I can't cook

Not the kind of “can’t cook” that involves burning water or being unable to fry an egg. I get the mechanics of it. I can follow a recipe if it isn’t too complicated. So perhaps it would be more accurate if I said “I don’t cook”.

I grew up on a steady diet of of spaghetti, mac and cheese, fish fingers, and leftovers. When N and I got married and began to live together, I made an effort to cook “from scratch”. That’s what wives do, right? We ended up eating a lot of casseroles primarily composed of pasta and cheese. God help me, I tried. And, bless him, N put up with it for about a week.

Then he revealed that he is a seriously talented cook. The kind who takes notes when he watches the Food Network. The kind who can make a marinade without a recipe. You get the idea. Anyway, he thought it would be a better idea if he handled the cooking from then on. I was shocked, but also relieved that what we ate would now be the responsibility of someone who knew the finer points of cooking.

We have a pretty good set up. He cooks, we both eat, and I do the washing up. Except when he has to go out of town, then my good-hearted friends take turns having me over for dinner, because they know that without intervention I would eat nothing but cereal and ramen noodles until N got back.

The only problem is that, with N working so hard to finish his PhD, our diet hasn’t been so healthy recently. To take a little pressure off of him I’m trying to take our diet improvement scheme into my own inexperienced hands.

The first thing I did was make granola using an A.lton Bro.wn recipe (one of N's heroes). It actually didn’t turn out too badly. So for breakfast now we have about a third cup of granola topped with fresh fruit salad and yogurt. It is so delicious that I actually look forward to the morning!

Yesterday I went to the store and bought a lot of fresh fruits, vegetables, and other “real foods”. Now that I have a healthy breakfast covered, I am ready to tackle the other meals. I made a big pot of Greek Orzo Salad to pack for lunches this week. No mishaps. Of course, I haven’t tasted it yet…I guess I’ll wait to pronounce it a success.