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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Equipment!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Smartypts who wrote (80)	6/5/2000 12:09:00 AM
From: Gidget	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132

AMONG ALL GRAND and lost American traditions, there is perhaps none more lamentable than the nightly sit-down supper. Are you old enough to remember what it was like to come home to the smell of yeasty scratch-baked dinner rolls? A pie on the window sill? A roast in the oven? Did you once fondly know the quintessentially American crunch of crackling hot fried chicken from a cast iron skillet -- rather than a cardboard bucket? Nowadays, home cooking is for hobbyists, with their unsplattered professional kitchens and shiny, once-used gadgets. What use would grandma have had for these rice cookers, pasta makers, juicers, peelers, convection roasters and custom cleavers? Feh! Grandma knew that the only tools a home cook needs are time and ingenuity. Unfortunately, momma's too busy earning the bread to be baking it. Managing an office on top of running a household leaves the modern woman no time and energy to recreate her mothers' home cooked bounty. But before you enter the dysfunctional dietary netherworld of Lean Cuisine, Hot Pockets and hamburger hell, consider hubby -- the fellow parked over yonder, on the sofa. Has it occurred to you that while you're taking that public speaking night class, getting your real estate license and meeting with your investment club, hubby could be churning out the souffles and casseroles? The good news for gals is that the modern man esteems himself as a cook. Man's man TV chefs like Emeril Lagasse and Mario Battaglia have made it okay for men to move beyond the barbecue grill, into aprons and oven mitts. Slaving over a hot stove is now considered to be righteously macho activity. Tongs are for tough guys; dishtowels for dudesters. These days, getting your man to do your bidding in the kitchen is actually easier than making him do your bidding in the bedroom. It just takes the right kind of encouragement. But more about wooden spoons and their manifold uses later on. YOU CAN BEGIN your husband's culinary apprenticeship by setting him up with the proper tools. Signing him up for a class in the basics at a local college or trade school is a wonderful idea (and would make for a great gift). Superb cookbooks abound these days, and there are no better teachers than Julia Child, Marion Cunningham, Marcella Hazan, Mollie Katzen and Martha Stewart. These women of culinary authority have each written a series of user-friendly cookbooks guaranteed to whip your husband into a frothy delight, when it comes to cooking. And while you're checking out those cookbooks, sign your husband up for a subscription to Cook's Magazine. Cook's is, quite simply, The Bible for the unpretentious but serious home cook. If you'd like to start seeing simple classic American dishes turning up on your dinner table -- caesar salad, grilled steaks and key lime pie -- you will definitely want your hubby to follow the gospel of Cook's editor Christopher Kimball (who happens to be, sorry to say it ladies, one happily married Pantry God). Once your husband begins his foray into the kitchen, encourage him. Start suggesting menu ideas. Let him know what foods you're hankering for. Then demonstrate to him how the way to a woman's heart is through her taste buds. Escort him to your bedroom and lavish him with praise and affection whenever he comes up with a knockout of a meal. Of course, if he's negligent in his kitchen duties, don't hesitate to do what Martha or Marcella might do: put him on the hot seat. Chase him around the dining room with one of those wooden spoons. Once your husband finishes up the dishes, remember these words of wisdom: "after a great meal there is nothing like a great cigar." Nowadays, the smoke-filled study is becoming the province of women, especially those in the corporate world. Cigar smoking is a habit we recommend. And not at all for the tobacco fix. It's not even necessary to inhale to experience the essential feminine satisfaction of cigar smoking. And that satisfaction, dear ladies, is the feeling of something so perfectly phallic clenched tightly between your teeth. In this modern world, is there any gesture more symbolically revealing than a woman chomping down on a cigar? We think not. Especially when it's lit by a man wearing an apron. Enjoy your cigar in the comfort of your favorite chair, with a snifter of brandy at hand and your husband perched between your legs. What a glorious feeling at the end of a perfect meal: to sit back, to sip brandy, and feel your shoes and stockings being lovingly removed for you. And then your panties, too... Abandon etiquette, ladies! And to the man of the house? Bon appetite, darlings!