Men do not want to have to surrender their man-cards at the dinner table. Eating should be rewarding, and these 14 meals just don’t qualify.
1) The Cook-It-Yourself Dinner: Skewering raw meat and dunking it into a pot of scolding fondue bourguignonne for no fewer than 90 seconds is a tedious task when you are hungry. Trying it with the kids is extra special. Long pointed spears at the dinner table are guaranteed to be more of headache for Dad than a treat.
2) The Chopstick Dinner: Give Dad a fork. At least then Dad will be finished eating in time to help clean up the sticky rice mess the kids are inevitably going to make.
3) The Rabbit Food Dinner: If there is one answer almost no man wants to hear when he asks what’s for dinner, it’s “salad.” Salad makes a meat and potatoes plate more colorful, and Dad eats it first to get it out of the way.
4) The Healthy Dinner: Unseasoned chicken breast next to mashed cauliflower and a stringy glob of spinach will have Dad offering to pick up dinner on the way home for a month.
5) The Veggie/Vegan Dinner: Even more heart breaking for Dad than boring chicken is sans meat altogether.
6) The Sweet Breakfast Dinner: Breakfast for dinner is quirky and cool as long as it isn’t dessert disguised as dinner. The kids will be overjoyed, but Dad does not want French toast as the day’s final meal.
7) The Repeat Dinner: Dinner went over so well last night; why not make it again today! Not cool. No matter how much he loves spaghetti, Dad can get bored with it quickly.
8) The Lunches-for-the-week Dinner: It is likely Dad enjoys Sunday dinner a whole lot less if he knows a substantial amount of it was made to accommodate his lunches for the entire week.
9) The Soup Dinner: For a lot of men, soup does not constitute an entire meal. Soup is an annoying appetizer. Why would Dad want to eat with a spoon something that would be more practical in a cup?
10) The Left-out Dinner: Dad does not want to be devouring his hamburger when across the table he sees Mom picking at a salad. Even more, he does not want it the other way around.
11) The Eternal Wait Dinner: Dad is a creature of habit. For every minute past his usual dinnertime, Dad appreciates that four-hour Rouladen a little less.
12) The Cold Dinner: He had Wheaties for breakfast, a ham sandwich for lunch, and now he has to eat sushi for dinner. With dinners like that Dad is sure to be at the table, reading aloud the definition of “cook.”
13) The Experimental Dinner: “We have pimientos, creamed corn, and spam. I bet I could make something with all of this,” is not a sentence an on-looking man wants to hear. Always keep a frozen pizza at the ready.
14) The Pretentious Dinner: Whether it’s caviar or monkey brains, calling a food a “delicacy” does not make it any less offensive to Dad’s pallet.
If you want to reach Dad’s heart through his stomach, let him keep his man-card, and serve something he wants to eat.
