Dinner Crimes

Every girl has an insatiable desire to be pampered. One of the many surefire ways to impress a woman is took cook her dinner. The romance of a candlelit dinner and knowing your man slaved away on a stove or an oven for a while just to impress you is a surefire "win" for most guys.

But if you're going to go for it, you have to proceed carefully.

Most likely, if you burn the dinner or otherwise make it inedible, girls will forgive you. It's the effort that counts truly. We'll also likely never ask you to cook again if you royally screw it up badly enough, and we'll offer to cook from then on. We're ok with you attempting stuffed mushrooms or almond-crusted tuna steaks - whether you actually succeed or not. (Obviously infinitely more impressive if you pull it off, but I digress.)

A truly heinous offense, more-so than the failure to pull off a delicious almond-crusted tuna steak, and one for which you will not be forgiven, is making a huge fuss over a dinner that a.) you can't possibly screw up and b.) took hardly any effort over a monkey's capabilities.

We'll forgive you if you screw up something that took effort or was even remotely challenging. We'll sing your praises for trying to do something sweet, no matter the outcome. But if you come in saying you'll make us dinner, we expect a little effort... or if you're not going to really even try, humility.

Let me explain...

Berkley was a fast-talker. He was suave and smooth, but he definitely thought more of himself than I did in the end. One night, he announced, "Baby, I'm gonna make you dinner tomorrow night. How about some fish and pasta?"

Sounds wonderful, right? Fish is a challenging dish to prepare since its so easy to overcook, and pasta, while not exactly the most difficult entree to prepare, takes at least some degree of knowledge on how to cook. Score, a man willing to cook for me!

I was in for a disappointing surprise. I arrived just in time to see him in the midst of his meal preparation. The oven was on, and he was already cooking the pasta in the pot of boiling water... all seemed well.

Then I noticed the Kraft macaroni and cheese box... extra cheesy. I made this crap in middle school. Kids watched the blue box commercials when I was younger. This was not the pasta I was expecting.

But wait, it gets better.

I was sort of hoping against hope that the fish would be a little more high quality than mac and cheese from a box. Maybe he just didn't know any other way to make pasta, and I was more than willing to throw that in the "its the thought that counts" category.

He opened the oven to retrieve the fish... sticks. He made fishsticks. The kind you buy precooked and just set in the oven for 8 minutes or so.

I'm willing to let it slide if a man cannot cook. But bachelor food when you make a big fuss about cooking me dinner is absolutely unacceptable. This is the kind of "dinner" you make for kids you're babysitting because its the only thing they'll eat without crying for mommy. This is not something you play up for your girlfriend as a real San Francisco treat and then spend all of a middle-school amount of effort preparing.

Needless to say, I tried to pretend I was pleased. But Berkley's plan to impress truly fell flat. I would much rather he attempted a recipe with some degree of risk and fail miserably rather than pick something that pleases the under-age-10 crowd.

Fishsticks and Kraft macaroni and cheese = Dinner FAIL.

Five. Five Dollar. Five Dollar...Ribs?

Meeting your significant other's parents for the first time totally sucks. Meeting them subsequent times also totally sucks. There is a great deal of pressure to seem responsible, but not controlling. To be polite, but not stuffy. To be fun, but not obnoxious. As if that's not enough, the odds are stacked against you from the beginning because every parent is convinced that no person in the world is worthy of dating their little snowflake.

For guys, there's the added pressure of what to do when the check comes. If you offer to pay, does it look like you're implying that the parents can't afford to? Does it send the message that you are trying to buy their daughter off of them? If you don't offer to pay, do you look cheap? While I would usually advise offering, I would say that depending on the situation, either could be the right answer to the check conundrum.

Then there is that hidden third route which is never the right answer. That is the one which Fred chose to take.

Fred came to visit me at my parents' house. Since he only packed jorts, this limited our dining options, but my parents still wanted to take us out to dinner. So, we went to a casual restaurant which served mainly burgers and such. My parents ordered wraps (they're health-conscious) and I ordered a burger (I am not so health-conscious). Fred decided that he just couldn't resist ordering ribs.

This was a little annoying to me since it is such a fussy and messy meal and no one else was eating it. I was a little shocked that he wanted to eat something that was so sloppy in front of my parents. But, I didn't say anything. I didn't even give him a dirty look when he proceeded to get barbecue sauce and bits of meat all over his face and his ugly ass Hawaiian shirt.

