Life changes and French Onion Soup

I promise that I have been cooking. I haven't just stopped eating for the past three months. But we moved, and if you've ever moved, you know that it takes a long time to feel settled. First, there's the thinking and planning about moving, which includes planning out meals for a couple weeks so that you use what you have and don't have much left in your fridge the day before you ship out. Then there's the three day drive with the poor cat, who doesn't figure out until part way through day two that she's not going to die and meowing doesn't actually help very much. Then you move in, and you give away your empty moving boxes for free on Craigslist.

But even after your first trip to the grocery store to pick up dinner because you're starving and you need some of those new home essentials, it takes a little while to really get settled, physically and emotionally. I'm just now getting used to the idea that this is home, as we put in all the effort it takes to find our way around town and make new friends. And still do the meal planning and cooking. 

I've been experimenting in the last month or so with buying and eating less meat, for a variety of reasons: meat can be pricey, environmental impacts, health impacts, etc. We still buy and eat meat, because it's delicious, but what about all the other food out there that is amazing that I skipped over before just because meat is quick, easy and familiar? 

So I stocked my kitchen with lentils, beans, quinoa and other dried and canned goods. I've made a lot of soup and soupy things, with some seriously epic failures (one that I couldn't even eat, but my sweet (hungry) husband got it down AND ate the leftovers for lunch the next day). I'm enjoying the exploration, my new crock pot and food processor, and have had a lot of fun buying from the dry goods bulk section at the store. I've gotten most of my recipes from Forks Over Knives. 

My favourite thing that I've made in the past few weeks is French onion soup. I pulled from two different recipes and filled my ramekins and was thrilled with the result. I didn't even get weepy from cutting up six onions! And all the cheese? Amazing. So amazing, that the only photo I have to offer is an after photo. 

                                                 

Saturday night pizza

After returning from a short but satisfying backpacking trip, we were completely out of food at home. I had planned Monday through Wednesday so well that we didn't leave any perishables to - ahem - perish, while we were away. I realize now that even better planning would have included some sort of freezer item for dinner when we got back, but the lack of food forced me to go to the grocery store, which I would have hated to do tomorrow. Anyway.

I found and modified* a pizza recipe from Real Simple that I never tried when I was going through their month of recipes earlier in the year because I skip over pretty much anything that calls for mushrooms and am intimidated by the thought of working pizza dough. But beer and pizza sounded too good to pass up for a relaxing Saturday evening. I got one of those premade pizza dough thingies, added zucchini, bell pepper, marinara sauce, plenty of fresh grated mozzarella, avocado and egg. I added the egg a bit too late so it was still a little jiggly, but didn't taste terrible. Next time I'd just add it at the beginning, since it only takes about 12 minutes for the crust to bake and the cheese to melt, and I think the egg would be just about done by then. I liked that the pizza was meatless, but still really filling.

Pretty, pretty pizza!

*modified, v: 1) didn't follow the recipe; 2) messed up; 3) made it my own. 

I made pretty things!

Summer is still my favourite time of year: the epic thunder storms, the warm, long evenings, the summer brews. I have been cooking, but have been spending more time enjoying the evenings with my husband and friends. Tonight I'm making grilled flank steak with a honey dijon glaze, found here. 

Last night, I made a beautiful salad, that was filling, sweet, savory and full of colour! I loved every bite.

In this salad: baby greens, white beans, corn, strawberries, red bell pepper, carrots, avocado, feta cheese, topped with a balsamic dressing! Yum!

 And this afternoon I tried my hand at zucchini, banana, chocolate chip bread. I haven't tasted it yet, but I have to tell you, it's my first loaf that has successfully made it out of the baking pan in one piece!!! I am so excited about this that I don't even want to cut it. Okay, that's a blatant lie. I took the photo, time to eat!
Recipe status: Followed! Oh wait...I added chocolate chips instead of the called-for pecans. See the full recipe here!

Cooling on my porch railing, since I don't have an adorable cottage kitchen window to place it in.

One more thing, if you're interested in beer, even a little, check out and follow my friend Steph's budding blog at Small Pour Steph!

Summer!

