Cook Your Own Damn Food...

I didn't always have an aversion to cooking. In fact, some of my fondest childhood memories are of my mother and I baking cheese straws and homemade bread in our cramped kitchen in Brooklyn. But as I got older, she and I stopped cooking and I spent most of my time with my head in a book, juggling junior high with all the homework I got from Prep. There hardly was time for cooking when I was 11 and 12, and eventually my interests turned to music, TV and thinking about boys when I entered high school.

By the time I got to college, cooking wasn't even on my radar. I wasn't about to whip out a pot or pan when I had McDonald's, Wendy's, Wes Wings, Cup-O'-Noodles, Niblets corn and Chef Boyardee at my disposal. The most "cooking" I ever did at Wesleyan entailed frying kielbasa in a pan. 

And the deeper entrenched in my 20s I became, the more often I would hear the same question: "How are you going to feed your husband?"

Excuse me?

"What are you going to do when you get married?"

My response: "Eat bologna sandwiches, I guess."


***
Recently I saw this question posed on an online forum: "True or False: West Indian Women have the POTENTIAL to be the BEST Women." One male participant lamented the fact that West Indian women here in the states leave much to be desired, compared to their counterparts back home. A female responded to his post, saying: "[sic] If a W.I. woman is brought up back home in d right way ...Her upbringing will not departfrom her. In this N. America if you find a well bred W.I. woman.. she is wukking hard, cleaning house, cooking and taking care ah she man needs."

I was born in the United States, but the expectations that come with Guyanese ancestry have always been clear. Like the female forum user stated, West Indian women are expected to keep a clean house and have dinner ready when her man gets home. As we all know, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. But from a young age, I decided that wasn't going to be my life. I was going to be more than just a wife, a cook and a maid. 

Perhaps I've taken my disdain for gender norms too far, seeing as how I can't make pepper pot, garlic pork, or even plain old lasagna. But my desire to finally learn how to cook isn't contingent upon a marriage proposal.

It's on my terms.


(image courtesy of Urlybits.com)