Hmm....

...Rich is going to cook me dinner for my birthday tonight.

When I first met him, he didn't cook much. Mostly he ate out, and if he did make something at home, it was simple, like pasta. A big night of cooking for him was putting some chicken in BBQ sauce and sticking it in the oven, along with some frozen fries. I quickly tried to put a stop to that. As grad students, we can't afford to eat out almost every night. And although he has a high tolerance for eating the same thing meal after meal, I definitely don't. So we tried cooking together.

In the beginning, "cooking together" meant I would tell Rich to saute something, he would say "I don't know how," then I would say (all annoyed) "you just stir the damn stuff in the pan, how hard is that?" To his credit, he wanted to try hard, it was just easier and faster for both of us if I did the work. And when I did teach him to do something, like saute and chop/dice and roast, he wouldn't do it often enough that it would stick, so he'd have to learn all over again.

We realized this pattern of me buying groceries and cooking for him couldn't continue. I was getting cranky from having to buy 3x what I would normally buy because he eats so much more than I do, and he was annoyed because I wasn't letting him help me at all, but would still get mad at him for not helping.

We made a plan - each week we would make dinner twice together. We would plan together, go grocery shopping together, and cook together. We made this plan maybe a month and a half ago, yet we've really only carried it out in full (from planning->shopping->cooking) once. Things happen, people get busy - I guess we just underestimated how much effort this venture would take.

Today he is actually going to take a half day off work (this guy doesn't take off work for *anything*) so that he will have enough time to think of what to make, buy the ingredients, and put it all together. Awww, what a big sweetie. I've always believed that anybody can cook, especially engineers! I mean, all day we come up with ways to solve problems. Sometimes with guidance, sometimes by the seat of our pants. So we should be able to follow recipes, right? I'm sure he'll be pleasantly surprised at how simple cooking can be - and therefore more willing to cook more often with me :) Oooh, I hope he remembers to make cake....