Anatomy of the Perfect Red Pill Date: Phase VIII Coda

Continued from Phase VII Sex And Stuff

Coda

It's all to simple to want to sit back and rest on your laurels after pulling off the perfect Red Pill date.  I mean, after buffing your SR through the roof and then spending several passionate hours enjoying the fruits of your labors may seem like sufficient recompense for your expense and time.  And if this was a one-night-stand or a booty call, you might be right.

But this is my wife -- the woman who will someday likely drive me to the doctor four times a week for treatment for whatever is going to kill me when I'm 80.  You can't pump and dump your wife -- it's poor form and reduces your SR.  Even just soaking up the vibe of fulfilled contentment, while alluring, isn't what you need to do the next morning.  When you're married, after all, the date is still going on.

I got up the next morning at a ridiculously early hour for a weekend, but I had a mission yet to accomplish.  With Mrs. Ironwood still snoring contentedly away, I snuck out to the kitchen and began making her breakfast in bed.

Aww, I can hear you saying, How trite, contrived and cliched!

Well, yeah.  But there's a reason it's trite, contrived, and cliched -- it works.  And as with so many things, it's really about how you do it.

I took our leftovers out of the fridge and began preparations.  First the coffee -- and for this morning I chose a recent Honduran coffee which won the SCAA's Golden Cup award.  Now you might prefer Duncan Donuts brew (It's not bad -- 100% Sumatran Organic) but I wanted something special, and I knew the man who roasted it, personally.  And while the coffee was brewing, I began an omelet.

Now, a lot of men are intimidated by the omelet, mostly because it is reputed to be a difficult and elaborate dish.  In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.  Omelets are easy, if you know a few secrets.

First, start with eggs as close to room temperature as possible, so get the eggs out BEFORE you make the coffee.  Then beat three eggs well with a wisk or fork in a bowl.  Add 1-2 tsps. of COLD WATER.  The rule goes, if you want eggs that are fluffy, add milk (protein).  If you want your eggs to coalesce and remain intact as you fold it around like you do with an omelet, you use cold water to thin the proportions of protein.  

Next, get out whatever you're going to stuff the omelet with.  This can be just about anything you like with eggs, but I wanted to reprise the night before, so I grabbed Mrs. I's leftover steak (the one with the Roquefort and balsamic vinegar glaze) and sliced it as thin as I could.  Then I sauteed it in a pan with some mushrooms, onions, a few jaunty asparagus tips, splashed in a tsp. of white wine to deglaze, and a 1/4 tsp of white truffle oil before I took it off the heat and set it aside.

NOTE: Truffle oil, white or black, is for my money the single easiest way to impart a mad amount of flavor to a savory dish without incurring a big fat/sugar penalty.  You'll spend about $10-$15 on a bottle, but you'll only use it occasionally and it should last you at least a year.  But the aroma and the flavor it adds to any dish is amazing.  I've put a few drops in plain Kraft Mac & Cheese to take to a function and had people RAVE about my incredibly wonderful fare.  Truffle oil is such a strong but delicate flavor it's hard to go wrong with it.

Now, to the omelet: Stir up your egg mixture a bit, put a saute pan or omelet pan on the stove on Med-High heat, and spray with a non-stick cooking spray, and as soon as it's hot, dump the egg mixture in and turn the heat to MED.  Then wait a few minutes.  You'll notice, of course, that the eggs around the sides get hard and cooked pretty quickly, but that there's a huge pool of liquid egg still in the center.  So you take your spatula and you gently pry-up the edges of the omelet as it cooks and allow that liquid to seep under the cooked egg, where it will cook and add itself to the omelet one layer at a time.  You continue doing this around the edge of the dish until there is almost no liquid left.  

Then you dump all of that stuff you sauteed earlier onto one side of the circular egg disc in the pan.  In my case it was really good steak, mushrooms, onions, and asparagus.  I also added about 2 oz. of chevre goat cheese -- it's like cream cheese only much, much better.  At this point, one side of your omelet should look like a pizza, kinda, and the other should be bare.  This is where you gently force your spatula under the empty side and flip it up over the top of all of the stuffing.  Let it cook a few moments while you're preparing to plate it up.

Getting an omelet out of the pan without destroying it's essentially sandwichy nature is actually pretty easy.  Instead of screwing around with a spatula in an effort to lift the entire thing to a plate intact, try inverting the plate over the pan with the folded omelet, then flipping both until the more-cooked side of the omelet is on the plate -- voila!

Now I could have stopped there, but I also had a half a cantaloupe and fresh strawberries.  I served the latter with a dollop of sour cream and sugar -- really, try it.  Add some whole wheat English Muffins and the coffee, and you've got a highly impressive breakfast in bed in about as much time as it takes to whip up some scrambled eggs.  

So I woke up Mrs. I the next morning with a steak-and-asparagus omelet, fresh fruit, and coffee.  Needless to say, I was greeted in heroic fashion.  I elected to sit with her while she ate (I rarely eat breakfast) and enjoy my truly exquisite coffee while we discussed the details of the previous evening.