Admittedly, I haven't been cooking anything very extravagant and I haven't been writing about it. I cooked something semi-exciting recently and then forgot to blog. Oops.

But it's summer! Schedules are wonky, cookouts start happening, and food has to be easy. For me, summer means salads. Vegetables are way more fun to buy in the summer, and it's avocado season, so what could be better?

If you have any favourite salad recipes or additions or dressings or must-try's, leave me a link or comment!

Looks like Southern Living has some great ideas.

Goat cheese

Goat cheese is amazing. I want it on everything.

Back up.

.......................

When I was 15, during my second year of high school, I was The Queen of the House of Norway in Balboa Park, San Diego. I don't think I ever completely understood the purpose of this, but I was asked so I did it. There are these cute cultural houses on the Prado in Balboa Park, near the San Diego Zoo and the Organ Pavillion, and my Norwegian grandmother got me involved in this girl's fraternal organization where "queens" and "princesses" would represent the houses from all the different countries and do service projects. I went to meetings early on Sunday mornings a couple times a month, and listened to the minutes and plans for the group. Yea, it was weird and confusing and sometimes the mom's who were there would argue loudly. But I wore a purple dress to the "coronation" (and a sweet crown that was real Norwegian silver) and never did much else except learn traditional dances and show up for some events in the park. Once I showed up to the big Norwegian Independence Day parade without the right shoes and got in trouble and had to wear my mom's shoes. I wore a bunad and waved a flag. I hope my parents didn't lose any money on this experience.

Anyway, the House of Norway itself is kinda cool. There's a picture of the King of Norway and he sends them letters sometimes. Every Sunday when the House is open, volunteers come in and host for a couple hours and make Norwegian waffles with jam and it's delicious and delightful.

But sometimes, they serve brunost.

Brunost is brown goat cheese. I haven't had it since I was young, but I remember it being awful and tasting like barf. Sorry, my Norwegian genes didn't overcome this one. Wikipedia says "It is often sold in the USA under the name Gjetost, which means goat cheese." So don't be fooled. It's a caramelized whey cheese, and it's brown. And old Norwegian ladies eat it on crackers that taste like cardboard. 

........................

This week, I made delicious chèvre and scrambled egg breakfast burritos. Oh my. I used the French goat cheese which is white, soft and crumbly, and sometimes has spices already mixed in it. I made this for breakfast two mornings in a row because it was so delicious. The cheese smeared on a warm tortilla and then loaded with soft eggs is a great way to start my day. I don't have any photos because there just wasn't time. 

So what I should have said at the beginning, I guess, is that I want chèvre on everything. 

Salmon with soy glaze

Thankfully, tonight's dinner turned out much better than Monday's. Nothing exploded! Nothing caught on fire! No ingredients were missed! Nothing stuck to a pan! Um...yea...

Minus all the gunk that husband is now cleaning out of the rice pot and off the baking sheet, everything turned out delicious. Once my hard-as-rock brown sugar was chipped away into the soy sauce for the fish glaze, everything came together. I've never actually broiled anything before, and I still don't have a good concept of what broiling actually does, but there's a setting for it on the oven, so I broiled the salmon, and apparently broiled the crap out of the onions that were on the baking sheet with it. The glaze was tasty (of course, there's a quarter cup of sugar in it) and it went well over the fish and broccoli and rice without overpowering either the fish or broccoli. It was a pretty simple dinner, still with good flavour, and got healthy fish into our diet for the day. The onions were almost completely black, so I could have done without those, or just kept them raw. I also probably should have loaded up on more broccoli (I think I didn't put in as much as the recipe called for), but I liked that I could just put it in with the rice for a few minutes and it cooked so quickly. Overall, we're happy and full.

See what I mean about the onions? We shared the fillet, and the pear was a tasty side!

Little kitty got some yummy salmon! Earlier this week, she discovered that she loves bacon, too. 

Wife, 0; Blender, 1

Last week I made some super boring enchiladas, but don't worry, I learned a lot. Then husband made some pretty boring stir fry, but it was better than the one he made before that. Then there was last night: corn chowder Monday.

Let me set the scene that husband came home to.

