Hey Man, What’s Cooking?
Let’s celebrate “National Men Make Dinner Day” all year round.
By Jeff Cann
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 was 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…