Now, why did I bring her breakfast in bed when I already got my cookies?  Well, for one thing the goal was to inflate my SR and keep it inflated, and by re-engaging her the next morning I quickly kill any idea that I just wanted to get my cookies, and I did, in fact, have an incredibly good time going out with her.  

The other advantage to this is that its a great DHV if done properly and unexpectedly.  She knows I can cook and it's hard to impress her with that.  But taking dinner leftovers and re-inventing them as breakfast, that impressed her.  Enough to decide after breakfast (and an extended period in the bathroom) that she was ready for more cookies.

By Noon (yes, Noon -- Pagans don't usually make it to Church on Sunday) we were both thoroughly sated in body, mind, and spirit.  She managed to call four girlfriends, her sister and her mother while I was cleaning up the kitchen, informing them all of her incredible evening, and getting gasps of envy from her best friends.  Her single friends were incredibly jealous, but so were her married friends.  As a mutual friend of ours just mentioned yesterday, "Dude, you done fucked it up and raised the bar for every married man here!".

Preselection and Admiration Buffs: SR +4 (reaction of friends and relatives)

Alpha Wolf Buff: SR +1 (reaction of MY friends)

By treating her thus, I raised Mrs. Ironwood's personal status within her female peer group significantly.  While that group does include more ostensibly attractive women, as well as other women in relationships and plenty of single women, the fact that I a) romantically dated my wife b) spent a LOT of money on the date and c) was not hesitant in the slightest about bragging about it to my male friends (too often as men we feel discouraged about bragging about our romantic conquests, particularly if we are married and there is only one "land" you can legally conquer -- brag about your romantic prowess to your fellas in front of your wife and you get additional points for alphatude), nearly every woman in her group has to admit that her current relationship is not, in fact, that successfully romantic.  Which means I look that much better, and so does she.

But inflating her status and SR was one of the goals -- because as long as she feels good about the date and it meets with the approval of her female peers, then the likelihood she will respond positively to future sexual advances goes up significantly.  

IN CONCLUSION: The Hooker Math

Now, some of you might be literally shitting bricks over the idea of spending $500 on a date -- not a whole weekend, but one date.  It seems outrageously extravagant, and I'm sure you think I'm being a chumpish ATM about the whole thing.  But to use the venerable Athol Kay's concept of "hooker math" (dividing the number and types of sex with a woman by the amount of money you spent on her, adjusted to conform with the price list of the median price of said sex acts by local professionals for the same service), I stand behind my investment.  Because you can't just count one night into the occasion.

It has now been over two weeks since the Big Date.  But it is still paying dividends.

The weekend after, we ended up going to a semi-formal PTA auction, and reprised our outfits from the previous week.  We both looked hot, I in particular got some attention (we have more single mommies than single daddies at our elementary school) which added to my preselection buff, and it certainly helped Mrs. I's status with the other mommies by having me on her arm, and bragging about the previous week's date.  This brought back a complete reprise of the feelings of the previous weekend, and we spent another post-date evening rutting like crazed weasels.  And this time it cost me about $15 in drinks and the purchase of a custom-made hula hoop.

But wait, there's more . . . 

This past Saturday, we had yet another series of events.  First the Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet, and later that evening a friend's 40th birthday party.  Again we reprised the outfits, re-lived the date, and got all warm and fuzzy again.  Again I caught a lovely preselection and admiration buff.  And, yet again, there was a lot of sex involved, inspired by the date.

So as far as Hooker Math goes, after putting $500 into it, I essentially quintupled the value of my money.  So for an evening out I arguable got over $2500 worth of hot, steamy married-people sex and a wife who thinks the sun rises and sets in my ass.  It wasn't the money -- hell, that was one of the points of this exercise, to do a date without worrying about money.  It was the experience.  I wanted to do it, I made it happen, and I reaped the consequential rewards -- and continue to do so.

Factoring that into the equation . . . that was one of the best $500 I ever spent.

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Alpha Move: Iron Chef "The Kitchen is MY Domain"

I originally posted this as a comment on the venerable Badger's site, but I thought it bore re-posting here:

A commenter basically said that cooking was women's work.  I passionately disagree.  Here's why.

While cooking has traditionally been done by women in agricultural and tribal cultures due to the division of labor, there is nothing unmasculine or inherently and irredeemably beta about cooking.  Indeed, it can be an intensely profound exercise of male power.

Mrs. Ironwood can't cook.  At all.  Her brother and her male cousin were both adept professional chefs.  She and her mother . . . well, they couldn't cook their way out of a refugee camp with Paula Deen helping them.  My wife once washed pasta with soap.  Two weeks after moving in with her, I excused her from all future attempts and assumed the duties exclusively.  Indeed, I wrote into our marriage vows that I will "Feed her when she is hungry".  She's utterly abysmal, due in part to her training in science, which requires exact measurements and such. ("It's says 'brown the beef' . . . how brown?  What shade of brown?  AGHH!" -- actual quote).

