Home-cooked meals, home-cooked noodles, husband's cooking - Photo: NHA XUAN
My husband has maintained that cooking habit since we first fell in love, even though I often grumbled why we didn't go out to eat instead of having to cook and clean up. At those times, he just smiled and said, "Going to the market to cook helps my mind rest, then I can only focus on the food, without worrying about anything else."
Admire husband's good cooking
After 10 years together, our daily routine remains the same. On weekends when we have no work to do, he takes his wife to the market and personally selects fresh sea fish that have just been brought from Vung Tau, Phu Quoc, etc. Then he stops by the vegetable stall to buy a handful of raw vegetables, some eggplants, pineapples, and not forgetting some basil leaves to have a delicious pot of sour sea fish soup.
My husband and I both love sour soup, without a doubt, which is the favorite dish of sour sea fish. Sometimes it is sweetened silver pomfret, sometimes it is cooked with pineapple, mackerel cooked with sour bamboo shoots, baby mackerel cooked with young tamarind leaves... each season has its own dish. On days when we are too lazy to prepare too much, we only need a bowl of sour soup, a plate of raw vegetables, and a bowl of spicy garlic and chili fish sauce to have a meal where "husband eats and wife slurps, nodding and praising the deliciousness".
Due to the nature of his job, which requires him to travel a lot, my husband has also learned how to cook many delicious and unique dishes.
My husband's daily meals sometimes open my eyes to dishes I have never heard of, let alone eaten, from whale fish cooked with star fruit, silver pomfret fish cooked with pickled melon, frog soup cooked with green banana, fish noodle soup with betel leaves, stir-fried mushrooms with eggs, anchovies braised with tamarind...
In addition to his love of learning new dishes, I also admire his dedication to his cooking, even though to him, those things are "normal". One day, I blurted out that I was craving stir-fried river shrimp with star fruit. Early the next morning, I saw him riding his bike to the market, and a moment later, he brought back a bag of river shrimp "you have to go to the market early to get this".
Another soup that I can’t get enough of is stuffed bitter melon soup. The dish sounds simple, but when cooked by my husband, it is so elaborate that it is addictive. The bitter melon must be wild bitter melon, the fruit must be small enough to take two bites to be delicious. The stuffing is minced meat mixed with a little fat to make it smooth, sometimes shrimp is added, seasoned to taste, then put in a mortar with finely chopped wood ear mushrooms and pounded by hand to make it chewy. It must be pounded by hand to be delicious, my husband said.
Work together, love forever
Every time I "show off" the meals my husband cooks, my friends exclaim that I am lucky to have a husband who is a "housewife", others beautifully call them "loving meals". Once a friend commented "you are such a good husband", I immediately corrected her "you are a successful wife".
I am indeed lucky, but it is luck to have a partner who knows how to take care of the family rather than being a woman who doesn't have to cook. Besides, I have probably seen this luck many times.
Since I was little, the family kitchen has always been my father's "territory", where he cooked dishes that my siblings and I loved, such as braised pork, sour soup, taro soup...
My childhood was spent observing the division of labor in my parents' family. My mother was in business, my father was in the government, whoever had free time took care of the family, one worked while the other did the housework. As for cooking, my mother would buy and prepare the ingredients, and my father would do the cooking afterwards.
Even now, when parents have reached retirement age, no longer work and no longer live with their children, the grandparents' cooking process is still a series of steps "done together", rhythmic and clear.
Sometimes I also think it's too much trouble. After my mother prepares the ingredients, she calls my father to the kitchen to cook. When my father finishes cooking, he calls "Grandma, sprinkle some pepper, some green onion and cilantro and then serve the rice". "Why bother? Why can't one person do it all?" - I asked many times.
Later I understood that it was a matter of division of labor and working together, taking care of the family together.
My family also has a clear division of labor. Before meals, the wife leisurely waits for her husband to cook. After meals, the husband leisurely watches TV while his wife cleans up. Whoever is good at what does what.
Nowadays, there are many women who consider career goals as important as taking care of their family, and there are also many men who consider cooking a delicious meal for their wife and children as important as their work achievements. Scrolling through social media, there is no shortage of famous TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram channels with meals cooked for their wives and children.
Is it time to think that the idea that women earn money to "help" men, or that men "help" women with housework is no longer relevant? Don't "monopolize" the kitchen for one gender, let it be a place where anyone can come in to cook loving meals for the people they love.
Housework should not be considered the exclusive domain of women.
According to the thinking of the majority from the past until now, cooking and housework have always been the "privilege" of women. If a woman marries a husband who is capable of "helping" his wife, she is lucky.
In an article published in the New York Post in March this year, a study by the US home cleaning service Homeaglow found that the average American adult (both male and female) in 2022 will spend 34 minutes a day on housework, which translates to an hourly wage of $19.69/day. In total, they work 208 hours, equivalent to $7,188/year.
However, when analyzed by gender, the results show that women do $6,431 more housework per year than men. Accordingly, men do housework for an average of 19 minutes per day, equivalent to $3,909 per year, while women do it for an average of 49 minutes per day, equivalent to $10,341 per year.
That is why the saying "housework is for women" is not only a thought in our country but also everywhere on the planet. Although that imbalance still exists, it is an undeniable fact that many women today no longer consider housework as their "exclusive" right.
There is a generation of women who were born and raised without being taught by their parents that "you have to be good at housework to get married"; there is a generation of women who are busy enough with work, with their personal careers, with social work; there is a generation of women who work side by side with their husbands to build a home, together earning money to take care of the family.
Of course, there are also husbands who stand shoulder to shoulder with their wives in household chores and cooking.
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/nau-an-cho-nguoi-minh-thuong-20241019104107664.htm
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