I offered to cook my wife dinner. "No problem honey, I want to do this. I’ll enjoy it." I clucked that I would leave the office no later than 5:30 PM. and cook her lasagna--from scratch. I had never cooked lasagna before but how difficult could it be.

The scars run deep from many years of trying to please women in the kitchen. My first cooking attempt ended in infamy. The tuna noodle casserole looked disturbingly similar to clam chowder. My girlfriend promptly called my sister and brother-in-law to come over and laugh at my art project. The autopsy of tuna soup revealed one missing key ingredient--noodles--and my girlfriend and sister celebrated. Attempts to defend myself or blame the recipe increased the merriment.  

Marriage inspired me to try cooking again. Since getting married, I have honed some regular recipes such as "Saturday Night" chicken, chocolate soufflé, and Szechwan shrimp. My culinary efforts win me enough brownie points to go golfing, leave laundry on the floor, and not shave on weekends.  

At 5:30 I called Jennifer. The Drudge Report alerts about Michael Jackson’s latest plastic surgery were proving alluring and Latin America wanted to know when we would be coming down to Columbia to do more sales training. "Honey, I’ll be home closer to six."

At 6:30 I called again. "Honey, I’m leaving right now." 

At 7:00, I peeled out of the company parking lot. No problem. I could be in the kitchen cooking in thirty minutes. All I had to do was navigate the twenty-minute commute and buy the ingredients.  

Sadly, supermarkets perplex me almost as much as Costco. The odds of finding what I need or where I expect to find it seem equal to winning the lottery. Béchamel sauce--where does one find bloody Béchamel sauce. A kindly stranger explained that one does not buy Béchamel sauce--that was what the milk, flour, butter, and salt on my shopping list were for. Forgoing the pleasure of making hand-rolled pasta dough, I decided to buy noodles. The noodles were nowhere to be found in the wine and spirits section. ("You can use the frozen noodles in aisle eight, the cooking noodles in aisle four, or visit the Cantadora pasta section in aisle forty-seven.") Likewise, the cheese hid itself in at least three different sections. Why can’t ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan all just get along? I covered more mileage in the Safeway than during my last marathon. The agony ended with the woman in front of me writing a check for $3.49 worth of lemons.  

I was in the kitchen, cooking, from scratch, promptly at . The meat sauce, the first step, required an hour with an additional thirty minutes allotted for sitting. I cut the cooking time in half and let the sauce sit for twenty seconds. The sweet aroma of Italian sausage--substituted for the Bolognese meat still hidden somewhere in Safeway--filled my wife’s nostrils. She began to forgive me; after all this was her night to be pampered.  

My nimble fingers delicately and neatly layered the first row of noodles in the bottom of the pan. I now spread the ricotta cheese, the cold lumpy ricotta cheese, like frozen butter across toast, tearing up large chunks of noodle.  

My screams prompted spousal intervention. Jennifer showed me a Betty Crocker tip: to soften cold lumpy ricotta cheese, place in blender, hit turbo blend, and watch ricotta cheese congeal in blender. Fascinated, I pulled the ricotta ball out of the blender and began hacking it onto the cratered noodles.  

Jennifer’s interruption flustered me. I forgot the proper layering order. My mind dimmed. Noodles, ricotta, then sauce, or noodles, mozzarella, sauce then ricotta. A line-up of sauce, sauce, noodles, sauce, mozzarella, sauce, mozzarella, ricotta, ricotta, ricotta, noodles, noodles, and parmesan ensued.  

The sauce disappeared two layers before hitting the top. A large pile of noodles covered by a dusting of parmesan decorated the top of the pan.  

The lasagna flew into the oven at 9:40. Only one hour left for cooking. My pregnant wife was getting hungry. The hunger caused her eyeballs to slowly recede to the back of her head. She begged for some Power Bar to tide her over.  

At 10:35, I tossed open the over door. Voilá, la pie de resistance. Only one more hour. I had accidentally turned the oven off.  

I brought out more Power Bar. By now even our dog, Mollie, had stopped begging and gone to bed in disgust.  

At 11:40, I took my tasty cheese lasagna with splashes of béchamel sauce and plopped it on my plate. As Jennifer snored on the couch, I lapped up my tasty creation and decided that I had true talent after all. The contentment lasted all the way through the end of Sportscenter.  

At midnight, I roused my wife to go to bed. Unfortunately, six hours of waiting for a meal makes a pregnant woman surly.  

"What happened to the lasagna?" - "What?" - "What!" - "You what?" - "You ate it without me?"  

This lapse in judgement will surely arise in arguments thirty years from now along with my decision to tell her that her new pants looked "comfortable." My protest of good intentions only caused her lips to crinkle further in disgust.  

We did not go to bed. We stayed downstairs until she ate her lasagna. My saving grace was that she actually liked it. She liked it! Emboldened, I resolved then to practice more, to move beyond the past and embrace the future, to become the modern man who shares the kitchen as well as the channel changer. Marinated tri-tip, shrimp pasta, homemade risotto; the dinner table will be my wife’s oyster. Too bad I can not duplicate the lasagna.  

Author's Biography

I live in California in United States. An international sales trainer, I do freelance writing, run marathons, and admire recipes in "The Bachelor's Guide to Home Cooking."

My greatest honor has been getting the opportunity to read some of my personal essays to audiences from the Leukemia Society of America in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

E-mail Robert at RMar31796@aol.com

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