When the check came, Fred decided that he should offer to pay. But rather than offer to split the bill with my parents, he presented them with a barbecue sauce soaked five dollar bill. Why? Because he figured his meal was about five dollars more than everyone else's. I wish I were joking about this.

I can understand that he would not offer to pay for everyone's meal. He was 22 and at 22, taking four people out to dinner, even to a burger joint, is a big investment.

However, given that he had chosen to offer to pay part of the check, I feel like the minimum offer he should have made would have been for his full meal. The preferred would have been to just split the damn check -- maybe offering to throw in a few extra bucks if he were truly concerned about his meal costing more.

But just paying the difference between his meal and the table average? How did this seem like a good idea? I tried to whisper discreetly to him to just not offer at all. This would have been a lot less awkward than offering up five dollars.

My parents were confused and annoyed by the offer and politely refused. But they never let me forget it, despite my attempts to block that night out of my memory.

He's a Caaaaaniac, CAAAAAANIAC!

It's a little weird how much of my relationship with Fred revolved around chicken.

The night after I had discussed the chicken wings incident with Fred, we went to Raising Canes. Since Fred had already eaten one dinner and I am hardly the type of girl who can pack a continuous stream of chicken wings for three hours (sorry, I love my size 2 ass too much), we decieded to split a Caniac (which I paid for).

For those of you out of the loop, this includes 6 chicken fingers, some fries and two pieces of toast (this is important).

Well, since Fred was too busying blowing on a conch shell (insert phallic reference here), I went ahead and seperated the chicken fingers, removing three for myself. Well, this did not go over well. He threw a hissy fit (seriously, a fucking hissy fit) that I was trying to eat his food.

Um, wow. Didn't know he was so protective over it (just kidding, his fat ass and matching beer gut was a dead giveaway that he never let one morsel of food escape his claws).

Also, as a math major, he really should have realized that removing three chicken fingers from a six chicken finger meal is, in fact, taking half of it. But apparently he was blinded by the idea of being potentially denied a chicken finger.

In his fit, he claimed that I was trying to take his food from him. Apparently he believed this to be an ongoing problem. This was weird to me because we were about the same height, but I was half his weight. He was clearly not missing out on any food.

Anyway, I finally got my act together and and dumped him after this...I just wish I hadn't taken him back a few weeks later. D'oh!

Follow Your Nose

Sometimes when you need to blow your nose, a box of tissues is just not close by. I understand this. In college, I would only buy tissues if I had gotten sick enough to go through them in a few hours. The rest of the time, I used toilet paper. Sometimes even napkins. I am not ashamed to admit my gross habits (for the record though, I have gotten past this and currently have three boxes of tissues on my desk ... but that is only because work pays for them since they are office supplies).

When tissues are unavailable, there are alternatives, some better than others. If I had to rank the alternatives, I would put toilet paper at the top of that list, followed by cheap napkins (softer than the nice ones), then nice napkins, then paper towels, and then...creative options. Thankfully, I have never gotten to the creative options. Fred, on the other hand, has.

One night I was at his apartment making enchiladas and he decided that he absolutely had to blow his nose immediately. Sure, there were napkins and paper towels in the kitchen. And there was toilet paper in the bathroom. If he were truly a purist, I am sure his anal-retentive roommate had some tissues to spare (Actual real tissues! What a concept!). But Fred opted for the creative option. His choice? A corn tortilla. I'm sure his inner monolouge was something like "I'm such a rebel, I am blowing my nose with food!"

I can't even begin to describe how nauseating it is to see someone blow their nose into the food you are cooking, but trust me, it was not a good time.

I was completely appalled that he decided to use a corn tortilla to blow his nose out of some sick interest rather than out of necessity. Furthermore, an unfried corn tortilla is actually kind of crumbly and not really a good material for this, ergo, it did not exactly work out the way he had hoped. Not to mention, they were much more expensive than any other option and they were what I was fucking cooking for dinner.

I don't know if he thought he was being innovative, funny or both. I found his display to be none of the above. And he was making his own dinner for a very long time after that.

Feeling Lucky?

Fred and I used to go to a Mexican restaurant near his house quite frequently. Well, more frequently than anywhere else -- he didn't like to go out much. Anyway, the first time we went, I ordered steak fajitas which were incredibly good, but ended up being rather large. So the next time we went, we ended up splitting an order of the steak fajitas.

