's just a societal thing to believe that women
are the natural cooks.  I've never bought into it because every man in my life
(relatives and dates) have always been able to cook at least Jell-O and Mac
and Cheese.  ;-)

My daughter isn't interested in learning to cook yet, but my son
is always asking to help, or to cook on his own, so we've shown him
all sorts of things.  He's at the point now where he decides what
spices, if any, to use, how much to use, etc.  He's pretty good at
getting cooking temperatures just right.  For age 13, I think he's
doing well.  I assume -- although I've never asked him -- that he's
interested in it because he sees me cooking a lot.  Or at least,
seeing me cooking makes him free to be interested.

As to "real men" knowing how to cook, keesan, I don't think you've
seen enough gangster movies.  Ever since The Godfather, the image
of the big tough-talking man preparing a mouth-watering Italian
meal has almost become a cliche'.  Danny Aiello even makes pasta
sauce from scratch while holding a group of hostages at gunpoint
in one movie.  It's not unusual in Italian families for the men to
at least participate in the cooking, unless cooking is an ego-
thing for one of the women, as it was for my father's mother.
No one, I mean *no* one, could tell that woman how to cook, offer
to cook in her stead, or even offer a helpful suggestion, up until
her death at age 89.  Still, my dad learned by watching her, and he 
was able to prepare some passable things when we were momless on 
a few occasions.

Another good example or role model that I think will get many men
into the kitchen is the great number of male cooks presiding over
cooking shows on TV.

Re #10, I am assuming Just a Slinkie, which I have not noticed outside of the
homme conference, has something to do with the discussion of writing styles,
where names in -ie are usually female and 'just a' is female.  Slinky?  (As
in slinky dress, that sounds female too.)
In both #11 and #12, men learned or are learning to cook in families where
the fathers cooked or cook.  But how did the fathers themselves learn to cook.
Michael, who taught you to cook.  I never asked my father who taught him. 
His father died when my father was 12, and he had two older sisters to help
his mother cook, maybe he watched them?  I have not watched gangster movies,
and assumed Italian men, like Yugoslav men, did not cook.  The only one I
know, who is now about 90, did not cook, but his wife worked only at home.
I am curious when it became 'normal' for boys to learn to cook, and how that
correlates with when mothers started to work for pay.  Are there male grexers
who don't know how to cook, and if so how old are you?

When I was 13 or 14, I used to love to cook, but now I'm usually just trying
to minimize the amount of work I have to do to get food.  Part of it may have
been that it was a new thing that I could do at the time, and part of it may
have been that with a family dinner, there was likely to be some sort of,
however vague, schedule to it, while when I'm eating alone I usually wait
until I'm hungry before I start thinking about food preparation.

(The Danny Aiello movie that Michael mentions in #12 is "2 Days in the
Valley" and is a lot of fun. Recommended.)

Scott, do you sew anything besides curtains?  How many other men know how to
sew or even sew on buttons, or to knit?  My father's father was a tailor, but
my father, who must have learned to cook from his mother, never knew how to
sew.  My mother's father, the baker, also worked in a suitcase factory for
a while and made us leather belts and suitcases from wooden milk crates.  He
mended his clothing extensively (I inherited some well worn long underwear
and patched sheets) and knitted his own sweaters.

I can sew buttons and a few other simple tricks like that, but
knitting is an impenetrable mystery to me.

I could do some clathes, but I'm not really motivated.  I did do Renassance
Fair costume stuff last summer, though.  I was attracted to it many years ago
as a budding engineer, and was fortunate that my parents weren't concerned
about keeping me away from it.  In high school my brother did some kits (down
vest, backtpack).  My sister didn't do much sewing at all, and I'm probably
the only one (besides my dad) who actually owns a sewing machine. 

I used to know how to knit.  I could probably re-learn it without too much
trouble.

