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Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, Guest Contributor
Slow Food Boston

(A couple at a table. In front of them are a half-eaten box of pizza, an empty wine bottle and two glasses.)
MAN: Hey, let’s invite the Guptas/your boss/my fratbros over for a barbeque this weekend! I’ll cook.
WOMAN: Great idea, honey!

(Several days later. A smallish kitchen. Woman enters lugging numerous grocery bags.) WOMAN: I’m home. I got the flank steak and the chicken legs! And the charcoal! I also picked up a few other things to, you know, round out the meal.
MAN: (offstage; voice is faint, as if from very far away): You’re the best! Would you mind making that terrific marinade you do for the chicken? And salting the meat? Thanks, babe!
WOMAN: Sure thing! (Woman makes a marinade and pours over the chicken legs. She sprinkles sea salt on the flank steak. Then she pulls dozens of vegetables from the grocery bags and puts them on the counter. She scrubs potatoes and boils them. She halves zucchini, peppers, and onions, then tosses them with olive oil and salt. She drains the potatoes, peels them and makes potato salad.) Um, honey? Don’t you think you should get the fire started? (Woman fills enormous pot with water and staggers with it over to stove. She makes tomato salad; husks corn. Man shambles into kitchen, opens a beer, and goes out to deck.)
MAN: Do you know where my chimney and fire starter are?
WOMAN: In the basement, right where you put them last fall! (Sound of a blaze igniting. Man comes stumbling into kitchen from deck, wiping soot off his forehead, then disappears into other part of house. Woman goes out to deck with broom, sponge and cleaning detergent. Fifteen minutes later, she comes back in.) Honey! I think the fire’s ready! (Woman piles plates, glasses and cutlery on trays. Man shambles into kitchen, opens another beer, and goes out to deck.)
MAN: Okay, you can bring me the meat now! (Woman brings him marinated chicken legs, flank steak and halved vegetables. Then she returns to kitchen to clean up. Fifteen minutes later, the Guptas/boss/fratbros arrive. Woman goes out to deck.)
MAN: Hey!
WOMAN: Hi there!
GUPTAS/BOSS/FRATBROS: What’s up? Wow! Everything smells great!
MAN: Sit down! Sit down! Have a beer! (Woman goes to kitchen to wash marinades off platters, then brings them to the man who piles them with food. Man passes platters.) Help yourself! (Woman returns to kitchen to get the things she forgot earlier: salt, pepper, butter and napkins.)
GUPTAS/BOSS/FRATBROS (raising beer bottles): A toast! To summer—and this amazing food!
MAN: It was nothing, dude. I just threw a couple things on the grill. But cheers!

Yep, it’s time for our favorite woman-subjugating summer ritual, the backyard barbeque. *ducks airborne Pabst cans* The meal is not so much a celebration of man the hunter, but a re-enactment of the original division of labor in which women cooked and men—”liberated from the simple biological demands of a long day’s commitment to chewing raw food”—did whatever the hell they pleased, according to the fascinating book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.

In Paleolithic times, it played out like this: The double-X crowd dedicated their mornings to digging up tubers, winnowing seeds and picking greens; afternoons, to washing, pounding, grinding and roasting. Some days—maybe when there were one too many games of toss-the-wooly-mammoth-bladder, the Ys showed up empty-handed, and couples dined together on her arduously prepared vittles. Other days, he came waltzing in with mastodon steaks—and hijacked the cookfire to sizzle up a feast for him and the homies. (If she was lucky, his helpmate got a scrap or two.)

Totally unfair, right? But Richard Wrangham says it was this lopsided work arrangement—women supplying the day-to-day sustenance; men, the razzle-dazzle—that allowed the human species to evolve, among other things, finding a look that really worked for it (leggy, hairless, weak-chinned) and handily dominating all other lifeforms (except for our future masters, the insects and viruses). In other words, civilization as we know it—the Internet! Chinese take-out!—was built on approximately 2.92 quadrillion hours of female kitchen drudgery.

For this reason and more*, it’s time to consider a new summer ritual: one that honors the ladycook. Omit the meat entirely, or make it the girlie way—on the stove and in a pan!

*Other reasons to skip the ‘Q:
Carcinogens: PAHs and HCAs—scary!
Local air pollution: Cough! Cough!
Carbon footprint: Three-quarters of heat disappears into the atmosphere!
Hot, sweaty and uncomfortable
Meat burnt and toughened beyond recognition