Growing up, my father worked days, leaving early in the morning to catch the first train into Boston and returning home by five. My mother would always have supper ready on the table. She made meat, mashed potatoes, and canned vegetables. When I had trouble going to the bathroom and the doctor asked if I was eating enough fiber through fresh fruits and vegetables she said yes, even though the tablespoon of microwaved string beans, corn kernels, carrots, or broccoli was all I was offered. Not surprisingly, when I was thirteen and declared myself a vegetarian and started cooking for myself the problems went away. Maybe it was this need for control that prevented my husband from cooking for me. Maybe it was that he couldn't cook or would rather spend time at the gym than feeding our marriage.
When we moved in together, I dutifully took on the role of wife that I had learned from my mother. Unable to find a job, I busied myself by going to the supermarket and buying the ingredients for the newest recipe in the cook books I'd bought before moving south. I read each cook book cover to cover, determined to be a better cook than either of my parents.
Growing up, my husband had to fend for himself when it came to food. When he was very young his older siblings would prepare something, but when they moved out and it was just him and his mother he often went without eating. There were times when a jar of peanut butter was all he had in his house to eat. My home cooked Italian meals were a delicacy to him and he quickly started gaining back the weight he'd lost in Iraq. Because he was a meat-eater, I made two meals every night. A vegetarian dish for myself and a meat meal for him. Sometimes I'd put so much effort into his meal that I'd just pop a veggie burger in the microwave for myself.
The first time he cooked for me he made an omelet for breakfast. I made him bacon and eggs every Saturday and collected the bacon grease in a glass jar that I kept under the kitchen sink so that it wouldn't harden and clog the pipes. Usually, I coated the pans with butter or nonstick spray. For my meal, he poured in the bacon grease. I knew something wasn't right from the first bite. I tried to act grateful though-- otherwise I might never receive a home cooked meal from him again. After I'd choked half of it down he told me he'd use the bacon grease and I gagged looking at the puddle in the plate.
Toward the end of our relationship, when I knew things weren't going to last much longer, I continued cooking for him despite the good advice of a close friend. He would come home from the gym close to 10 o'clock at night and shovel in whatever I'd put together for him. I made more and more pre-packaged meals like the ones pictured above. I'd slide them into the oven, trying to time it for when he came home, but as he arrived later and later and often not at all they would cool off and coagulate.
The day he left, I sent him with three shopping bags filled with food I would not or could not eat. He left behind anything that needed to be kept cool, however, since his sister's refrigerator had stopped working and she didn't have intentions of replacing it. I felt bad about just throwing things away, so I waited for them to expire before getting rid of them. The Amy's pot-pies and pizza pockets resided in the freezer and have an extremely long shelf-life. Even though they have been greeting me for a year each time I reach for ice or frozen fruit, they still will not expire for another year. I will leave them in the community freezer at my workplace in hopes that someone will enjoy them.
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