Way to man's heart still through his stomach

The worst thing about marriage is that once the wives start getting comfortable, they start starving their husbands. To death, sometimes.

You arrive home, tired like an overworked donkey and hungry. You can eat any type of food put before you. But even an empty stomach has standards. Wives who cook cabbage as a vegetable for dinner, should be divorced that very night. You wonder of the very glaring oversight in our new Constitution: failing to outlaw cabbage and watermelon. Because, there is no good way of preparing the damn cabbage. It is just terrible and must never end up on the dining table.

There are married women, for whom bride price was paid who bring pasta and minced meat to the dinner table. And they expect a man to eat that, and dispense with his duties, conjugal and all. This is gastronomical offence and the wife should be sent back to her grandmother to learn some culinary skills.

And then, there are the wives who cook the indigenous vegetables, essentially the terrible and bitter weeds that people claim are nutritionally wondrous. Well, once in a while, managus and osuga/chinsaga, kunde and such are not bad. But their nutritional value is overrated. And there are some indigenous vegetables that are terrible for men.

Leaves of legumes, pumpkin leaves and murenda are ruinously terrible. Any time a wife thinks that she is adding diversity to the table by preparing these vegetables, she is actually insulting her husband’s sensibilities.

For men who hail from Western Kenya, and married to Central Kenya women, there is always a culinary rift that can never be bridged. Serving such a man githeri is treason. Githeri, mukimo and any food with potatoes, is dreaded by men from Western Kenya.

Pleasing a man is fairly simple. If his health and lifestyle allow, a man needs meat or something meaty atleast three or four times a week. Western Kenya men must eat ugali everyday. No playing around with this.

Men need greens. Spinach, sukuma wiki and some salad is all they need. Indigenous vegetables are welcome once in a while. If you must have them twice a week, then you have to prepare them in a special way. But don’t be monotonous.

But the secret to appeasing a man by adding some magic to any food. Some times wives serve vegetables that stare back to you like Satan. Especially when you have committed some mistake. Or when you didn’t leave money for your preferred food. You end up with some badly cooked sukuma wiki that even a prisoner will turn down, and ugali that even a starving cat won’t have.

And one can know the food that was prepared as a by-the-way. If only women knew how food is such a vital glue in a marriage, many will invest in recipes and (online) cooking classes to learn how to prepare mouth-watering meals.

This is a discussion you have been having with Carol. Her cooking is good at times, but her corporate life often gets the worst of her, and she cooks very bland stuff. Not cool. You served her the penultimate warning last week.

@nyanchwani/[email protected]