Red's Wrap
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An Anniversary Eve Reflection on Marriage
To celebrate our anniversary tomorrow, my husband went through the 3-inch stack of recipes he clipped from the New York Times over the past few years and threw out all the ones that had fish sauce as an ingredient.
It doesn’t quite match religious conversion as evidence of love, but it comes close, especially since fish sauce was central to one of our biggest disagreements this year. A few weeks ago, in an alarming and inexplicable move, he doused the world’s most beautiful Alaskan shrimp with fish sauce. “It’s a fabulous recipe. You’re going to love it!,” he said, as I choked my way through the fish sauce miasma enveloping the kitchen. He was in heaven.
I was incredulous that he’d maimed the shrimp with fish sauce, not only because the shrimp could absolutely stand on their own, being that totally luscious, but because my detestation of fish sauce is legendary. But my husband, who is orthodox in very few ways, never deviates from a recipe.
“Why did you use fish sauce? I hate fish sauce!”
“That’s what the recipe called for.”
I ate a ham sandwich for dinner while he sat across the room, exclaiming every two minutes, “You should try this! It’s great!”
It got uglier than that – a lot of threats to hard-cook his sunny side up eggs, since it seemed to me that if I’ve told him a hundred times that I hate fish sauce and he still uses it, I should break the yolks on his eggs and flip them over to fry until they look like Play-Doh pancakes made by a three-year old.
I told him that I would never cook another sunny side up egg in my lifetime.
I have since backed down.
The bottle of fish sauce is still in the refrigerator.
He threw out the recipes with fish sauce.
Such is marriage.
11 Comments on “An Anniversary Eve Reflection on Marriage”
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“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Reblogged this on Red's Wrap.
As a long time single two thoughts came to me. 1)Given that your husband is Jewish, was a ham sandwich a double comment? 2) Could fish sauce be a dipping sauce for those that enjoy it and not used by those who don’t. Personally I don’t think I have ever had it and don’t feel a need.
Paula – are you suggesting that my eating a ham sandwich was some sort of veiled insult — LOL?! Oh my. Jews eat ham, bacon, corned beef, latkes, lasagna, pad Thai, all kinds of stuff. Some Jews avoid certain foods for religious reasons – Howard’s not one of them. 🙂 It really depends on how observant an individual is – a great deal of variation.
Here it is cilantro. Yes, such is marriage.
Yeah – you either love cilantro or it’s a total no go. No in-between.
I’m with you!! I’m an equal opportunity eater, but fish sauce is an abomination. Happy almost anniversary!
That’s why we’re blogging soulmates!
😘
Sounds like home to me. Garry like only old movies he’s seen at least a dozen times before and though he is serious baseball fan, if baseball is over, he’ll fill in with ANY sport. And he has yet to understand that when he says “Whatever you’d like to watch is fine with me,” sitting in his corner of the sofa suffering while whatever I want to watch is on doesn’t really match the moment.
Mind you, I’ve learned to really like baseball because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t see him from March through October.
Thus is marriage. At least we are on the same side politically.
Maybe he’ll throw out the fish sauce bottle in the morning.
Nah – he’s holding out hope that I’ll ‘convert’ to loving fish sauce.