Are restaurants taking over family kitchens?

‘Weekly Trust’ has observed that more surprising is the fact that it is no longer an occasional treat, as many housewives have now transferred their kitchen responsibilities to the employees of these eateries who help them cook meals on a weekly basis or as pre-arranged.  And it is sometimes for the entire family, with or […]

‘Weekly Trust’ has observed that more surprising is the fact that it is no longer an occasional treat, as many housewives have now transferred their kitchen responsibilities to the employees of these eateries who help them cook meals on a weekly basis or as pre-arranged.  And it is sometimes for the entire family, with or without any occasion on hand for celebration.
But many adults still relish with nostalgia tasty meals, cooked by mothers in the days of yore and have cherished favourite delicacies till this moment. “Can we say now that our children would remember ours?”, asked a dumbfounded housewife.
But for Mr. Haliru Zubairu, it is not an issue following a personal advert experience of such services rendered him.
“I was at a bank one day, when a lady walked up to me with a handbill advertising her business. She said, she could cook meals for a week for me or depending on my need if I were a bachelor or if I had a wife who couldn’t cook for the home,” Zubairu said.
According to him, this is outsourcing. “With a lot of women now becoming working class, it is understandable that they may not have the time to always cook for their families. At weekends they usually have social engagements to attend as well as spend time with their husbands and children.”
Just days free on weekends, Zubairu says, “I don’t want my wife in the kitchen half of that time.”
It is distasteful and not culturally unacceptable to Mr. Tonye Humphrey. He opines that a woman’s most valuable responsibility is her husband’s stomach or more expressly put, “to take care of the feeding requirements of her husband and work should come secondary.”
“The reason we have most marriage crises today can be attributed to this omission by most working-class wives. Depending on outside sources to feed one’s husband shows that one of the most vibrant pedestals of a harmonious marriage has been crushed and is a sign of deeper menace both at the home front and at the social level. It is easier for enemies to poison your husband or other women to snatch him away from you when you don’t cook for him,” Humphrey stated.
Personally, Mrs. Saratu Ibrahim said women who indulge themselves in such negative matrimonial attitudes are taking their marriages for granted. “I’m a woman and I work long hours. I see nothing to stop any woman from taking a day between Saturday and Sundays, at least, in preparing for the various meals her family will need for the week.”
She asks how such women would inculcate the habit of cooking in their daughters especially with more men taking over the kitchen. “The laziness of these women is pushing their men to enjoy meals outside. Working or not, a wife should create time to cook for her husband and family,” she added.
But beyond this, many children rather than have properly home-cooked food packaged for their school lunch break, now have meatpies, donuts, sausages and the likes ‘forced’ on them by mothers and aunties. Mrs. Ibrahim opines that, failure to give them proper food is indirectly getting them addicted to junk food.
Mr. Samuel Oba thinks women who buy food from a restaurant for a whole week must have justifiable reasons, be they good or bad. “First, it could be because they are full-fledged career women without the time to cook; secondly, they may just hate cooking; thirdly, it could be that they are just plain lazy mothers/wives,” Oba said.
“However”, he said, “ I do not have a problem eating out once in a while or even doing the cooking when she is indisposed. But, purchasing food to last a week? No way; that’s totally forbidden. It could have a far reaching negative effect on my female children too…Who then would they learn from?”
Oba says he likes to eat his wife’s food and no other, except, if the circumstances cannot be  avoided. But then she must find a way to cook herself!, he adds  
Mr. Emmanuel Ejor described the trend as a shame. According to the father of three, “the heart of a man, many believe, is closely attached to the dishes that come out of his wife’s kitchen. When a woman takes to eateries to feed the home, she is indirectly sending him out to go where he can feel the sense of some finger licking homemade stuff’”
Ejor said it is not an African trend and those who practice it are copycatting which may endanger the lives of their family. He said most of the eateries cook in large quantities using ingredients that ordinarily may have some negative impacts on the health of their children.”
In response to this, Mabel John (not real name) asked, “How can they tell where the food is from. They all want to eat good meals and who cooks it usually doesn’t matter especially when it is being presented by their wife.
“I do it and a lot too. Sometimes I cook and my husband sees me, but cannot tell from the taste what I can cook or cannot cook.”
She added that if it is a lifestyle one has decided to adopt, “you should be ready not to go to the low class places that could harm your family.
The mother of two said, “if he springs a surprise on me by inviting guests unexpectedly, we take them out to have dinner. Being married for thirteen years, it gets boring to be cooking so much. One needs to take a break every now and again.”
Employees of a popular Wuse 2, Abuja restaurant confirmed to our reporter that they make as much money from cooking for such women as they do from regular sales of food to those who come in to eat.
Speaking anonymously one of them said, “In some seasons especially Christmas our turn over is massive because many of the women don’t bother to cook at all. Some come on a daily basis to pick their orders. For others, every three days or weekly. But it is a very big part of our business which we cannot afford to lose.”
The services are not only provided by eateries. Even food selling points at the Utako Market, are engaged and has been at it for as long as the existence of the city itself.
Ezinne Okaro who runs one of the shops said, “I have a lot of customers, both male and female whom I cook for. For some, I cook the food directly from my house as I prepare what I will sell for the day and they come to pick them in their own pots or coolers. For some others, I have to go to their homes to cook the food there.”
Okaro said, “The charges are not the same on either occasions, but in the long run, they are discounted compared to when they come here to my shop to buy the food in plates,” she added.
It’s also become an online trend. Two litres of vegetable soup is currently selling on one of the popular online shopping sites at two thousand naira (N2, 000) and by mid day from when it was posted had sold 35 per cent.