When I first started dating my husband I noticed his cabinets were filled with boxes of macaroni and cheese. Like he won the mac & cheese lotto. My kind of guy. My kind of cooking: open the box, throw into boiling water and eat. I knew it was a match made in heaven.

I blame my lack of enthusiasm for cooking on my mother who raised us on fish sticks. Mom made a mean Mrs. Paul’s but that’s where the talent ended. So this aversion to cooking had to be inherited. Never mind that my older sister could get for her own cooking show. She’s probably adopted.

When I first moved in with my husband I noticed that all the macaroni and cheese boxes were gone. “You’re out of mac & cheese,” I announced.

“No more of that now that you’ve moved in,” he said.

Where was he during the courting process? Did he sleep through all the Chinese take-out and pizza delivery guys? Now he suddenly thought I was Julia Child reincarnated. I knew I shouldn’t have fixed him a salad that one time. I was sending the wrong message. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I have to like cooking.

I was one of those little girls who begged Santa not to bring her an easy bake oven and I was one of those teenagers who failed Home Ec and never looked back.

Ironically though, when I was married to my first husband I cooked all the time. Perhaps that’s why he left. I was an expert at anything bland, in other words lacking in taste. Burned meat was my specialty. When I became single again I threw away all my pots and pans in exchange for every take-out menu and frozen dinner I could get my hands on. I was a free woman in every sense.

But after moving in with my new husband I knew those days were over. Once again, it was a choice between bland or burned, the latter of which at least had some taste to it. My husband never complained. He just seemed happy that there was something other than cheesy pasta on his plate. The smoke alarm going off became a normal background noise like TV or the radio.

My sister tried to “educate me.” She suggested Coquilles St Jacques. I became excited until I realized it wasn’t an island in the Caribbean, just another impossible dish to make.

My husband did the unspeakable by inviting his parents over for dinner. On the morning of their arrival, I developed this mysterious disease that prevented me from going within fifty feet of a kitchen. But my husband insisted that we not cancel since they flew four-thousand miles to see us. “Doesn’t their hotel have a restaurant?” I asked. “I could kick this disease if we were headed to a restaurant.”

Apparently my new mother-in-law preferred home-cooked meals. So my husband (the mac & cheese boy) cooked. The fish was not bland or burned or Mrs. Paul’s. I was shocked; I was married to a closet chef. “How did you come up with this?” I asked him later that night. “And where did the fresh fish come from?”

“I found the recipe in a cookbook and the fish at a market,” he said. Imagine that.

He might not win a slot on the cooking show with my sister but at least he didn’t burn anything and it was tasty. So tasty that I didn’t flinch when he said that I cooked the meal. I blushed when his parents showered me with compliments but I wondered why he hid this secret from me.

“That was my first time,” he said.

But his first time was better than all my hundreds of times. So much better that he bought more cookbooks. He abandoned his beloved car shows for cooking shows. He and my sister discovered new recipes like doctors discovering a cure for cancer. I didn’t miss all things bland and burned but somehow I felt left out.

So we started cooking together. And I’m learning a lot. I’m an expert at throwing things into the pan and stirring. We take turns picking a dish and one of us is the main chef and the other the assistant. I’ve realized that cooking is not so bad, especially when there are two of you. Tonight is my night. After much thought I’ve decided to go with fish sticks.