Ok, I’m going to be brave here I know that there isn’t one way to be a femme, and I know that we are all different, hell I’ve even written posts about those sorts of things however sometimes I can’t help but feel like a bad femme for something that I can’t do. I’m going to come clean about this even though it’s hard, and even though sometimes it makes me feel like I missed some crucial femme gene. I can’t cook, ok that’s not completely true, but I can’t cook well, and the few dishes that I can manage to create into something somewhat resembling something you might want to eat are almost always heavily reliant upon boxed or frozen saviors.

My partner on the other hand can cook just about anything, and ze is one of those incredible cooks who can improvise and alter recipes because ze has a “vision” of what the final product will look like…. and yes, it’s always good. As a femme I feel like I should be able to cook. When we have dinner parties (as we do with some regularity) I want to be able to say I created the incredibly tasty delights we will devour over the course of several hours and good conversation. Beyond feeling like I should be able to, I want to cook!

Last month when a good friend of mine and I went to the NYC femme tea party we were both in awe at the femmes who sat around us, many of whom were professional chefs, and who did magical things like create homemade chocolate molded into interesting shapes, or yearly put up preserves despite living in a tiny Manhattan apartment with a matching sized kitchen! These femmes were incredible, and I wanted to be just like them! Cooking has never been something I’ve had a lot of practice with, I didn’t learn to do it growing up and living on my own I subsisted mostly on macaroni and cheese, and then spaghetti when I was vegan (nutrition was never a high priority).

The first night I cooked for the handsome butch who would become my life partner I threw half a bag of macaroni into a pot and when I thought the had cooked enough I dumped a jar of cold tomato sauce onto it (I always figured the hot pasta would make the sauce warm enough to eat). To hir credit ze ate the crunchy chilly pasta without complaint (although ze did suggest we eat dinner at taco bell the next night ). I figure that I can say without a doubt ze didn’t fall in love with me for my cooking abilities. I’ve become a much better cook over the past few years, and there are now a few dishes in my repertoire that I can create with some degree of success, hopefully with time I will continue to improve.

This Christmas I opened a pretty wrapped box that sat under the tree, and inside was the most beautiful apron I’d ever seen! Pink and white strips and polka dots, with lace it was everything an apron should be, and it was mine. I’ve wanted an apron for years (remember how I said I have a cooking fetish?) and now I finally have one. I tend to wear it as part of random outfits that are nowhere near the kitchen, but it is a bit of inspiration, after all accessories make everything better!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.