A: I don’t like cooking.
A: I cook because I am the only one who can cook and feed the tummies in my home.
B: But don’t you cook 3 meals a day?
A: Yes, I do. I have been cooking 3 meals a day regularly since 2013 which makes it 8 years now. The meals were less edible in the beginning whereas, now, the frequency of I churning out edible meals has increased.
B: See. Then you must have learned to love cooking!
A: Not at all. Love is a distant word which can ever come close to cooking in my mind.
B: You are a strange woman. I have not known any woman who doesn’t love cooking.
A: In that case, you must meet my friends and you might realise you have not known enough women.

A: Tell me, do you like cooking?
B: Yes I do.
A: Then you must be cooking often?
B: No I don’t get enough time because of my work but I cook special dishes when I feel like. My wife cooks mostly.
A: Yeah. Of course.
In the above conversation, A is me and B is Mr. B.
Yesterday, I was speaking to a female friend and she began the same way as Mr. B did about how I must have learned to love cooking after so many years of doing the same. I gave her the same answer that I haven’t. Further adding – I am sure I cannot ever because if love has not happened in the last 8 years then the future possibility of a love story developing between me and cooking is far too bleak.
“You never pretend na,” she said to me.
“Never. There is no need to,” is always my stand.

Joining #MondayMusings hosted by Corinne Rodrigues
You know after I got married, whenever I chat with a male classmate or an ex-male colleague they always wanted to know what I cooked for breakfast and lunch. It always annoyed me, that question. I am okay with cooking, sometimes I even love to cook. But I don’t like being asked that question as if that’s the only thing I have left in my life to love and care about.
And of course, there is no need to pretend that you love cooking. What purpose does it serve? As though pretending would make you richer or something!
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Please ask your friend B, if he/she enjoys getting their eyebrows plucked. Been doing it for years now, yet am to fall in love or remotely like the process
The same with cooking. Somethings you just do, thats all.
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I DO NOT love cooking either! And, I feel that those who cook only on occasions should keep their “love for cooking” funda to themselves. Do it daily and then you talk. Right, Anamika? ;P
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Love that you chose to say it like it is. I’m so glad you wrote about it. This needs to be talked about often.
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I have been saying the same thing to anyone who even mentions cooking! I am just like you, I cook fancy dishes if I feel like it and I have fed my family regularly for 25 years now, but no, I will never say that I love cooking. But I do know of people(even women) who love cooking but will never admit it because it is something that we are not supposed to enjoy. So, yeah. Why pretend? Agree with you!
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I love your honest response, Anamika. I can understand how reactions differ with regard to cooking as far as women are concerned. I never enjoyed cooking when I was younger. But I learnt to love it as the years went by, especially when I realised it is a life skill that one ought to know, men and women alike. Having said that, I wouldn’t like to HAVE to cook every day, if I had a choice. I believe cooking should be as much a woman’s job as a man’s. What I particularly feel irked about is that women are compelled to do a hundred different things at home and also have to cook 3 or more meals a day. Sad reality!!
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I’m a self taught cook, because most of my life my parents had a cook. Before we got married, Jose agreed to cook, but soon I began to be the more regular cook. And since he’s happy to cut veggies etc, we manage between us. The best part was when my parents came to stay with us they kept thanking Jose for teaching me to cook, and he’d laugh because we both knew it wasn’t true!
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