Everyone does it with conviction whether at home or in business I hear you say
But the truth is I have never until now really thought about it in my very own way
You see that cooking was something best left to the wife or before her the mother
And committing time or energy to it was beyond me and really too much of a bother.
But now for once let’s sound the bugle and lets with total conviction issue a rallying call
For with idle time on my hands I have at last committed to master the art for once and all
And like any previous resolution in life I will study it with great precision and some care
For it’s useless to start out on this venture with no proper utensils or the cupboard bare.
So I have acquired a series of colourful cookbooks, mostly I’ll admit with fine Italian fare
And I have redecorated the kitchen to give it a new image of a sophisticated culinary lair
Of course I have also watched DVD’s of Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey and even Contaldo
For though I wish to cook mostly Italian I don’t want to basically mix up freddo and caldo.
Like all men who aspire to taking lessons in life I am not ready to simply just rely on luck
For like Hester Blumenthal, my ambition is to run a famous restaurant like The Fat Duck.
I have already begun to take notes and to ponder whether snails go with salmon moose
But my wife remains very sceptical and thinks that I will just end up cooking my goose.
She should wait until she tastes my fine food and she can ask her friends round for tea
And perhaps she could even recommend me for TV fame or at least Come Dine with Me.
Yes there is no limit to my potential for achieving an expression of gastronomic delight
Alas my efforts so far could be deemed a trifle banal, trivial or even a sad and sorry sight.
Perhaps my first efforts in preparing Fegato Grasso al Balsamico left me in a sort of bind
And my wife’s view that my Risotto Primavera was just edible could even be deemed kind
Maybe I was a little over ambitious in first attempting to serve Tuscan Fagiano Tartufato
But I have to admit that her criticisms of my cooking process were beginning to ‘grato’.
So she took me aside, sighed and said that my cooking fare required some key reflection
For example, could I without any knowledge or skills achieve a harmonious perfection?
Cooking she said is an art form forged by many people over a lifetime of trial and error
And any attempt to master it by me over a weekend could lead to disaster or even terror.
In cooking like prison, she said, you have to do time and with my efforts she was pleased
But I’m not sure if this assuaged my sense of unfilled ambition or indeed of being teased.
She said why not start by aspiring to getting her breakfast in bed which would be super
And would give me a real break from rugby football matches and drink induced stupor.
I now realise that cooking for each other is best thought of as a form of human sharing,
And that the relative skills of each party should not be a source of friction to that pairing
But deep down in me there is still a small but smouldering sense of uneasiness and dread
Because I sometimes think that she may have hoodwinked me just to get breakfast in bed.
On balance though when I smell and taste her fine cooking I get a great sense of yearning
I suppose it’s not too much to ask to bring up her coffee, porridge and toast of a morning.
You see cooking fine dishes are but pastimes best enjoyed with friends purely for fun
And endless discussion on their relative merits is unnecessary when all is said and done.
Note: This is a purely fictional verse written for amusement only.
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