Cooking

Brad and I have completely different cooking styles. I want the simple dishes, salads or soups, pastas. I gravitate toward the same flavors over and over: kalamata olives, roasted red peppers, basil, cheese. Any combination of these makes me happy. Brad, on the other hand, wants extreme variety, never cooks the same thing twice, and searches out exotic ingredients to try. The solution is obvious, let Brad cook.

So he cooks every night with a few stipulations from me (no mushrooms, no fish, light onions). After working all day, he comes home and surfs the internet for recipes. It amazes me that he’ll say, “I want to make pork chops,” and comes up with 20,000 varieties. He picks one at random with an unusual combination of flavors and prints it up. Then he’s off to the store to get what he needs. He does this every day!

On the rare occasion when I cook, maybe six times a year, people are amazed that I know what I’m doing. But that's because I cook, in my mind, all the time. I subscribe to Fine Cooking and read all the articles each month. I check cookbooks out of the library and swoon over the pictures. I can’t imagine cooking something off the internet. How do you know what it will look like?

When we are having guests for dinner, often I will pull out some recipe that I’ve been hording and ask Brad to make it. It’s a good compromise for us, he gets to cook without agonizing over what to make. We decide on the complete menu together, so we're both happy with it.