The Chores of Life

If there were a competition for being undemanding (household wide) V would take the Olympic Gold medal by a fair few miles and without a whisker of a doubt. In our household division of labour is such that he will do everything that is asked of him, including but not limited to – laundry (incl. wash and iron his own office shirts if need be), maintain all accounts/ financial gobbled-gook, be the gardener and provider of takeway/ delivery service food and organize all gadget things.

I, on the other hand, have only one task besides supervising our very slow cleaner once a week and that is the task of making sure we have sometimes healthy and always tasty food to eat. It’s a good thing given the situation that I actively love food and that V can scrape together toast or order in pizza on days when I don’t. To say I love food is a bit of an understatement. For me it’s not just looking at an array of photogenically arranged plates of the stuff and pouring though my collection of cookbooks, but the act of preparing, cooking and eating it all with relish. No chore is this in my mind.

One of my slightly OCD things is the planning of meals for a week ahead. On Friday’s or Saturdays I will make up a menu plan (in my head) for the coming week which will include dinners for the two of us from Monday to Friday. The menu plan basically leads to a quick check for existing ingredients in fridge/ freezer/ cupboards – all of which are stocked with a monthly home delivery run, at which time a vague menu is usually swirling around in my head. And then each week comes the quick grocery update list, usually not more than one canvas bag of groceries from our nearest Tesco/ Waitrose, enough to complement our existing groceries and come up with a week of meals.

Friday dinner is always an iffy one with last minute plans to eat out either by ourselves or with friends, rendering any forward planning useless. But Monday to Thursday is usually sacrosanct and followed to the T. While sometimes there are aberrations due to exhaustion or alternate office commitments and often there are just leftovers, this is rare. Not many people do but I enjoy the quiet of coming home early from work, turning on the TV for some background noise or putting on some music while I spin around the kitchen organising our dinner. People call me weird. I call me hungry.

Our weekends are usually made up of multiple meals outside (restaurants, people’ houses) and one home cooked meal which could be as complex as multi-layered slow-cooked Lasagna or as simple as a packet of Maggie noodles doused in ketchup, masala chili and Tabasco. I spend all week thinking of and researching where we could/ will go in this city of a million restaurants. And this week, after a week of: 1. bhindi, kaali dal, aloo with rotis 2. Mushroom fettuccini with garlic bread 3. Mostly home-made pizza and 4. Baked potatoes with salad, I’m ready for the weekend….bring it on!

There is such a fine line between enjoying something and finding it an unappetizing chore. I have read time and again on blogs and in books, of people who can’t/ won’t cook because for them it is a waste of good evening time and space or they don’t enjoy it or someone else is happy to do it for them or they can afford to both physically and financially eat out all the time. Sadly we have neither the stomach nor money nor energy for that lifestyle. And gladly one of us is happy to cook. And luckily both of us are always always happy to eat.