Now, I should point out a mundane detail that really didn't catch my attention the first time either. Since I ordered a meat dish that involved cutting, the waiter had brought me a steak knife. The second time we went, since we were splitting the entree, the waiter just gave the steak knife to Fred. He made some comment about having received the 'lucky knife,' but I didn't really think too much of it. I just assumed this was his lame-ass attempt at being funny.

The third time we went, after we had ordered, he looked at me excitedly, and said "I wonder who's going to get the lucky knife this time." I looked at him and asked what exactly he thought the purpose of the lucky knife even was. He told me "I'm not sure, I think it's just some kind of tradition in Mexico."

D'oh. I still have no idea how someone who was in his mid-twenties managed to never grasp the concept of a steak knife. He honestly thought it was just a little lucky treat that someone at each table was randomly rewarded with for eating dinner. Seriously, how the hell did he function?

Merry Christmas!

Now that I’ve gotten the annual “bad gift” post out of the way, I can put up my 2007 holiday post. This year, I got together with BJA and decided to make this years’ entry about family...more specifically, uncomfortable holiday experiences with our exes’ families (or our own, whatever). If you have any good stories to add, post in the comments section, or email me.

So, I will kick things off:


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I had just met Fred (we weren’t really even dating at this point) when a hurricane was heading toward the city I went to college in. Class was going to be canceled for several days, giving us plenty of time to leave campus and go wherever for a while. This was about a week after things ended with Shrek, so I was feeling particularly awful and just wanted to go home (I should mention home was 1200 miles away. Clearly this wasn’t one of my most rational decisions). I had planned to take a flight back home, but Fred told me that he was going to drive out of town and was willing to take a 1200 mile detour and he would drive up to his house (another 500 miles) after that.

Somehow during the 18 hour car ride, Fred managed to convince me to spend a day at my house, then ride up to his with him.

By the time we had made it to Fred's house, I was completely drained from my recent break up, a long road trip, and the stress of having to leave school so suddenly. When we got to Fred’s neighborhood, he called his parents to tell them we were close. They were over at Fred’s uncle’s house and told him to just come over there.

When we got to the uncle’s house, there was a full family party going on. Parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, friends, EVERYONE was there. So, not only did I have the stress of meeting parents, I had the stress of meeting the whole extended family. Seriously.

Luckily, everyone was really nice, but there were a few VERY awkward moments. The one that sticks out in my mind the most is when Fred’s uncle, after having talked with me for 3 minutes, gave me a very sincere look and asked if I had considered marrying into the family. I was completely caught off guard, and frankly, a little frightened by the question. I responded that it was not something that I had considered. I was then invited to marry into the family. Definitely the most intense meeting of an ex’s family I’ve ever had.

BJA

Holidays are just the time for family, friends, fun, and festivities. Unless you're dating a loser. Then you can toss in a little mortification.

I was dating Neanderthal for... well in hindsight a lot longer than some of the others. He wasn't as bad as many of the guys featured in this blog. In fact, on a whole he was a good boyfriend. But his manners were deplorable. And after his behavior in front of my parents during the holidays... well it didn't last much longer.

Guys, may I stress that you must learn how to hold a fork before you dine outside of your home? You hold it as you would a pencil, or at least that's the closest approximation I can come up with. You do NOT hold it, as Neanderthal did, in a full fisted grip that enables you to shovel food in your mouth. It is gross. And it's ineffective. I can tell because the food is falling off of your fork in different directions. I remember my Granny, who was an impeccably mannered woman, trained by Mrs. Manners, nearly dropped her jaw. Please do NOT mortify me in front of my grandmother.

Food shoveler. Gross.

Drink it up

I was in college once -- really. I understand the whole "leave no soldier wounded" mentality regarding alcoholic beverages. In fact, much to my mother's dismay, I still practice this sometimes (I can't even begin to tell you how many times my mom has told me "you've had enough; leave that soldier wounded"). I completely understand if one wants to finish his or her beer before getting up and leaving the table at a restaurant.

But Fred took this to a whole new level. The first time we went out to eat, he got up to go. I followed his lead, stood up and started to walk to the door. I was outside before I turned around and saw Fred's fat ass still standing at the table, chugging every single liquid on the table. Really. His beer, my coke, his water, my water. He drank each beverage as if he were trying to set the world record for speed drinking, resulting in beer, coke and water dribbled on his face and the front of his shirt. I had never seen anything like this before. It was truly a disgusting display.

