Cooking.

I do the cooking in our house. This is not because I was an excellent cook when we were married, far from it. Being a baker, I get home early in the day. When we got married, I was home by 2 pm during the week. Sometimes Sarah wouldn't get home until 10 pm, but she mainly got home by 6. Since I had to go to bed earlier than she did, it made sense for me to make dinner and have it ready when she got home, so I wouldn't be up late or eating right before bed.

My mom showed me a few things about cooking (she was really good at coming up with stuff when we complained that there was nothing to eat), but I didn't really know much when I started. My college meals included bags of Lipton (now Knorr) noodles with frozen vegetables, boxed mashed potatoes with bacon, sour cream, and cheese, and Ramen noodles with grilled cheese. I was always burning the grilled cheese, because I put the butter in the pan and then put the sandwich in. Sarah showed me the proper way, which is buttering the bread first, and then putting it in the pan. It comes out much better that way.

Sarah and I traded off cooking for a few years. In the early days, I didn't do much with meat that wasn't hamburger, so we had a lot of meat loaves, cheeseburgers, and casseroles. I started getting chicken breasts, because I didn't really like bone-in chicken that much (I still don't). Back then I really over-trimmed the chicken breasts, anything that looked like fat was cut out, along with a good chunk of the surrounding area. I made a few beef roasts (I used to buy the bags that came with the seasoning packets that you mixed with water and poured over the meat, I called them "boil in bag" roasts). I had the same trimming problem with the meat that I had with the chicken, so I tended to stay away from it.

I was still using the boxed potato flakes then, as a side dish. We were also using canned vegetables, and probably some boxed rice dishes. We were living in an apartment in NJ, and the kitchen was impossibly small, and we didn't have a dishwasher. I tended to go with easy to prepare stuff with low cleanup. It wasn't until we moved into our house and our (my) nice big kitchen that I really started cooking.

This is when I took over the cooking full-time, as I was getting home even earlier than I did when we were first married. I also started trying different recipes and making things from scratch more often. I really like making things from scratch that most people wouldn't, like pastas (I made a pretty good spinach ravioli years ago that Sarah really liked), sloppy joes (based on the Brady Bunch cookbook recipe!), baked beans (though I sometimes use canned beans for this), among other things. I tend to use recipes as a guide, not as gospel, so sometimes if I make something again, it doesn't taste the same. I will go online for a recipe, and look up different versions of the same recipe and combine the best parts of them. I have a bad habit of not writing this down, so if I want to make that cobbled-together recipe again, I'm screwed. I have gotten very good at making sure that everything is ready at the same time. Sarah says she has trouble with this, which is why she doesn't like to cook. I tease her about her not cooking, but I don't mind being the cook. I like it when her woman friends are jealous of her because I do the cooking. :)

I like cooking a lot; even though I bake all day at work, I can still come home and enjoy making dinner. I have been neglecting it lately though; when I come home from work I am usually chained to the Intertubes, and I wait too long to start. I've been relying on the boxed stuff again, which is not good. I need to make healthier foods, because we need to lose weight. I also need to eat less of those healthy foods, which is a problem.

This post is pretty disjointed. I wonder if it's because it's Sunday and my schedule is screwed up? Sorry about that. :(