Tuesday Tipday: To Serve Man

For years now I've been against buying cookbooks. When you subscribe to as many magazines as I have (ok, do) you get plenty of recipes in your mailbox every month, not to mention the scores of cooking ideas you can find online, on TV, or from the library.

One of my favorite cooking shows is Everyday Food, and I also get the magazine from the library and scan the recipes I'd like to try. I was looking through an issue and saw that one of the hosts of the show, Lucinda Scala Quinn had written a cookbook that helps you deal with feeding men. Feeding men, y'all!

I cannot tell you how much she read my mind! After several months of low-level poverty where figuring out what to cook and eat was a daily trial, I needed this book. By the time I found out about it HUBS and I had recovered some financial stability, but I was still feeling like I didn't really know how to cook for us.

HUBS can only cook pasta with jar sauce, burgers and fries; if I want anything besides that I have to cook, and that's fine (usually), I like cooking. But, back when I was living alone, if I didn't feel like cooking or didn't have anything much in the house and didn't have much cash to shop, do you know what I did? I ate cereal, or a salad, or a sandwich and I was fine.



That won't work with HUBS. He needs massive quantities of meat to feel like he's eaten anything other than a snack. I believe I could feed him an entire box of cereal and a half gallon of milk for dinner and within two hours he'd go "Yeah, that didn't really feel like a meal."

I. Love. This. Book! It's not just the tips and the recipes but the book-iness of the book: the design of the cover and pages, the photography, the heft of it and the textured, cloth-like cover. In the intro she acknowledges that "men eat differently from women." Yes! I thought I was going crazy over here, watching HUBS eat five Arby's roast beef sandwiches with a large order of fries and a giant soda in one freakin' sitting! It's not just me, apparently. Men just do that.

For Tuesday Tipday I'm going to share one of her suggestions with you: serve the man you cook for. I know, I know. He's a grown-ass man, he can walk, you did all the cooking and the least he can do is fix his own plate, but guess what? If he's what I like to call a Hungry Jack, he'll literally eat everything if you let him.

Once I started putting reasonable portions on HUBS' plate, he ate it and was generally satisfied. He rarely even goes back for seconds now. This means that when I cook enough for six people, I will actually have four servings of leftovers instead of one! Amazing!

The long and short of it? If you like to cook, you can't go wrong with this book. If you like to eat, you can't go wrong with this book. And if you're still getting used to feeding a man, you cannot go wrong with this book!