When he finally made it outside, I had no idea what to make of what I had just seen. "Thirsty?" I asked him, slightly confused. I figured this was a one time deal, so I didn't really press the issue. Boy, was I wrong.

Every single time we went out, he would do this. It's not the fact that he wanted to drink everything on the table that bothered me -- it was the fact that he could not do this while sitting at the table. He would stand up, sometimes put on his coat, then chug everything on the table as if in two seconds, all the glasses would be taken violently away from him and he would never have another drop of liquid again. He did not leave a drop of anything on the table. It was amazing. He even consumed a good amount of the ice in his quest to drink as much as physically possible. Every single fricking time we went out. Even though it was clearly his goal to cram every liquid on the table down this throat as quickly as possible, the entire act usually took around a minute, which usually meant I was well on my way out the door before he started to actually leave.

I asked -- no, begged him to just drink what he wanted to drink while he was still sitting down. Aside from looking like a complete ass, he was blocking traffic for the wait staff trying to do their jobs by standing up in the middle of an aisle.

After a couple of months of this, I would start not getting up when he did because I knew the whole chugging display would take-up a ton of time.

Finally one day, I stopped him before getting up and told him in a very stern voice that I was serious about him not standing up to do the obligatory chug every single time we went out. I asked him to remain seated and drink what he wanted to drink. He seemed to listen and sheepishly finished his water, then said he was ready. I thought I had finally gotten through to him, and happily stood up and made my way to the door.

Half way out, I turned around and saw him standing at the table, chugging my drink. He looked at me as he finished my drink with a big, shit-eating grin on his face. Not only did he look like a complete dumbass, he was doing it just to spite me. At this point, it wasn't the fact that he was completely (for this and other reasons) not restaurant-trained that bothered me, it was the fact that he was determined look like white trash everywhere he went, even when he knew better.

The moment I locked eyes with him as he was putting my empty glass on the table was the exact moment I knew things weren't going to work out.

Yummy yummy yummy

Ex 4 (who from here on out shall be referred to as “Fred Flintstone” due to the fact they had the same physique) had the absolute filthiest apartment I have ever seen. Let me back-up a little.

While we were in college, Fred lived next door to me with three other guys. They were all filthy and took pride in their filth. At one point, there was a red mold growing on the wall in their bathroom, but it was killed a few weeks later by a yellow mold which overtook it. The apartment did not once, in an entire year, see a cleaning product. The bathroom permanently smelled like vomit, crap and beer. There were ripped-up magazines (from when they decided not to waste money on TP) covering the floor and empty bottles of beer in the shower (one of his roommates was a raging alcoholic).

His roommates would sit around and brag about how messy it was. Gross. He finally did some “deep cleaning” at the end of the year. The apartment was a million times cleaner than I had ever seen it and it was still foul. His mother came to move him out after said deep cleaning and cried when she saw the place. She was really quite distraught that her son had been living in squalor.

But little Fred grew up and graduated from college. He moved away, got a job and an apartment. I assumed that he would really take pride in having his own place and keep it clean. I convinced myself that the only reason the other apartment was messy is because he had 3 other roommates who encouraged it. Not only that, but it’s easier to pass off responsibility for a dirty place when there are 3 other people to blame.

As is the case about the overly optimistic assumptions I make about men, I was wrong.

It was only a matter of weeks before the apartment was even worse than the old one. The bathroom was never cleaned, the kitchen had dirty dishes lining all free counter space and half-eaten food was sitting throughout the apartment. The combination of these things resulted in his apartment smelling like rotting ass. I even gave him cleaning supplies for Christmas (along with other things – this was really more of a gag gift) to encourage him to clean his nasty-ass apartment. Didn’t work.

Several times I suggested he get a maid service to come every two weeks. He would flip out and insist that he was capable of keeping his own living space clean. Bullshit.

I will be the first to admit that I am a messy person. I am not, however, a dirty person. Half-eaten food is something that really grosses the hell out of me. I am insane about dirty dishes too (don’t even ask how many times in college I was the one to crack and wash everyone else’s dishes). So, naturally, I would never want to cook in his kitchen. At first, I would help him clean-up the kitchen so it was clean enough for me to make dinner. After awhile, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I never wanted to eat anything that had been in that hell hole.

This resulted in us eating out a lot more, which led to Fred bitching about how much money he was spending on going out.

