Prescription not to cook cures all

My wife recently had to go to the hospital for a medical procedure, and after it was over I sat with her in a recovery room where she was to emerge from the stupor caused by the medications that had knocked her out and eased the pain.

The doctor walked in and told us the results, though he was speaking mostly to me because he knew that the stuff he had injected into her vein would not let her remember anything for hours.

Next, a nurse reiterated what the doctor had found and told us what JoAn should do to ensure a rapid recovery. I took notes and accepted the prescription forms while my wife sat there and nodded a lot, not quite herself.

Suddenly, she perked up when she spotted something written across a paper the nurse was showing us.

JoAn tugged at my arm and motioned toward the paper insistently. I saw what she was pointing at: "Do not operate the stove."

The nurse explained that it was all right for my wife to use a microwave oven that day after we returned home because it shuts off automatically. A stove was more dangerous for a doped-up patient, though.

The nurse continued to explain everything, but my wife ignored it all. She kept pointing to that line: "Do not operate the stove." She couldn't have been happier, even if she weren't floating like a hippie on the third day of Woodstock.

You see, JoAn does not enjoy cooking. If she had her way, she would never again fry, bake, boil, broil, saute, roast, grill, batter, blanch, poach, braise, sear, simmer, glaze, parboil, marinate, clarify or scramble.

She doesn't mind cleaning up the kitchen or washing the dishes (well, she does mind, but she does those chores every day without complaint). Cooking, however, is all work, no fun.

I, on the other hand, love to cook but hate to wash, so between the two of us, we get our calories eaten and our kitchen cleaned.

Though she detests cooking, JoAn has prepared more meals than she cares to remember. In fact, when we were dating, I fell in love with her "gooshy-goshy" roasts about the same time I fell for her.

Don't pretend you don't know what a gooshy-goshy roast is. You know very well that it's a pot roast or a chuck roast, one that's tender and juicy. Well, you know now, anyway.

In those days, we used that term to differentiate it from a second type of roast she prepared. She preferred the taste of that second roast and said it was called an eye of the round. I found it dense, tough and unsightly, though, and called it an "arm roast." To me, it looked as though she had deprived a bodybuilder of his limb between the elbow and the shoulder and had slapped it onto a platter.

Many roasts later, after we had married and bought our house, I installed a new stovetop because the old electric heating elements weren't working properly. (To understand the magnitude of that task, you have to know that my home-repair skills are suitable for working on nothing more complex than an igloo.)

I had installed the stovetop and was finishing the wiring when JoAn came home that evening. She was impressed. I figured it was time to cash in the Brownie points I had earned.

"Why don't you whip us up a wonderful supper?" I suggested.

She looked at the shiny chrome, the painted metal and the four electric coils for 30 seconds or so. Then, she patted my arm and said: "No, I don't want to get it dirty."

Though JoAn has gotten that stove dirty a few times during the years, she still reminds me of the doctor's warning: "Do not operate the stove."

Reach Glynn Moore at (706) 823-3419 or glynn.moore@augustachronicle.com.