Macho Chef: Shopping

This whole gift-giving thing drives me crazy.

First off, I never remember what anyone in my family wants for Christmas, except that my kids keep on asking for stuff I will not, or that I cannot, buy for them. The only thing that seems to interest children are gory video games, expensive new consoles for more gory video games, and furniture that allows them to more comfortably play gory video games. If they aren't happy with the umpteen video games they have for entertainment (which are still gruesome enough to make me cringe), then the Chef boys can go play with their dang Legos.

And when someone asks me what I want for Christmas, I just draw a blank. Sure, there are lots of things that I would love to have, but none of the items on my list actually exist.

I've been asking for a jet pack for as long as I can remember.

Then there is buying gifts for the impossible person. I'm talking about the person who either wants gifts that you don't want to buy, or who will politely ignore any gift you do want to get for her. There are some people in the world that acquiring a gift for them is an exercise in futility. I'm talking about Mrs. Chef.

This year, at the top of her list, she wants shampoo. Oh sure, it's expensive and it only comes from Norway, but shampoo?

She also wants clothes, but buying clothing for Mrs. Chef is a waste of time. She hates my taste in clothes. I really don't blame her for this, because I can never tell if I picked out something from the catalog because I think it will look good on my wife or because it looked good on the model in the catalog.

I know it's sexist, but I personally believe women force men to hate shopping. It must be a diabolical scheme that a man can take 15 minutes to walk into a mall and purchase a pair of pants, yet a woman will take three hours to accomplish the same task. The extreme torment I feel when I accompany Mrs. Chef to the store and she has to try on eight billion pairs of shoes cannot be an accident. But she pretends that I am the one who is behaving unreasonably.

Once we went to a store to purchase a shirt for me. We were at a Sears because I needed a blue collared shirt. I found a whole rack of them, grabbed the size I wear and headed for the cash register.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"I'm going to pay for the shirt."

"Aren't you going to even try it on?" You would think I was picking out a prosthetic arm, choosing a baby to adopt or something else important.

"Why? It's a double extra large, and that's my size. It will fit."

She seemed exasperated, and she lowered her voice a bit before saying, "But how do you know if you will like it?"

Maybe she forgot why we had come here, but I responded as carefully as I could. "Because it's blue and it has...uh... a collar."

Apparently that wasn't the right answer.

When she goes to the store on her own, Mrs. Chef comes home excited and eager to show me what she bought.

After fifteen years of marriage, we know that having both of us in a store at the same time is a surefire formula for pursed lips and stony silences on the way home.

I figure women intentionally make shopping a needlessly complicated and frustrating experience just so men will not want to go to the store with them.

It's the only explanation that makes any sense.

Zucchini Zest

WHAT YOU NEED

3 tablespoons of oil

3 zucchinis, peeled & sliced

1/2 white onion, sliced

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

1/2 teaspoon of season salt

1 tablespoon of Mrs. Dash Lemon Pepper

2 tablespoons of rice wine vinegar

WHAT YOU DO

1. Heat the oil on high in a wok or large saucepan. Toss in the zucchini, onion, garlic and salt and stir fry for about a minute.

2. Add the lemon pepper and the vinegar and stir fry for another minute. Serve.