As he runs his finger under the cold sink water, I think about the pasta on the table, homemade fresh Fettuccine that he’s spent all day making.

There's sauce too: chunky, spicy tomato sauce mixed with fresh, homegrown spices. We were just about to dig in when this accident occurred. He sliced his finger cutting pepperoni bread. He may need stitches. I throw the bread away, and after we wrap his finger, he lifts it in the air above his heart. I hold a pomegranate martini to his mouth. “Tilt your chin back,” I say, and he does. “Drink the alcohol.”

He’s surprised I’m so helpful. That night in bed he looks at me and says, “You were good. You really took care of me.” This needs to be said. This needs to be said because usually, mostly, he is the one that takes care of me. We are newlyweds, four months and going strong, and my husband waits on me hand and foot.

My mother calls my husband “the poor man.” My brother thinks I’m a princess. “The way he waits on you…” they say, shaking their heads.

My friend, Libby, is shocked that we’re encouraged to just sit with our legs crossed on the coffee table and sip Sauvignon Blanc while my husband whips up turkey lasagna with four cheeses. “It’s 7p.m. He’s making lasagna now?” I tell her how quick he is, that he is a lasagna-pro. We clink our glasses and she whispers to me, “You have it so good.”

It’s true. I do have it good. My husband commutes an hour home from work every night, stops at the grocery store, and then comes home and immediately begins to cook. Some of his specialties are: pork loin stuffed with buffalo mozzarella and prosciutto, spicy shrimp scampi, delicately wrapped spinach and blue cheese calzones, and deep fried mozzarella carozza.

He pours me glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon which he’s picked up, too, or a nice, light Pinot Noir. And he never complains. He just ties on his black Williams Sonoma apron (which he asked for this Christmas), turns on the Bose, and gets to work.

In our case, our marriage, a man’s work is never done. My husband is the primary cook in the family, the dishwasher, and the handyman. He also takes out the trash, cleans out the fridge, and calls me from work asking: what would you like for dinner? I’m proud to say my man’s place is in the kitchen.

I grew up in a family with more traditional gender roles. My mother cooked dinner nightly: meatloaf, chicken with potatoes and a vegetable, steak and fries. My father would come home from work, take a trip to the bathroom with the paper, and then sit in his chair until dinner was ready. It’s not so much like that for them anymore, though. My mother has grown older and less fond of cooking hearty meals.

“I prefer having a life,” she tells me. She thinks it’s easier to whip up something like salad tossed with grilled chicken. "That’s dinner?" I imagine my father asking, his eyes wide with confusion. But there is a pot holder above their stove now depicting a woman wearing an apron, holding out a casserole. The caption below her reads: You’ll eat it. And you’ll like it.

My husband doesn’t mind the labor involved in making pasta from scratch, and he enjoys spending hours pouring over cookbooks. In fact, he sometimes lugs the biggest one into bed with us, The Professional Chef, and reads it lovingly as if it were a favorite novel.

Food shopping is something he enjoys, too, especially the farmer’s market, which he frequents most Saturdays. Last weekend as he picked out fresh basil, pesto sauce, and huge, ripe tomatoes, I wandered around like a finicky child looking for something interesting to see or do.

Men in the kitchen is something we see more of these days. At a cooking class my husband recently took, there were three men out of the 12 students. “There were actually men!” he exclaimed.

My guilt gets me sometimes. I should cook, I think. A wife cooks for her husband. I imagine myself at the stove in front of a skillet of sizzling mushrooms, the NY strip perfecting itself in the oven. But, no, I just don’t enjoy it. And so I rationalize that my husband does enjoy it, that he actually loves to cook. It’s his hobby, his stress reliever, his joy. So, why do I still feel guilty then when I kick my feet up and sip wine while he works? I don’t know any men that feel guilt while their wives toil in the kitchen.

I tried once on Valentine’s Day to make him a meal. I bought pre-made crab cakes (his favorite), dried penne and canned sauce. Pretty amateur, I know. But guess what? He loved it. It wasn’t the food, he said; it was the pampering, the having something done for him. It tasted good because someone else made it. Sometimes, I tried to work as his sous chef—mincing garlic, cutting the onions, washing the ice berg. But I always seem to get in the way. And he always ends up saying sweetly, “Get out of my kitchen.”

“I’m worried,” I tell him. He’s recently had a tetanus shot and his finger is taking a long time to heal. We’ve ordered out for over a week— limp pizza, oily Chinese, carb- loaded subs. I miss his homemade roasted red pepper pizza, his artichoke stuffed shells, his lentil soup.

I want his chicken soup which simmers all day and where the chicken falls off the bone, creating a savory broth. I want his tomatoes which he stuffs with rice, fresh bread crumbs, and sharp cheddar cheese. My mouth waters thinking about fillet mignon and how, while I wait for it to be cooked, he gives me a bowl of salty fries to nibble on.

We are sitting on the couch. He looks at me. “Why are you worried?” he says, looking concerned. How do I tell him that I’m worried it was all just a phase? That this finger injury might be the catalyst, the thing that makes him want to stop cooking? No more potato and leek soup. No more marinated shrimp and Naan bread.

What if he realizes just how much he does and refuses to do it for any longer? I panic. “I’m afraid you’ll never cook again,” I blurt out.

He looks at me and laughs. “Don’t be so dramatic,” he says. “Are you kidding? I was just thinking that I can’t wait to take a crack at spaghetti bolognese this weekend!”

“Really?”

“And it will be my own, a kind of combo of a bunch of recipes I’ve read up on. Hey, just promise me one thing?”

“Yeah?”

“Promise you’ll stay out of the kitchen.”