Hey Man, What’s Cooking?

In 1996, my soon-to-be wife and I moved into an apartment together. It was an obvious step up from the run-down forties-era garden apartments we both previously rented. This place was in a modern high-rise with a newly renovated kitchen—a room full of sparkling appliances. On our first night in the apartment, we decided to make a nice meal featuring broiled pork chops to celebrate. As a newly cohabitating couple, we split our cooking chores along gender lines. Men make meat, right? My part was simple, broil the chops. How could I mess that up?

I set the oven on broil and cracked a beer as the oven heated up. Five minutes later, billows of smoke poured from the oven and filled our apartment. Our fire alarm immediately blared, and a minute later, the building alarm sounded as well. Neighbors we hadn’t met yet pounded on our door yelling helpful things like “Please don’t burn down our building.” Our post-fire forensic analysis uncovered a plastic wrapped oven manual, still in the oven, burned and melted to a crisp.

November 2 is National Men Make Dinner Day. It’s celebrated yearly on the first Thursday in November. I guess this is a pathetic attempt to balance out National Women Spend Sixteen Hours in the Kitchen Day exactly three weeks later. In the intervening twenty-seven years since my failed attempt to ruin a brand-new oven, I’ve turned into a decent, if unimaginative, cook. I regularly knock out the basics—eggs, chili, pasta—but my wife still handles the lion’s share of our cooking.

Men Make Dinner Day is a chance for me to shine. To strut my stuff. A chance to prove that I can do more than boil pasta and heat up sauce. Yes, I can do this, but I need help. Lots of help. Fortunately, my library has a phenomenal collection of cookbooks. A quick search of the catalogue found that countywide, there are over a thousand of them.

If you’re an occasional basic cook like me, you might wonder “What use do I have for a thousand cookbooks?” I encourage you to emulate my wife. Every time she walks out of the library, she carries two or three cookbooks with her. She does this not necessarily for the recipes, but for the ideas. How many evenings do you stand around your kitchen and think “Man, what should we have for dinner?”

There seems to be a cookbook for everything. Grilling, vegan, low-fat, low salt, high-fat, allergy free, simple recipes, complex recipes, cookbooks featuring your favorite food truck meals, exploring the history of cooked food, ways to spice up movie night, and of course cuisines from around the world.

So give it a try. On National Men Make Dinner Day, or any day really, break away from your usual fare. Put your chili on the back-burner, leave your pre-pressed burgers ungrilled. Check out a few library cookbooks and wow your family with a totally unique and scrumptious dinner. MAN-kind is counting on you.

Note: I wrote this story originally as a publicity piece for the library where I work. I modified it to promote libraries in general. Patronize your local library, and don’t forget to donate to their annual appeal (which is probably going on right now).

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Previously Published on jefftcann.com and is republished on Medium.

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Photo credit: iStock