The Buckets by Greg Cravens for September 26, 2012

I’m not a widower, but I’m Old & Alone (snif), and I have really enjoyed getting creative in the kitchen; creative, quick, and clean.And NO MICROWAVING!!!

But then . . . my case ain’t MOST cases, huh?

Hm . . . one reason I’m Alone, I suppose, is that I never — well, RARELY — cooked before I was.

My mom died when she and my dad were 54. He’s now 76 and still waits for someone to fix him a plate when we get together for dinners. I don’t think he knows how to turn on the stove. .Not meant as a slam on him, but he’s of a completely different era. He’s shocked that my husband can and will put together a complete meal on his off days..I love Frank—he’s like my dad in so many ways. It’s like you have a front row seat in our house, Greg!!

my husband has cooked exactly 2 meals in our 10 years of marriage. he’d live on lunch meat sandwiches or chicken bar-b-q hot pockets if it was up to him.

In my family it was just the opposite, my Mom’s father was a doctor, so they always had servants, so she didn’t know how to cook at all when she and my Dad got married. But she developed into quite a good cook by the time I could notice, although she didn’t particularly like to do it.

I just bought a Panasonic Microwave (refurb, on sale for $60) and I can hardly wait to buy a bunch ofhttp://www.michelinas.ca/otherproducts/english/

My husband loves to cook – has even cooked a whole Thanksgiving dinner. I’m a good cook but not my favorite thing to do. I’d do the microwave thing but too much bad stuff in those dinners.

My dad is a 97-year-old widower, and regularly eats lunch at a local diner (good for social contact) and eats microwave dinners, supplemented by fruit and desserts. I think those microwave dinners with meat and vegetables can be pretty good. I eat my main meal at work or scrounge together mainly vegetarian meals when I’m off work.

When my niece moved from dorm to apartment, her mother gave her a cookbook called “Help, My Apartment Has a Kitchen!”

I enjoy cooking, and now that I work from home I cook most meals from scratch each day. It’s cheaper, healthier, and tastes better than any of the microwavable crappola. Cooking ain’t that challenging – I’ve never really understood how anybody could be unable to do it with at least a moderate degree of success.

That’s just sad.

I like to remind my wife every now and then that if she ever makes it necessary for me to be a bachelor again, I’m well equipped. I actually do most of the cooking; every weekend I fire up the grill, the oven, or the soup pot and cook for the week, and usually have extras to throw in the freezer . My mother didn’t believe in sending children of either sex go out into the world without knowing how to cook, clean, and do laundry so she made sure my sister and I had plenty of practice. My brother-in-law is awful lucky he married her; his mother had the opposite view, that she was going to take care of her boys. I don’t think he ever cooked until he got a job managing a Pizza Hut.

I think Greg has been peeking in a lot of homes. Keep up the good work.

After my mother died, I remeber my dad trying to warm up hamburger buns in the stove without removing them from the plastic bag. He had to throw away the Corningware afterwards. To be fair, I think this gaffe was more due to stress than culinary cluelessness. Loosing your spouce in your 40s when you still have kids at home is crushing.

My father-in-law was like that. He would have starved if he had to cook for himself.