I, on the other hand, have cooking as a part of my family culture, with a legacy cookbook and everything.  I've cooked professionally for years, and pursued it as a passionate hobby since my teens.  The skill certainly got me laid in college -- there is great Game in cooking, if you do it right.  The first time I cooked a full mean for Mrs. Ironwood, she dropped the fork, swallowed, and said "I want to have your babies."  I'm good.

So when we cohabitated, I cooked.  She didn't.  When we got married, I cooked, she didn't.  I do every meal, and I don't phone it in.  I have demanded that she learn how to respect the food even if she doesn't know how to prepare it, and I've introduced her to all sorts of cuisines she likely never would have tried.  My subtextual message was pretty loud: FOOD COMES THROUGH ME!  IF YOU WANT TO EAT WELL, KEEP ME HAPPY.

Even in my worst Beta years, I was always Alpha in the kitchen.  I could have a girlfriend in my kitchen and even assist, but if she started trying to take control, I'd throw a bitch out. MY DOMAIN.  And if she didn't like the food . . . well, sure sign of poor relationship material.

Mrs. Ironwood loves everything I put in front of her.  While her single girlfriends were eating Ramen noodles or "dating for dinner" or hitting McD's AGAIN, she was getting incredible meals every night.  Serious DHV.

So, now that I have kids, and I'm running a family in addition to a relationship, the kitchen and meal prep is an even more important extension of power and order in my household.  There's nothing beta in mandating when and what shall be consumed by the family, what is purchased at the grocery store and how much is spent.  In a post-industrial world where cleaning and supplying has been largely outsourced or simplified, cooking (and laundry) remain the key components of housework left.  Athol has spoken at length about the Game value of doing laundry, and I defer to his expertise on the matter.  But the Married Game value of cooking is at least as high, and can be much, much higher.

And now that I have kids, I use cooking to make sure they have the Ironwood gene for culinary arts intact, and teach them my rules and my perspective on food.  One child at a time is designated "kitchen elf" and acts as an apprentice and assistant.  Each meal they cook comes with a lecture on where the food came from, nutrient value, portions, preservation, native culture, method of cultivation, and important historical and cultural points related to the food.  All very nerdy, yes.

But my 7 year old can turn a pretty deft omelet.  My 10 year old makes her own pie crust.  My 12 year old can tell you far, far more than you wanted to know about all sorts of kitchen and food-related lore.  We have enshrined "rules of the kitchen", from Rule No. 1: Sharp things cut, hot things burn to The Ironwood Rule: In this house, we garnish!  My kids go to the grocery store and farmer's market with me, help with cleanup (with a little coercion) and are generally part of the cooking tradition.  Mrs. Ironwood has learned enough to be competent with very simple dishes, but I still like having one of the kids around to watch her, just in case.

Cooking is not exclusively a feminine province.  Consider the scene from <i>Goodfellas</i>, when the mobsters are conspiring to cook pasta in prison and pay loving attention  to each detail of the meal.  In the rugged Pyrenees the Euskandulak gentlemen's "supper clubs" are all-male social opportunities wherein the local leading men of the community take turns producing fabulous meals for each other (and then go on to discuss smuggling operations or furthering the goals of the Basque Separatist movement with guns and bombs).  In my own beloved South, there are teams of male barbecue enthusiasts who compete relentlessly for title and reputation.  Last weekend I had the fortune to be on a Scout backpacking trip during which I ate expertly prepared venison and squirrel by a man who knew how to use seasoning and preparation to bring out the full, rich flavor of the meat.

There is nothing at all unmanly about food prep.  Nor is it a demeaning or unhonorable task.  Indeed, the idea that "men don't cook" for years gave women power over the domestic homefront.  Now that division of labor is a lot less pronounced, there's no reason at all why a man can't be responsible for the food that goes in the mouths of his family.

It's a subtle Art, make no mistake.  The comfortable dependability of food provides plenty of positive Beta, and your craft -- and eventual mastery -- of turning ingredients into delicious food provides a powerful statement about your dedication and skill, knowledge and creativity, all of which are Alpha.

But then it comes to presentation, and that's where the real Alpha kicks in.  Anyone can cook, eventually.  But if you really want to get the most out of the experience then I suggest you cultivate a bit of showmanship and cunning about how you present your food to the people who eat it.  That doesn't necessarily mean that every meal has to be 5 star fare, but it does mean that you use attractive and appropriate settings to support your meals.

One advantage of living in a traditionally-oriented culture like the South is that there is a culture of appreciation around manners, etiquette, and the proper enjoyment of food.  My table is My Table, and I set the rules.  It's as much my arena as my bed or my desk, and I enforce those rules rigorously (though not always successfully) when we are eating.  The rules are not decided by mutual consensus, or a vote, or anything other than the fact that it is My Table, the Captain's Table, and I alone am the arbiter of the rules there.

If they don't like it, there's peanut butter and jelly in the pantry.

So don't dismiss this very valuable avenue of alpha/beta power as inherently feminine or demeaning.  That would be letting go of a potential masculine asset.

Besides, don't forget that far more women poison their husbands than vice versa.  No need to tempt her.  Just sayin'.

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