Him: *opens door* Hey! Oh...
He has the most incredibly concerned look on his face.

Me: bursts into tears of hysteria that I was trying to hold back before he walked in the door, but now cannot contain incomprehensible sobbing and crying.

Him: still with concerned look comes over to investigate, finds blender with top off, wife covered in corn chowder, corn bits spewed all over kitchen.

Me: still crying, but also realizing how ridiculous this is, I manage to spit out an apology for ruining dinner.

He: asks if I'm crying or laughing

Me: Both!

As I try to calm down from my hysterics, I explain that I am laughing and crying and that the recipe told me to blend half of the soup, but when I tried, my powerful blender exploded its top off (even though my hand was there!) and projected corn chowder ALL over the kitchen, most notably into the toaster and on my face. Lesson: don't spew hot soup all over your face; it isn't pleasant and you will let out a distinctive yelp before realizing you still have to turn the blender off!

Just a few minutes before all of this, I had sent husband a loving text telling him dinner was almost ready... April Fools!

Husband cleaned up my mess while I cleaned up my face and when we finally got to sit down to dinner, it was actually, dare I say, pretty tasty! I topped off the soup with bacon (which he was particularly excited about because I hardly ever cook it) and avocado, and had some whole wheat bread on the side.

All in all, a successful night. Good thing I followed the recipe this time.

Spaghetti squash

I found this awesome recipe today! I immediately did not follow it. Well, sort of. A little bit.

I rarely cook this squash. It's probably been over a year since I did it last, and I usually just sub it for pasta and put ground meat and sauce on it. But I decided that was boring, so I went to the interwebs for inspiration, as usual.

I like the recipe, basically a warm spaghetti squash salad/stir fry. A salad fry, if you will. Maybe not. That sounds kinda icky.

Anyway, I baked the squash, and followed the recipe until "add garlic." Then I added kale, tomato and orange bell pepper to the pan, before mixing it all together and sprinkling feta chees on top. It was a rainbow in a bowl! I think I should have either added more garlic or some other spices. I like the Italian style of the original recipe, but I don't love olives and I forgot to buy basil. I think spicing up the squash would have been good, since it's basically just bland fiber. Maybe a sauce or a dressing would have helped, but that also would have made it way less healthy. Any suggestions on how to keep this a super healthy dish while spicing it up?

Shepherd's pie

I've only had this dish in my adult life. My mom never made it, and I think it's probably a mid-Western thing, so I only recently added it to my dinner experiences. Yesterday, I decided to actually make it for the first time. I had a thawed pound of turkey meat in the fridge and didn't want to make pasta or turkey burgers again so I searched for other recipes that use ground turkey and decided on the "pie."

But, naturally, I didn't have the right ingredients for the recipe I found. It called for ground beef, first off, but no big deal. I normally sub turkey meat for things. I had most of the other ingredients, except beef bullion granules. "That can't be good," I thought to myself. When I finally found them at the store and read the ingredients list on the back, I couldn't bring myself to buy them. I don't know if they're necessarily bad for you, but it just didn't look quite right. So I didn't get them and ran the risk of ruining dinner. But I had organic chicken broth at home and figured I could just add that for moisture and flavour.

I also went the "hard" route and decided to make the potato topping from scratch instead of using instant potatoes. But when I pulled out my bag of potatoes, I saw that they had all gone soft and started to sprout. Thankfully, I had two sweet potatoes on hand. I also decided it was weird that the potato recipe called for adding in carrots and cheese. So instead, I added the carrots to the meat mixture and put the cheese on top of the sweet potatoes.

The whole thing was relatively easy! Beyond the turkey meat, I followed the pie recipe, and I'm pretty sure that for a potato topping you can do whatever you want. I liked the flavour that the sweet potatoes added to the dish, because normal potatoes are pretty bland. And I just used the chicken broth here and there to keep the meat moist while cooking. I baked it at 400 degrees for 15 minutes and voila! (I'm not exactly meeting my slow cooking goal this month, by the way, but I'll keep trying!)

