Who's Cooking?
The search for a better way to share dinner responsibilities
I come to this post not as an expert, but as someone looking for new ideas and ways of thinking about how we share the tasks around dinner.
When it comes to household responsibilities, meals (and nearly all aspects of food) fall squarely in my domain. For the most part, this is my choice. I care more about food than my husband (here I am writing a whole newsletter about it!) and am rather particular about what I want to eat on any given day. Of all the routine tasks we manage, I would take food over many others. I relish a trip to the grocery store more than the average person and usually don’t mind cooking. Yet, as we give and take in other parts of our lives, I would love to be able to hand off some of the dinner process when my week is hectic or the daily slog hits too hard.
When I am the “default” person in a specific aspect of life, I find it hard to genuinely share responsibilities. There is so much information that I invisibly hold, it can feel weighty to download and pass on. Just as I have no idea which night our paper recycling needs to be at the curb, my husband does not keep a running mental inventory of our refrigerator contents. I have yet to find a way of sharing some of these tasks that falls between holding them all myself and my occasional exasperated announcement that there is no plan for dinner.
In my digging for an answer, I came across Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play movement. Rodksy breaks down every household task into its individual parts. In addition to her book, she offers a deck of playing cards to divvy up, defining each task by its three categories: conception, planning, and execution.
The full set of cards is visible on the Fair Play website, but since we’re here to talk about dinner, I’ll dive into that one. The “Weekday Dinner” card defines this task as:
What I appreciate about this approach is how concretely it lays out each task, letting the lengthy list of mental minutia see the light of day. When we typically picture “making dinner,” we often only account for these last pieces of cooking/preparing and serving. However, we are actually doing the earlier tasks, and I would add even more.
When we meal plan, we have to take into account all the various preferences and needs of our household. What are dinners that everyone will actually eat, but give a good balance of foods? How can we vary meals throughout the week? Pulling from the “Groceries” card, what is already in the fridge vs. needs to be purchased?
I also checked in with a few readers about how they split up dinner duties. Some, like myself, manage the full dinner domain. Sierra shared, “I only cook for one other person, who is very easy to please. That being said, in our house, dinner is solely my chore, and the organization of my routine varies a lot.”
Those who do share seem to have one thing in common. Rather than handing off a meal here or there, they have a system for swapping the whole card, whether as their lives change or just by the day or week.
From Kat: “My husband and I started to switch every other week of cooking and menu planning and honestly, it’s been so good for our marriage. During our week, we take care of the cooking and cleaning. It’s a real treat for whoever has the week off! Whoever is not cooking can’t veto the menu. And if it’s your week to cook, you can add in some ‘dinners out’ as well.”
From Katie: “I used to always cook after work, but now my partner makes a quick dinner after work or earlier in the slow cooker.”
From Kyra: "My husband cooks dinners on the weekend and I cook during the week."
I would still take the Dinner card over Garbage, but these insights provide some inspiration for sharing the meal task in its entirety. Handing off dinner means all of it – from meal planning and updating grocery lists (we already rely heavily on the iPhone’s shared notes feature), to the final cooking/serving piece. And we have one kitchen rule that’s not going anywhere: whoever cooks, the other person does the dishes.
Food For Thought
Some helpful and interesting links from around the internet:
This mediterranean baked feta with tomatoes from Smitten Kitchen is one of my favorite summer meals that barely feels like cooking. It goes well with a pot of pasta, which can be served plain for any pickier eaters.
Just in time for summer, the team at Serious Eats taste tested chocolate ice creams so you don’t have to (but you still can).