Had a big-ish fight with K tonite. Seems like our blowups always come over dinner, and are usually about dinner. This time, the kernel, the basis, was ketchup.

The last time K made spaghetti, she took a very nice sauce that I had made...ground beef, mushrooms, fresh garlic, etc...and added canned tuna and ketchup. I was very angry that she had chosen to take something I had made and without even tasting it adulterated it and, in my view, ruined it. Ketchup, for gods sake.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I don't know everything, but that being said, I do know some things very well. One thing I do know is that you don't put f-ing ketchup on yer pasta. I mean, you can...and some people do...but I like to think that no one I know would consider that acceptable. Ketchup is a condiment, not an ingredient. It goes great on french fries and on mediocre hamburgers, but if what you're eating is up to par, ketchup is really not necessary... Am I wrong?

Now, K has taken it upon herself to become a first class stay-at-home wife and mother. We have no children, so the mother thing is on the back burner. As a wife, she has a kind of 1950s ideal...do the laundry, cook and clean, take care of her man like his mother used to do. All well and good I suppose...not the path I'd prefer for her to take, but this is what she wants. To that end, she prepares all the meals (I'm no longer allowed to cook...she takes it as a personal insult
when I take up pan and knife). The problem is, she is still deep in the learning curve in the kitchen.

Most of the time she comes up aces, especially when she is cooking in her comfort zone...japanese and korean stuff she can turn out with aplomb. She also does well improvising in that vein. No complaints here. The problem is when she turns her hand to more western fare.

There is an axiom amongst westerners in japan that if you serve up authentic fare to Japanese, they will politely tucker in, but will not come back for seconds. Reason being, and I guess rightly so, that the flavor palette of western cuisine and japanese cuisine are so different that if you don't take pains to tailor your cooking to japanese tastes that the Japanese will not go for it. I've seen this in action at countless restaurants...K's father will not eat Fench food, even japanese french...pizza comes with tuna and corn...you get the idea.

While I'm prepared to accept this fact on a cultural level, in my own home on my own table is a different story. Right or wrong, some thingsw I simply like the way I like and that is it. Pasta, case in point. I've lived alone for years, done all my own cooking, and enjoyed the fruits of my labours. I can cook the heck out of some pasta...a myriad of sauces and treatments at my disposal. Thus, when something comes down the pipe that I deem sub par, I feel free to say so...the old "if you don't like it, make it yourself" assault my dearest hope. Seldom do I get that opportunity tho.


Instead, I get sulking and evil looks...the fact that I didn't like what was for dinner K takes as a personal insult. I can understand her point of view here as well, but we are in the early going here, and if I don't make my preferences known now, I face a lifetime of politely nibbling and going away hungry. I don't want that, and I know K wants to make food we can both enjoy, but it is such an ordeal every time.

Ketchup has become the scapegoat...I don't like mayonnaise either, and K has taken that to heart...a big sacrifice in her mind, seeing as how mayonnaise figures heavily in westernish japanese popular cuisine. Some people even put it on their rice (gah!). She even whipped out some (japanese) cooking magazines to prove to me that ketchup is an ingredient in many recipies. Fine...but really...in minestrone soup? Its a short cut for the lazy and inept in my opinion...put it on my fries but never in my soup.

These cooking magazines are awful anyway. She has dogeared stacks of them...they are famous, she says....they are popular, she says...to which I say (to myself) is the reason they are crap. I know I can be a bit of a snob...but I'd prefer to have something a bit different than what millions of other 20something housewives are serving up, regardless of whether it is in a magazine or not. Indie rock cuisine for me.

She has been sulking for the past two hours, but seems to be coming out of it now...eating ice cream. I've apologized for dissing on ketchup and not eating my spinach twice already tonite... I hope she works this through by tomorrow, because we are off skiing in the morning. Yay!