It could be worse

A friend posted this BuzzFeed article, 37 People Who Are Worse At Cooking Than You. I feel much better about myself today. (I love BuzzFeed for these kinds of lists they put together, especially ones about happy corgis.)

Valentines Day dinner

Last night, our house menu included: balsamic glazed roasted beets; mashed sweet potatoes with maple syrup; pork chops with blackberry port sauce; fresh cucumber salad; wine; and chèvre stuffed in raspberries for dessert.  

Beets ready to roast!

I started the beets early, and I'd say that part counts toward my goal of cooking slower, because beets take forever to roast. Then I stuffed the raspberries and put them in the fridge. Since hubby wanted to cook with me, I waited until he got home to start the rest. We got the sweet potatoes going, and then he started on the pork. He did such a great job making the sauce, and I think the pork was my favourite part of the meal! I used a quick dressing for the cucumber salad. We also had Tilia malbec wine. 

Our supermarket didn't have blackberry juice, so I bought a blend, but saw later that the pork sauce recipe recommends blueberry juice if blackberry isn't available. I don't think it mattered too much. The sweet potatoes added a Thanksgiving feel to the meal and were so delicious. I didn't put very much maple syrup in, but I think that can be added until desired preference is reached. 

Delicious!

The only part that we didn't perfect was the balsamic glaze for the beets. We either had it too hot or left it on too long because it turned into balsamic rock candy immediately after we poured it over the beets and it cooled. So, unfortunately, not much of it made it onto the beets. Good thing beets are delicious on their own! 

A display in honor of the day. 

We made the biggest mess our kitchen has ever seen, I think, and it was totally worth it (even the rock candy stuck to our pans). We've decided that port, onions and berries are some of our favourite foods. I'm so thankful for a great meal and a sweet, foodie, adventurous husband to share my life and love! 

Wine and candles to set the mood!

The opposite of slow

Tonight's dinner was happily thrown together. After a lovely meeting at Southern Sun with a friend of mine for Stout Month, I was a little late for dinner. But my husband, awesome as he is, got it started while I was on my way home. I had queued up rice, asparagus and salmon, so I already had a plan...sort of.

Growing up, my favourite meal was barbecued salmon, a fresh salad with avocado, and fresh baked sourdough bread. I would spread butter and smash avocado on the bread, and smear ranch dressing from my salad all over my salmon. My mom really knew how to barbeque salmon and cooking it that way basically meant that no extra seasoning was required. Or maybe she just didn't want to and since the family was satisfied, why change it? Whatever. It is seriously delicious that way.

But we don't have a barbecue or grill, so we don't have a way to get that excellent smoky flavour into our fish. On my drive home I realized baked salmon was going to be pretty boring if I didn't use my spice rack. A quick search for "basic salmon recipe" saved the day. I found this blackened salmon recipe from Real Simple (without even trying to get something from there again) and whipped it together while hubby worked on the rice and asparagus.

Blackened salmon sounds so fancy. But what I learned tonight is that "blackened" is really just searing the spices (which produced a lot of cayenne pepper smoke in my kitchen and had us both in coughing fits) until the fish is black on the outside. I baked the salmon about 5 minutes longer than called for, since it was still pink when I checked it after 8 minutes. Maybe my fillets were a bit thick.

Blackened salmon = blackened pan. 

So minus the part where I didn't meet my cooking slow goal at all tonight, dinner turned out great! The salmon had a kick to it, but the seasoning mix didn't overpower the fish flavour. We put just a little zesty orange sauce on the rice, which complimented the spices, and dressed up the asparagus with lemon pepper. I'm pretty darn pleased with our result. I don't even think my pre-dinner stout is clouding my opinion.

A pretty picture of asparagus. 

Dinner is served! Delicious and healthy! 

