Dining on Venus and Mars

There are many differences between how things work on the respective home planets of the Male and Female race.

For a start, technology is far more advanced on Mars than Venus, even in the smallest room in the house, where used cardboard toilet rolls are automatically removed from the spool in the middle of the night without human intervention and teleported to the recycling bin. Sadly, men’s Martian DNA means that they retain a life-long inability to identify empty toilet rolls and give these unfamiliar items a wide berth.

But who knew that the differences even extend to the kitchen? I have heard many reports of the average Martian cooking session dirtying 7.29 times as many cooking utensils as an equivalent session by their Venusian counterparts, and involving approximately 738% of an adult’s Recommended Daily Allowance of saturated fat.

If I were to return to Venus tomorrow, my own personal Martian would, I think, subsist entirely on a diet of pasta in a ridiculously garlicky home-made tomato sauce – which brings me to my final point: certain dishes belong exclusively on Venus and some belong only on Mars.

Martian cuisine (aka What Men Will Eat If Left To Their Own Devices)

Braaied meat – probably rather charred on the outside, but with the delightful hint of beer that was poured over the meat to put out any flames below.

Pasta – either with a jar of sauce (probably cold!), or bolognaise sauce.

A potjiekos – nothing wussy and fiddly, but the meat and potatoes type.

Meat/fish from a tin – bully beef, tuna, tinned Vienna sausages… the list is endless.

Smash – easy, filling, goes with anything. What’s not to like?

Venusian cuisine (aka What Women Will Eat If Left To Their Own Devices)

Stir-fry – probably with some ridiculously priced macadamia nut oil and exotic vegetables.

Lentils, beans or chickpeas – women love them, but for some reason, men do not identify these as food. Nick regularly refers to chana masala as “that bean cr*p”.

Things served in stacks or decorated with squiggles of balsamic vinegar reduction – women coo over the presentation; men think it is fiddly and stupid.

Caesar salad – can’t be real food: where are the tomatoes, the feta, the cajun chicken strips or Thousand Island dressing?

Ice cream or peanut butter (preferably both) spooned directly from the container into the mouth, and usually washed down with a bottle of Chardonnay.

So what dishes do you think you’d find on Venus or Mars?

Jeanne Horak-Druiff is the face behind the multi-award winning blog www.cooksister.com. This ex-lawyer based in London now spends all her free-time cooking, photographing and eating good food.