The kitchen is sweetly scented with the aroma of coconut toasting in the oven. My counters are covered with a thin layer of confectionaries sugar that was blown up and out of my stand mixer as it tends to do when added to fast. The frosting feels tacky between my fingers and streaks up my forearm. Looking around I can see the work it will take to return my tiny kitchen to its original order, yet I stand amid the disarray both sticky and happy. 
Hours earlier I donned in my literal apron and set to work making my first homemade carrot cake. In today's world of easy boxed cakes, instant microwavable meals, and handy snack preserved in shiny packaging, you can become so far removed from the food that it seems unnecessary and somewhat lavish to make things from scratch. I can churn out a boxed cake in 12 minutes flat and have the whole thing, baked, iced, and the evidence my kitchen was ever used gone in an hour timeframe. But did I really make something or add heat to someone else's creation?
Here is where I make Gloria Steinem pick up the phone and have me banned from every N.O.W. meeting, Planned Parenthood rally and Democratic Women's Caucus luncheon from now till my death day, but I really love to cook. From conception, to inception, to commencement, the process is wholly satisfying in a way that painting or sculpting must be to others. I love to put my hand on food and transform it into something special. I love to take a jumble of ingredients and force order out of chaos. But mostly I love to cook for those I care for. I love to make them feel how much I really do care, to feel my affection in a very tangible way. 
Despite my innate love, I usually don't advertise my culinary predilection for one simple reason. In the Mormon culture, somewhere right around the age of Young Men's, from what I can tell, the boys are taught that if they open their mouths like guppies, some good intentioned girl is going to deposit food right in there. Let us be clear here, I love to cook, not be used. 
When I cook, I am doing service. Feeding you is the same as rubbing your shoulders after a long day, driving you to the airport, or bringing you medication when you are sick; I do it because I care not because it is somehow owed to you. A good rule of thumb is if we have never hung out at both mine and your house, you probably should not ask me to cook for you. If you don't know my brother's name or where I work, you probably should not ask me to cook for you. If it would be weird for me to call you at 2am and ask you to come and pick me up because my car won't start, then you probably should not ask me to cook for you. 
Candidly, my fascination with cooking started as marriage prep. Gloria Steinem be damned, I want to be an apron wearing, lunch box stuffing, child bearing, minivan driving, house cleaning, laundry folding, window washing, carpet vacuuming, quilt sewing, taxi driving, lullaby singing, stay-at-home mom. Knowing the skills required for my dream job don't develop over night, I began slowly working on my cooking skills because it was something I could both hone and share. 
My first attempts were abysmal. Countless hours and dollars were spent on food that was inedible to even the most desperate of dogs. If you ever have the pleasure of meeting my father, asking him about the first macaroni and cheese I made for Christmas, the ham in the Coke marinade, or why I am no longer allowed to "salt to taste". Despite the setbacks, I pushed forward. Perseverance paid off and I can now make amazing things like homemade carrot cake, which required even zest a lemon for the homemade icing.
The joy and fulfillment I get from cooking is something that not all of my gender share. Some lack the joy in the task but still know their way around a kitchen, while other seem to lack the gene altogether. Asserting their feminism, they revel in the fact that they refuse to cook. They took the call to severe their apron strings to heart and never took a second look back at the kitchen, where pots go unfilled, ovens stand cold, plates remain empty. 
Shouts ring in my ears that this is the feminist thing to do, that I deny my sisters in arms by picking up the spatula. I say nay, dear friends. Feminism is about giving women the equality of choices. While most think this means I must now be preoccupied with breaking the glass ceiling, they forget it is still my choice. I am a middle-class, educated women who earns an excellent wage for my labors. Ladies we have arrived. I have achieved all that Steinem and her cohorts fought so hard for and I truly thank her for that. But when I get married, I want my choice of being a stay at home mom to be just as valuable as the choices I made to get me this far. Why does that make my feminism any less valid?
Talking with a male friend the other day, he expressed his frustrations with the "new woman", with the woman sans spatula. He told me how he is expected to go out, wrestle the bear, bring home the pelt and still fend for himself when it came to dinner. Obviously that is an exaggeration of the comment, but I can see his point. When women are asked to act more like men, what territory is left for men to inhabit? How can we ask men to feel fulfilled and valued if it is his women who is breaking up the bar fight? 
Today, men are still expected to be manly, but have no right to expect women to be womanly. He is considered sexist and a chauvinist when he seeks a wife who can cook, who is not a slob, who wants to have his children. Again, I think we missed the essential crux of the feminist argument, choice. They fought so hard for women to have the choice, let us extend the same curtesy to him. He has a right to chose a women who suits him. He has the right to chose not to accept your laziness in the relationship. So, while you may chose to assert your power by refusing to touch a frying pan, don't be surprised if you say "table for one" more often than you like.
P.S. I clean too!
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