A Man in the Kitchen.(father's cooking and his marriage)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 03-SEP-07

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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

When I was a boy, it was said in my family that my mother, an otherwise respectable cook, had prepared for my father, during the first days of their marriage, a very bad dish. The dish was a hot tuna-andmayonnaise casserole with potato chips as a decorative garnish. It was this tuna casserole that had, as it were, driven my father to teach himself to cook. Over time, the story of the tuna casserole took on the status and weight of Received History; it became my father's explanation and alibi--"Baked mayonnaise! I had to take action!"--for his dominion over our kitchen. Looking back, I can see that the story also functioned as an origin narrative; it united us--my mother, my father,...

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