When Joe Cooks...

When Joe and I first met, I pretty much lived on Lipton Sides. You know, the little packages of broccoli cheese rice, chicken broccoli rice, etc? I could make some mean instant mashed potatoes thanks to making them so many years for my brother as well as boxed mac and cheese. I had absolutely no desire to cook but Joe had a passion for it so he was the original cook in our family. When I became a stay-at-home mom, I found it intimidating to cook for him at first. He can cook and he can cook well. He loves to make things from scratch, and this makes it impossible for him to follow a recipe. I started off slow. At first we ate a lot of simple dishes I got from my mom as well as boxed dinners (like Hamburger Helper & Betty Crocker) and frozen entrees (such as Stouffers lasagna). Joe helped by giving me pointers, ideas and frequent critiques which I took gracefully...well, I rarely take constructive criticism well, but I do listen to what he says.

I've always cared 100% about what goes into Hana's body so I made her baby food and as she grew older it just kind of spiraled from there. Then Jennifer bought me that awesome cook book you often hear me reference a couple years back and I've been a cooking fiend ever since. Now, I don't claim to make anything gourmet, but I try to cook the healthiest way and with the best ingredients and, I must admit, most things turn out tasting pretty darn good! But I'm still not Joe. What do I mean by that? Well, while I can follow any recipe and make a delicious dish and he is completely incapable of following the most simple recipe (I'm not joking. He can ruin a box of macaroni like you wouldn't believe!), he is fully capable of opening the pantry after I've said "There's nothing to cook" and creating a dish such as this:

What is that? Well that's some sort of parsley-jalapeno pesto pasta with an Italian-flavored chopped steak smothered in an Italian-mushroom gravy. That's the best name I can give it in hopes of trying to describe how unbelievably delicious it was. We'll never ever have it again because he has no idea exactly how he made it. This is similar to a pork stroganoff over rice dish he made a couple weekends back. It, too, was phenomenal, but we'll never have that exact dish again! Needless to say, we love it when Daddy cooks, and Daddy loves it when he cooks too. He really enjoys it and doesn't get to as often as he'd like anymore. I guess I should give him some recipe cards and a pen and have him scribble things down as he cooks so maybe we'll be able to enjoy his one-of-a-kind recipes again and again! In the meantime, I'll keep following recipes and learning to wing it every now and then.