The Spice Rack and Other Mysteries of Living With a Woman

Women are great executive chefs when it comes to planning holiday meals.  Able to conceive, plan, and execute a menu for a party from four to forty and enjoy doing it.   I consider myself a good prep and dependable line chef.  There is no shame in this.  Point me toward a huge pile of russet potatoes, the peeler and a sharp knife and I will make sure they are julienned just right for the chef de cuisine to turn them into gourmet papas fritas.  But task me with coming up with the menu in the first place and I will just call ahead for take out fries from the nearest burger joint.  So when my brother asked me to cut up some veggies for a crudites tray for my nephew's apres Bar Mitzvah party I was all over it.  But when he asked me if I thought we had prepared a sufficient quantity I was stymied.  "I have no idea", I lamely replied.  "Tammy usually tells me how much to make".  It is an absolute mystery to me how my wife seems to know with unflinching confidence what, and how much, to prepare for a party.  "Go to Acme and get a pound and a half of cooked shrimp for the hors d'oeurves" she steadfastly commands me as if I might mistakenly only buy one pound.  Therefore leaving each of our guests three shrimps short of what they actually desired.

Another source of great inscrutability for me is the spice rack . There are spices on display in our kitchen that were once used in 1997.  A particularly enigmatic one that comes to mind is cream of tarter.  I am not even sure that is a spice but my wife insists on it being perched on the spice rack alongside the more obvious Mediterranean oregano.  Some spices get relegated to the lazy susan in the spice cabinet but others are kept out on the hanging wall rack.  Allspice is in the cabinet but rosemary is on the rack.  Since neither have been used in anything served to me in the past twenty years I am unsure as to the logic of the organizational scheme.  But one time I did trade out the thyme leaves for the Season All (the most versatile of spices) and there was hell to pay.  Perhaps since the spice rack is visible to our guests it sends a certain message about our kitchen.  Fancy McCormick jars of rosemary, tarragon, Turkish bay leaves, and Saigon cinnamon all say Dean and DeLuca while a tub of Season All says Costco. If it were up to me we wouldn't even need a spice rack.  I would have garlic, onion, chile, and red pepper powders along side the salt and pepper shakers. And perhaps some coriander for my famous guacamole.

The puzzlement of the female character does not end in the kitchen.  My wife's sartorial vocabulary also eludes my cognitive frame of reference.  For example, please briefly describe the item of clothing seen in the photo below:

My wife, on a recent weekend away, informed me that I had left my "gold top" in the car.   "What's my gold top?" I irritatingly inquired.
"You know, for the outfit you are wearing tomorrow" she replied.
"You mean my yellow flannel shirt?  I am just going to wear it with my black jeans.   Men have shirts, not tops. "And furthermore", I firmly added, "I don't wear outfits."
Men have shirts and pants.  Women have outfits.

Then there is the matter of window treatments.  The idea that windows get treated is as foreign a concept to me as dressing a turkey.  If I were a bachelor I am quite certain the windows in my condo would have shades, blinds, or possibly, if I had a study, shudders.  If I did have the need to dress up the window frame I would take two measurements, width and height, and go buy some pre-made curtains at JC Penny which hang on a straight forward rod. In my house, however, we have swags, jabots, cornices, and lambrequins.  All custom sewn by my wife.  And in order to even fabricate a swag one needs the mathematical chops of Sir Isaac Newton. The formulas used to calculate the amount of material needed to sew a swag which will hang just so are complicated enough for an advanced algebra course. Yet Tammy can figure it out in her head while she is standing in the cutting table queue at JoAnn's while holding the bolt of calico muslin.  But for some odd reason she refuses to understand that a 15 watt CFL replaces a 60 watt incandescent.  Or even what CFL stands for. 

My final observation has been touched on before in this column (I promoted my blog).  When company comes over, even our own family, why must we hide all the evidence that we actually live in our home?  Every magazine, newspaper, glass, sock, and pen must be hidden from view as if we have newly arrived in our abode along with the guests.   I guess it's like your mother telling you to always put on a clean pair of underwear in case you are in an accident and the paramedics have to cut off your pants.  But much like the paramedics realizing many accident victims shit their pants anyway, your company surely is aware of the fact that there is usually a foot high stack of old newspapers on the coffee table so what's the difference.

Henry Higgins asked "why can't a woman be more like a man" many years ago so this topic is hardly new.  But I encourage you to send in your own anecdotes.  I even encourage "why can't a man be more like a woman" quips.