The tragedy of a fasting man: why a modern woman does not have to cook

I decided to cook chicken broth. I usually do this when I get sick – I boil a pot of broth and eat it all day afterwards with garlic butter bread. (In this case, the broth justifies spending hours eating a garlic butter baguette.)

But the day came when I was completely healthy, and nevertheless decided that it was time to cook the broth. A serious full-grown broth. After all, I am a woman.

Events quickly developed: I climbed onto the first culinary site that appeared with an advertisement for frying pans around the edges and discovered that in the kitchen there is a “bouquet de garni” – a bouquet of herbs that are added to the broth during cooking. I ran to the store. Unfortunately it was open.

In case you didn’t know, there are two types of bouquet garni: small and large. Petit, aka basic, consists of parsley, celery, bay leaf and thyme. The big one all the same understands something else more – basil and, it seems, something else. And maybe even something else. In general, I decided to start with a small bouquet.

Feeling like a female incarnation of Gordon Ramsay, I carefully lowered the bunch of herbs into the boiling water. While doing so, I was reminded of the famous scene from Bridget Jones’s Diary in which Bridget makes soup with ingredients tied together with blue thread and ends up with blue soup. She chuckled at Bridget, that unfortunate fool.

After 15 minutes, the aroma of spicy herbs began to permeate the apartment, which whispered compliments to my friendliness and my innate talent for cooking. Humming something (damn, did I really sing?!), I walked over to the cooking pot to check on how the aromatic golden broth was doing.

He was green.

My fragrant golden broth was top to bottom (if that phrase can be used in relation to broth) green. Such a rich emerald color. How can I explain… The color of the Scottish fields after the rain. The color of children’s broken knees, anointed with brilliant green. Sweater color from the latest Dolce & Gabbana spring-summer collection. In general, without knowing the background, one would have thought that I was cooking the broth of Gena the Crocodile.

It was impossible to understand the traitor among the herbs – when I removed the bouquet de garni from the infusion, it spread across the plate in a defiant dark green stain. Herbs mixed into a ball, without betraying the intruder – one for all and all for one. Musketeers suck.

But I almost fell in love with cooking!

In fact, I don’t like to cook. And above all, I don’t see the point of it at all. I spend most of the day away from home and I don’t know how to fit homemade food into my work schedule if I manage to cook it. For example, soup. Having soup in the morning before leaving for work with coffee? Have it in the evening the night after he returns? Take it with you to work to eat in front of the computer?

The third option is perhaps the most realistic. And many do just that. But personally, I am traumatized for life by a banana my grandmother secretly put in my backpack. By the third lesson, the banana turned into a smoothie (in the 90s, however, such a word was not yet known), fancifully softening the backs of textbooks. “What did you do with your textbooks?” the school librarian asked with disgust in her voice. Since then, I avoid carrying food in my bag. Even coconut.

So the option of eating soup in front of the computer is out of the question. Plus, sitting in front of the monitor for 8 hours straight, you start to appreciate any reason to step away from it at least for a while. Going out and getting food is a great excuse. (Going out and looking at a fire pit in the office hallway is also a great excuse, but, alas, that doesn’t happen often.)

Moreover, I am convinced that the appearance of food in the refrigerator inevitably leads to fullness. Here’s how it works: You have cheese in your fridge that expires tomorrow. You don’t seem to want cheese, but you remember war and famine. And you eat cheese fast so you don’t feel like an ungrateful bastard. And if you missed the expiration date – even worse. Each time, looking in the refrigerator, you look away guilty from the expired cheese, not daring to throw it away. Only after several months, having gathered the courage, quickly put it in the trash.

Cheese is another sweet option. And a piece of cheese? What if it was a herring under a fur coat, which my mother treated after the New Year’s party ?!

So I prefer not to raise food at home. “And feed the man? the public will be horrified. I have a friend who hasn’t moved in with her beloved man for two years now because she doesn’t want to cook for him. “See, I come home late at night, I only have the strength to fall on the bed and stare at the ceiling. But I have to cook dinner for him! When I try to object to this, they say no , you won’t have to and point out the benefits of everyday feminism, my friend looks at me with primitive horror She was raised that way – it doesn’t matter if you work twelve hour days in a job nervous management, in the evening your man should have dinner. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a man in an apartment? Here’s a girlfriend and won’t start.

I’m flattered to think I’m much more emancipated when it comes to eating the opposite sex. I reason like this: the peasant somehow arrived at the blessed day of our meeting. He didn’t die on the way from starvation, didn’t faint from chronic malnutrition, on the contrary, he looks ruddy and well fed. He is therefore able to take care of himself.

In addition, there is a whole coated cheese.