{"id":12766,"date":"2026-03-18T15:08:02","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T02:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/?p=12766"},"modified":"2026-03-18T15:08:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T02:08:02","slug":"domestic-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/18\/domestic-arts\/","title":{"rendered":"Domestic arts"},"content":{"rendered":"

I almost called this post \u201cfeminine arts\u201d which is an example of internalised bias. I\u2019m talking about cooking in the home.<\/p>\n

People still express surprise and (in the case of other women) envy when I say my husband does all the cooking. When we were first living together, we shared the job equally, but for some reason, after some months, he said he\u2019d rather do it all himself. I think it\u2019s because he discovered a new found love for cooking. My father was also the main cook in our family, mostly because of the terribly long hours my mother used to work. I seem to remember boiled mince with a side of chopped raw vegetables was a staple. My grandmother was a terrifying old battle axe, and I seriously doubt she ever taught her oldest boy anything in the kitchen. My mother in law was, I expect, equally unwelcoming to her son as far as culinary expertise goes, but there were some things he picked up nevertheless.<\/p>\n

The other day I came home to find him holding an egg which he was poking at with a pin. I had absolutely no idea what he was doing. He was looking for the air pocket at the fat end, but the egg was unusually symmetrical so that the big end was hard to distinguish. He was easily able to interpret my baffled expression, and explained that it was to prevent the egg cracking while it was being boiled. I was gobsmacked. When I was growing up, boiled eggs would invariably come festooned with a bubbling trail of white that had escaped from the cracked shell, like ectoplasm. As an adult, I\u2019d read that if you put the egg in cold water and then boiled it, the gradual heating would protect the shell from cracking, and that seemed to work. But deliberately pricking a hole in the shell beforehand was new to me. As it turns out, my mother in law actually had a little doodad that would put the hole in for you, called an egg pricker. Oh to be a housewife in the mid last century! More gadgets and home appliances than you could shake a stick at, as you floated through the days in the arms of Prince Valium.<\/p>\n

To show that he wasn\u2019t making things up, Simon ordered a couple online, which have been very useful in his latest culinary obsession, Caesar salad and variations.<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I almost called this post \u201cfeminine arts\u201d which is an example of internalised bias. I\u2019m talking about cooking in the home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Ukf-3jU","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11623,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/10\/tokyo-10-4-2025\/","url_meta":{"origin":12766,"position":0},"title":"Tokyo 10\/4\/2025","author":"Interloper11","date":"April 10, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Our flight got in yesterday evening, and by the time we\u2019d Ubered in to our hotel I was knackered and ready for bed.With a three hour time difference, I woke up at 4:30 and thought I\u2019d be awake the rest of the night, but the next thing I knew it\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/IMG_1872-225x300.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2475,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2019\/05\/25\/hot-hot\/","url_meta":{"origin":12766,"position":1},"title":"Hot hot","author":"Interloper11","date":"May 25, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Thank you to my daughter Samantha for this excellent report on our cooking endeavours last night: Girls weekend was going fabulously right up until dinner time when we both realised dad wasn\u2019t there to cook for us. Fortunately, over the past week we\u2019d been receiving those bougie food packages with\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/66DD88CF-6282-4853-8D37-130F254C7743-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4086,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2020\/01\/20\/mommie-dearest\/","url_meta":{"origin":12766,"position":2},"title":"Mommie Dearest","author":"Interloper11","date":"January 20, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Am always looking for ways to make my daughters\u2019 lives easier. Today I have hit on the idea of starting their future autobiographies for them, to save time and effort. This is especially clever, because I only need to write the one version, as their childhoods are essentially interchangeable, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7832,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2022\/04\/30\/mamma-mia\/","url_meta":{"origin":12766,"position":3},"title":"Mamma Mia!","author":"Interloper11","date":"April 30, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Did a list this week where the surgeon had a junior working with him for the day. It was purely for the benefit of the younger doctor, to broaden his experience, but it does give the surgeon an assistant and someone to talk to. I\u2019m sorry that for privacy reasons\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/FB7E7C4B-C03D-4808-9957-26585C4DE36F-300x241.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4582,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/16\/domestic-adventures\/","url_meta":{"origin":12766,"position":4},"title":"Domestic adventures","author":"Interloper11","date":"April 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Our cooking success continues. Only one near death experience this week, not including my woefully overcooked pork chops on Monday. It was a fat fire. It happened on Tuesday, when the rat man was here. Presumably his respirator would have saved him if we\u2019d all succumbed to smoke inhalation, so\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4783,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2020\/05\/16\/now-were-not-cooking\/","url_meta":{"origin":12766,"position":5},"title":"Now we\u2019re not cooking","author":"Interloper11","date":"May 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Had our first meal out today since before Lockdown, lunch at the popular local restaurant The Front Room. It was packed with people enjoying the mild autumn weather dining al fresco in the garden bar, lots of us with dogs, having walked there along the beach. 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