Well, dumbass, if you could have taken 30 minutes out of your busy week to do some dishes and wipe down the counters, you could have had all the cheap home-cooked meals you could stomach.

What's cooking?

One of my favorite restaurants in college was a little dive on the side of the highway. They have the most amazing pizza and Mexican food (random, right?) ever. It is totally the best PMS food in the world. Shrek would never take me there though because he knew I liked it. He was a dick that way. He made-up some lame excuse about how he was allergic to everything on the menu. He had a lot of made-up allergies which only remembered he had if it meant ruining something I wanted to do. Honestly, if he were actually allergic to half the things he claimed to be allergic to, he would have to live in a bubble and only eat rice cakes. But this entry is not about Shrek or his apparent allergies to everything.

Ok, so, the restaurant. Love it. Didn't go there much while I was dating Shrek. He was a jerk.

When I started dating Fred, I suggested that we go there for dinner one night. Not being a crappy person, he agreed to try it out. He even managed to find something on the menu that he was willing to eat (have I mentioned he's a really picky eater?). Since Fred insisted on getting an appetizer, I was full before I finished my enchiladas, so I got the remainder of them boxed-up.

We ended up going home after dinner and spent the night drinking and playing video games. Around 3am, I was still up and starving. Knowing that I still had my leftovers in the fridge, I asked Fredto go to the kitchen and heat them up for me.

Now, I knew that Fred couldn't cook, but I figured it doesn't take a rocket scientist (ha!) put an enchilada in the oven. I told him just to set the oven to warm, and put the enchilada on a pan and leave it in there for a few minutes. He disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, then came back and we played some more video games.

A few minutes later, I told him it was probably time to take it out, so we went back to the kitchen. As soon as we stepped into the hall, I smelled something completely foul coming from the kitchen. It only got worse as we approached.

I opened the oven and saw sitting inside a half-melted Styrofoam box on a cookie sheet with my enchilada peeking out through a hole that was burned through. Disgusting.

The melted box was all over my food and I couldn't eat it. Not to mention, it was probably toxic. I should probably say at this point, Fred was 21 years old. TWENTY-ONE FRICKIN' YEARS OLD AND HE DIDN'T KNOW STYROFOAM MELTS IN THE OVEN! Furthermore, it wasn't like he was an English or Phys Ed major--he majored in a science so there is no excuse.

To make matters worse, he was a typical man so all he had to eat in his house was beer, generic slim jims and a three-month-old petrified piece of teriyaki chicken that he called "Sparky." So I was sitting there in the middle of the night, starving and suffocated by the stench of Styrofoam enchiladas.

Needless to say, his inability to heat an enchilada made for a bad night for all parties involved.

Adventures in Etiquette

So, last October I went to visit Ex No. oh-I-don't-even-know-anymore who lived halfway across the country. I was really excited because it was my birthday and I hadn't seen him in about a month. So, obviously I was expecting something BIG--a grand gesture, if you will. Well, my birthday night started out really well. He had made reservations at a very nice restaurant on the beach. He had even called ahead to make sure that the restaurant served crème brulee--my favorite dessert. He was dressed nicely (I told him what to wear and he actually listened to me). Things were going great for a change.

Not for long. Well, we get to the restaurant (a little late, but that can't be blamed on him. Anyone who knows me knows that I am five minutes late for everything). We sit down--so far, so good. I had not been humiliated. Yet. We decide to order wine and that’s where things go wrong. The waiter brings out the wine and holds it out so the ex can see it. Well, the ex grabs the wine out of the waiter's hands, nods at him, and sets the wine down on the table. This is immediately followed by me saying "Oh my God *name withheld to protect me from lawsuits*" louder than I had intended and dropping my head into my hand. The waiter stared at us with absolute contempt. You have never experienced true humiliation until a waiter has looked at you as if you are PWT straight from the trailer park. Well, the waiter picks up the wine from the table and apparently decides to dispense with the whole ceremony. He just pours the wine and, I swear to God, he rolled his eyes as he walked away.

Maybe I could forgive the ex for this if he had a legitimate reason for not knowing the appropriate way to handle ordering wine at a nice restaurant--maybe if his family wasn't very affluent or he was from the middle of nowhere where Applebees is considered the height of class. But he's not. He's from a big city and his father is an absurdly successful doctor. I know that he has been to nice restaurants before. There is simply no excuse.