Did you every make anything more complicated than a scarf?  My brother got
partway through his scarf and lost so many stitches he gave up.  Are there
other traditionally female crafts that male grexers have learned?  I read that
women on average have better fine motor control and therefore are faster at
such things as threading needles and embroidery.  True?  (Of course nobody
is average, but think of several men and women that you know).

Coming from a household with three sons (including myself) and a father 
my mother was the person who had to do all the work in the house.
Since my father set that example I didn't know any better, but in my 
teen years I started to help out when my homework was done.
But when I started to go to university, and living on my own, I couldn't
 even break an egg (literally, I am not joking-> just tried to pull the 
up and down side apart, and wondered how other people managed to do it, 
untill I asked). So, there I was with the choice to eat tv-dinners, at 
college or at home. I decided for the last and started cooking.
Nowadays, I take much pried in cooking when I am having guests over for 
dinner. Because I am a bachelor by choice (not my first choice, but hey)
I have  learned to take care of myself and my householding, although I
detest  ironing (ridiculous anyway). In many aspects I am better equiped
when it  comes to householding than DIY chores. But heck, friends tell
me that I am rather feminine for a man, but  that's the way I am as a
man. I am having difficulty to understand how men can differ from this
way. I think I am born halfway between Venus  and Mars. The worst is
that making a proper job of householding is a tad bit  tiring when your
are fulltime employed. In that aspect I am glad not  having any kids to
take care of as well.  Anyway, Sundays have become my  traditional
house-cleaning day.

I had a (male) housemate once who mostly lived on pizza, but once tried to
learn to cook eggs.  He started by washing the entire carton of them under
the faucet.  I think it was a cardboard carton, too. Then went back to pizza.
Clees, is it not usual for men to cook in the Netherlands?  When I visited
friends, it was only women's work (but the man was older generation, in his
sixties).  Doo most women there now work full-time outside the house?  I had
not heard of TV dinners in Europe.  Is a typical breakfast in the Netherlands
still a piece of bread wtih peanut butter, or cheese, or little chocolate bits
sprinkled on it, then eaten with fork and knife?

btw, I think I misspelled pride.

Re #22:
"Clees, is it not usual for men to cook in the Netherlands?  When I 
visited friends, it was only women's work (but the man was older 
generation, in his sixties)."
It still is not. Not even in higher educated environments. Fortunately I 
have got a lot of male friends who are fully capable of producing decent 
or even nice meals. Mostly these are the bachelor type of man and had to 
take care of themselves. I doesn't go that far that we exchange 
recipies, but sometimes you pick something up.
As I said: it depends on the attitude towards householding chores. Since 
I am used to doing them it can be very satisfying to have a clean house 
after laboring at Sunday-afternoon.
Why this kind of activities should be degrading I don't understand.
Preparing a delicious meal does the same trick.
Best indication is people taking second helpings. Most of my friends are 
too blunt to say anything about the meal.

"Do most women there now work full-time outside the house?"
No. I think the OECD had published a report on women working.
I was quite appalled to hear that the Netherlands are among the lowest 
scoring countries of the European Union. Mostly women are parttimers in 
Holland (as a matter of fact: approx. 40% of labourforce in Holland is 
parttime), easily to give up when children are about.
This means that the balance of women at the top is quite uneven as well.
And I always thought that the Dutch were so progressive.
Not.

"I had not heard of TV dinners in Europe."
Nuking is a habit, is the result of shifts in work-time.

"Is a typical breakfast in the Netherlands still a piece of bread wtih 
peanut butter, or cheese, or little chocolate bits sprinkled on it, then 
eaten with fork and knife?"
You forgot to mention strong coffee and a glass of milk.

Do people bring their own lunches or eat out?

Depends on where you work, I guess, and in what kind of job you are.
Small businessess at industry parks, I guess people will take their own lunch
along since most of these companies won0t have any facilities for eating
besides maybe a coffee vendor.
In town there will be lots of possibilities for lunching elsewhere.
In my case, at the university, there is a restaurant.

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