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Of course, men taking over the kitchen from officebound wives is not entirely new. Martin Ginsburg, husband of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has been the main cook in his household for nearly 50 years--ever since he took a bite of Ruth Bader's tuna casserole ("as close to inedible as food could be"). Their daughter Jane agreed with this assessment at an early age, he recalls, and mounted "a campaign to exclude Mommy from the kitchen, which Mommy fully supported." Upon Mommy's nomination to the bench, Jane remarked that she grew up "in a home with an equal division of responsibility: Father did the cooking, and Mother did the thinking." Nowadays Ginsburg bakes birthday cakes for his wife's fellow Justices--at least, he says, "when my wife tells me to."
But not every dad finds himself in the kitchen under such glamorous circumstances or because he loves it. Sometimes duty calls, plain and simple, as it did for Ronald Inniss, a high school guidance counselor in Boston and father of three grown kids who often come home to roost.
Inniss started cooking because his job enabled him to get home earlier than his wife. Though he's no gourmet chef, Inniss can, as he puts it, "feed the troops," who often include relatives and other children he has opened his home to. Among his standbys are spaghetti, meat loaf, roast chicken and stir-fry. "I like to hide the veggies," he confesses. He doesn't encourage the kids to help. "I basically like to keep them out of my way. I just want to get through it."
In Moyo's experience, however, Inniss's honesty and modesty are both rare. While rounding up volunteers for Real Men Cook, Moyo has often found himself mired in bragging sessions as though cooking were a competitive sport. "A lot of these guys will say flat out that they cook better than their wives," he reports. Moyo likes to tell them, "After you finish your years trying to slam-dunk on the basketball court, you can do the same thing with meatballs."