What We've Learned After a Month of Cooking Together

It's been a month since we've returned from retreat.  One of our goals is to cook a meal together once a week and we've actually done about three per week since we came home!  I was worried the newness would burn out but so far we seem to be barreling through about 40 different recipes I've already bookmarked.  (This post contains affiliate links that help keep this blog running at no cost to you.  See the Disclaimer page for more info.)

You've seen some of the meals on the Friday round ups like these babies:

(Chicken pot pie skillet)

(Cheesy Mexican Chicken)

(Lemon Lobster Ravioli)

(Penne Pasta Bake)

It's been fun to watch the Mr get involved and take pride in the meals we're making.  He seems to enjoy it and he takes an ownership in it that he didn't have before.  He would tell me things like "I'd cook you dinner but I'd have to make macaroni and cheese or something" because he had zero confidence in his cooking abilities.  Tuesday night after eating that night's meal, he said "maybe I could make you a meal sometime" and the words macaroni and cheese were nowhere in sight!  

The recipe directions are still quite scattered so we do better when we read ahead, comprehend where things are going and switch the order of steps if need be.  I believe this translates to learning to be more flexible and handling curve balls whereas the first week had me frantic and yelling "what's next!?  No, after that!!!" like I was competing on Chopped.  So I hope he's seen some improvement in my patience where that's concerned but I know I probably have a little ways to go.

Another thing I'm working on is letting him do the recipe.  We all have a way of doing things and if you're one of those people like me that doesn't want to bother someone and feel like if you don't do it, it won't get done right then you know you add stress to yourself.  By having these recipes written out, he tackles stuff like getting ingredients ready, making sauces and/or making homemade spice mixes and I do stuff like sear meats, get brown rice ready, etc.  The first week or two, I really had to restrain myself from saying "here, just let me do that."  I think I might've done that once and saw him get a little bummed and I gave the task back to him.  I thought "no, you will discourage him if you don't let him do this and learn for himself."  That's exactly what he's done.  

Even though I never minded coming up from working out and getting straight to dinner, I admit sometimes when I was particularly tired or the dish was more time consuming than I liked, I'd be irritated with him being able to kick back on the couch for 30 minutes while I went right to it.  I sometimes felt like I was getting a second workout and didn't get to exhale until I finally sat down to eat.  With him in there, the load is shared and I'm sure it would've been all along if I had just asked.  Although I don't need to cook together every night and the recipes we're doing are often far more involved than the ones I usually throw together, it's a nice way to be together doing something different.

Here's his side of the coin.

I was excited about cooking together but I figured I'd just get in the way mostly as I tend to have a lot of questions when it comes to cooking and get wrapped around my own axle when it comes to trying to time things out properly.  I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually fun and very rewarding, and I've learned a lot too. 

We cooked our first dish together and it was good but more importantly we worked together well as a team, even if we were a little frantic at times thanks to the poorly written instructions from the food prep service we tried.  When it comes to cooking I am a straight up rule follower, but what I learned first off is how free you can be with adding or removing certain ingredients to make a recipe your own and that is what impresses me most about The Mrs here.  She has always had a knack for cooking but I saw first hand how she has made recipes better by tweaking where she knew certain things would enhance a recipe and also to save us calories where we didn't really need them.  For example when the recipe calls for half a pound of butter and 10 tablespoons of salt and she cuts all that out and it still tastes amazing! (Okay those figures might have been an exaggeration, but honestly this is exactly why eating out at restaurants can be risky for weight loss efforts).

Now that we've had a few more opportunities to cook together and have found a bit of a stride, I have figured out what I am comfortable with which makes it even more enjoyable.  For instance, I have had the opportunity to make some sauces and there's just something about mixing all these different ingredients together and then finding out that  "Wow, this tastes amazing" or "Oh my God, I just made yum-yum sauce!"  It's something I find to be fascinating and rewarding. I also find that I like to cut the veggies up.  Give me those green onions, red peppers and tomatoes and let me handle the dicing and mincing and I am in my zone!  The prep is so important to the overall meal and I am able to feel like a contributor now which makes each meal we make that much more appreciated and also makes us take our time and eat slower because of the pride in working together and spending our time to make something special.

But what I have learned most of all is just how important it can be in a relationship to have some shared accomplishments.  We both are good at certain things in our lives but rarely have we had the chance to combine our efforts and get a rewarding outcome quite like we have with doing these meals together. When we both sit down to our hard earned dinner and take that first bite and it's awesome - we just both have a mutual pride that cannot be beat.  I highly recommend that in any relationship no matter how long or short you've been together as a couple.  Just last night we were eating a meal we made and it was so friggin' good and I was just proud of us for putting that together.   I was proud at how the minced scallion whites made the main dish taste and how she formed the entree so perfectly with the panko.  Then that sauce I made and she tweaked to make even better - it was just a wonderful feeling and I look forward to that. 

Lastly, I learned that even the after-dinner clean up can be rewarding.  I've been making a point to clean the stove top after our meals together.  Granted, its a smooth glass top that is supposed to be cleaned up after every cooking session - but we have never really done that, so it's nice to do that now and when we come down in the morning to a cleaner kitchen it's just a better way to set the mood for the day.  After I am done with that stuff I can relax better too, knowing the work is done for the day and we can unwind with our bellies full and relish in our shared accomplishment. 

So from a guy who is certainly no cook - take my word for it, try cooking together!  Even if you have a meal that doesn't work out as hoped, it's still fun and the best ingredient to strengthen any relationship.

Cooking together has gotten us out of a food rut because during June and July, I had ZERO motivation to make my usual dishes much less new things.  (Cereal for lunch was becoming a mainstay and it certainly wasn't a serving size.)  This has reminded me how nice it is to try something new and how much more fun it is to do it together.  It's funny to think that something as mundane as cooking together has made such a difference on a deeper level but it has for me.  It forces me to think outside of my type A/Virgo box and more importantly to ask for help because it's not a burden to do so like I've told myself for decades.  We've also taken to listening to music and making sure to put down our forks/take a drink after every bite.  This has forced us to slow down and not just scarf something down while we watch YouTube and be done in 10 minutes.  I hope this activity continues especially as we get into the cozy food months!

What life lessons do you find in unexpected places?

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