You should learn to cook new dishes together. To each their own, especially in their own home, but cooking have inherent value itself for multiple reasons, and teach a lot of soft skills. And cooking together is great, if your wife agree to let you be slow and let you mess up. If you have kids especially: some of my best memories are my parents learning to cook weird asian dishes and fail or succeed together.
It's funny, my wife has literally zero interest in learning computer programming in any way. I found that a bit odd, as I'd like to at least learn enough about anything she spends more than, say, 20 hours a week doing so that I can nod in the right places when she complains. Talking with my friend group, nobody found it even the slightest bit odd.
You say your wife has no interest in cooking and everybody loses their mind. Doubly ironic because I would wager on HN, people are probably better programmers than cooks, on average.
Most people find programming brain-meltingly dull. Socially, we're much closer to accountants than the real professional class—lawyers, doctors, and the professional-adjacent groups like professors—and also closer to accountants (and not the fun kind, like forensic accountants) as far as people's interest in what we do than, say, mechanical engineers or aerospace engineers or biologists or pharmaceutical chemists or whatever. May not be true in certain very tech-oriented cities like SF where everyone seems to be connected to software (I dunno) but it is everywhere else.
Shit, lots of programmers find it dull, too. It just pays a lot and is pretty fuckin' easy, so they get over it.
(incidentally, I'm pretty sure the social-class thing is why programmers struggle to get basic professional respect and perks like a goddamn office and not being micromanaged, even when our pay is sky-high—those are social perks, and we don't rate them, mostly)
"people are probably better programmers than cooks, on average."
Maybe. I think cooking is just a different type of programming, with neat hacks, syntax to follow, etc. Garbage in, garbage out is especially applicable too.
Also, who is losing their mind over my wife not cooking?
I believe everyone who eats should know how to cook at least a few basic things. Just like anyone who wears clothes should know how to wash them. Etc
