Relegated!

I have some vague pretensions to being a cook these days.  I get ready-prepared meals from Woolworths or Aldi and just heat them up.  But Woolworths and Aldi have good chefs so I think I mostly serve up pretty good food. But even in that humble role I was this week "relegated", if I understand that sporting term aright.

I had some Kassler chops (smoked pork chops done the way they do them in Kassel, a German city) so asked Anne over to share them with me on Wednesday.  I thought I had done rather well preparing some horse doovers and a pickle collation in advance.  Germans eat a lot of pickles. And I also cut up a couple of onions and fried them.  But as soon as Anne arrived, she took over cooking of the smoked pork and did things that didn't seem to correspond to the instructions on the packet.  But in deference to her great culinary experience, I left her to it and just hovered in the background.  And she got the smoked pork just right in the end. And she also brought over a potato bake that went well.  So we had a great dinner, albeit with more food than we could eat. My pickle collation was rather underused so it went back into the fridge. So I was glad to be relegated

And then the next night I invited Jenny over to share a gluten-free feast. I had acquired a variety of gluten free products and was interested to see if they were any good. We started with a guacamole dip and went onto the main dish of pork sausages.  I started out cooking the snags but Jenny also took over there.  So once again my feeble culinary skills were sidelined.  But Jenny got the snags just right so we again did well.  I also trotted out the pickle collation and we got near to finishing it  that time. I had the rest for a late-night snack. My third and fourth courses were not needed. Again we had too much food.

So I was lucky to be in the presence of two most accomplished  cooks. My own feeble skills were rightly bypassed.

I suspect that when a man offers to cook a dinner for a lady he might often end up with the lady doing most of the work.  He has just got to look feeble and the lady steps in to save the dinner from disaster!