Kitchen Highjinks in Marriage
Since Jim started this diet I have been cooking, like cooking a like, like every single freaking meal. I'm not whining. I don't mind. Plus the whole Covid 19 quarantine happening here in Costa Rica makes it very problematic to go out to eat. Since it started we've have takeout from favorite restaurants. For several weeks authorities here shut down all restaurants. The big tourist restaurants have shuttered their doors until the next high season. So it's cook or don't eat.
Plus this is really how it's supposed to work in healthy dynamic marriages. One partner expresses a need, a need for special food that must be cooked, and the other partner seeking to support what their spouse is trying to do cooks.
Jim does not cook. He's something of a retro sexual. No cooking, no laundry and not a lot of cleaning, which is fine. I tore a ligament early in our marriage, was ordered to stay off my feet for ten days. Day three I got up to cook, propping the leg up on a stool, because Jim had made Hamburger Helper three days in a row. I have household help, we have a gardener. Plus I enjoy cooking and I'm good at it. He likes eating, I like cooking.
Not that I think only wives should cook. In my family of origin the only meals not cooked by the housekeeper were those cooked by my father. When he would come up to Virginia he'd take over my kitchen and cook like mad. It brought him the same kind of joy and fulfillment it does for me. I'm going to have to actually stop and write down my father's recipes one day soon, lest his Cajun meals go the way of the dinosaur.
Another advantage of cooking is that I have food allergies that are part of the whole stupid mast cell thing and make breathing problematic. If I cook I avoid those foods. There's no worrying, there is no risk.
The other day I am cooking to beat the band. I've got all burners in use for our main meal of the day, lunch. I have high protein cornbread with veggies in the oven. I have banana bread made with almond flour and coconut sugar in the oven for dessert. And the stove goes stone cold dead. But not before the handle falls off the oven. I'm left scrambling to complete the meal in various stages of microwaving, using my ancient great grandmothers electric skillet and other small appliances.
Thought at first it was just out of propane. Here no one has natural gas, and certainly not through something as organized as gas lines. Here you have to go swink and tote a big tank of propane. We did. It didn't solve the problem.
Which is a pretty big problem in the middle of a pandemic. We're going to remodel the kitchen. It's the next big project. Just was not planning on starting now. Getting construction people is hard now, getting construction materials is even harder. The other issue is getting appliances right now.
Sure I could rush down to the Monge or Gollo and get a smaller offbrand four burner stove. But the kind of stove I want, something rather upscale and professional, likely must come from San Jose, a five hour car ride away. Five hour car rides cannot happen during driving and travel restrictions. It's a big purchase that would require a ton of research.
And then there's the other problem. Jim. We get along well most of the time, but when it comes to something like a remodel there is some small locking of horns, of compromise, or capitulation. We have to broker an agreement.
If it were up to me I'd have a crew in here within days install that beautiful purple art glass tile with the carnival glass finish in the kitchen as a tile backsplash and paint the exposed painted bits some shade of plum, bright green or turquoise. I'd incorporate a rainbow of colors in the new drapes, install a new high end fridge and stove. Tear out the ugly cheap cabinets someone hung as an afterthought above the stove and over the marble countertops. Put a stove vent hood over the stove and replace that cabinetry with open Guanacaste wood shelving. Likely spend both of our stimulus checks towards this.
But. I know Jim would freak out in the worst way. Mr. Meat, Potatoes and Beige would be so uncomfortable with my colorful kitchen. There would be fretting, and worrying over the colors, the tiles, what coordinates, what clashes and a lot of second guessing. So we've been engaged in those discussions, that delicate dance of decorating negotiation that is marriage.
Looks likely the kitchen will be painted a neutral, perhaps a gray with touches of lavender. The tiles will likely be those pretty multicolor Mexican ones. The appliances from Costco/Price Smart, which is definitely acceptable. Custom made Guanacaste wood cabinet to replace that one ugly pressboard one, and to match the other custom made Guanacaste wood beautiful cabinets already in place. The absolutely non-negotiable is the stove vent hood. And you know what? Both would be fine. Both would be gorgeous. I'm not the only one living in this house, it needs to reflect the ideas of each of us and our tastes.
Part of success in marriage is knowing what your partner is like, how to compromise with them to reach a place where everyone can thrive. Right now Jim is building and putting in a square foot gardening frame for me. I've been watching him approach it from his logical brain way. Me? I would have tossed those boards together at the speed of light, boom, they're together and already poured in the garden soil and planted. Jim is measuring, he's planting the boards four coats of paint, researching best options for bracketing the boards together. He's soil testing. He's seeing which parts of the property get the most sunlight. To add a gate or not? A week just to decide where it should go.
It's a good illustration of how he is and how I am. I think between the quarantine/travel ban, and Jim's rational careful way I'm going to be cooking on that hot plate and toaster oven a little longer than I would like. But it's all good.
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