2013 - The year I become a foodie

In 2012, I graduated with my Master's degree, ran an half marathon and got married. Kind of a big year! This year, my goal is to learn le art of cooking! In January, I did pretty well following quick, fairly basic recipes. Granted, nothing came out perfect, but we didn't starve, or lose any weight for that matter. But I'm already jonesin' for some more complicated stuff.  I think I've discovered that all these quick recipes which have your oven on 425 for just 30 minutes might not actually be doing justice to the food I'm cooking. Yea, dinner comes out edible, but there's got to be something more! I received the Colorado Cache cookbook for my bridal shower and I want to get into it, but it's incredibly intimidating. I might not be ready for that level yet. My goal* this month is even more meal planning and slower cooking. (Yikes!) I feel like there's a smart way and a dumb way to do this, though. I'm still not skilled enough to know which corners to cut, and where to never skimp. So, if you have any tips or tricks, leave a comment! I'll start featuring awesome, helpful comments!
*This goal may be modified weekly or even daily.

To help me out, I searched for some things cooks should know. I am pretty sure I literally typed in "things cooks should know." Here are two (out of 575,000,000 results).

10 Things Every Cook Should Know

Top Ten Things Every Budding Foodie Should Know

Also, I had a week off from real cooking because my husband was out of town and I've had that cold that's been going around so cooking wasn't very important to me. I did other domestic things like cleaning and laundry, though, so don't think I'm slacking!

Around the world

This week I've made a curry dish and enchiladas. As usual, I didn't use the called-for ingredients, but got pretty much the same result. Pretty much.

For the curry dish, I had difficulty finding red lentils. None of the lentils at the store looked red. They were reddish greenish and I'm pretty sure they were actually green lentils. But apparently there are several kinds of lentils, so I just grabbed what was available. I had never used fresh ginger before, and was pleasantly surprised by the experience. (The butternut squash residue has left my hands, but I replaced it with the strong smell of ginger for a night.) I had a couple of red potatoes left over from last week, so I used those instead of a russet potato. The only problem was that I didn't cut up the potato into small enough chunks. Next time. I really liked how soggy, for lack of a better word, the carrots got with the curry flavor. For future reference, curry stains things. Like my counter and wooden spoons. Oops.

                                     
    I think I had the most fun putting all my ingredients in little prep bowls that a friend of mine hand painted!

Someday when I am more skilled at baking (ha. ha.) I should learn how to make naan, but for now, it was store bought. I would rate the final dinner at about a 7.5/10. We both enjoyed it and were definitely filled!

                                             So fancy with scallion greens!

Tonight I made basic enchiladas. (Si, se puede!) Unfortunately I don't have any photos of it, but they turned out pretty well. My only disappointment is that the enchilada sauce I bought smelled cheap - like spicy Spaggetti-O sauce. Does anyone know where I can get some nicer enchilada sauce or have a recommendation for how to make my own? What is your favorite ingredient for enchiladas? I had ground beef, black beans and onions in mine! Tasty!

Butternut Squash and Tortellini and ?

Did you know that butternut squash leaves a creepy residue on your hands that can really freak you out before you search "butternut squash residue" online? Neither did I! But I do now and the "F" key on my keyboard is getting infected as I type, even though I have scrubbed my fingers with mineral oil trying to get it off. I didn't notice it until my hands started to dry and my skin felt tight. I thought, like others, that I was having an allergic reaction, and that I wouldn't be able to eat my dinner, but I've had butternut risotto before, so to the interwebs I went! Lo and behold, other people were complaining of the same and offering their advice on how to get rid of the residue, which I still haven't completely done. But this will be a strange reminder in the morning of tonight's dinner.

I picked another recipe from Real Simple and, as usual, modified it to my tastes. I can't stand mushrooms, so I looked up veggies that will cook similarly to mushroom, and decided on broccoli when I couldn't find any similar veggies that I liked. I think it would have worked if the head of broccoli I had was a little fresher. So the broccoli was a bust, in the end, and took away the green from dinner. Sigh.

I did manage to find some gruyere cheese, which was new to me, and probably helped the meal a lot. My squash wasn't quite ripe. How do you pick a ripe squash anyway? I should have asked the internet beforehand. But that just meant I had to cook it a little bit longer, and the flavor wasn't bad. The tortellini turned out just fine, thanks to package directions. Overall, I'd rate this meal as boring. I knew about half way through cooking it that it needed something more, I just didn't know what! So I cracked open a beer and called it lost. But it fed us, and I wasn't too disappointed in what was there, just disappointed in what I should have done, and I still don't know what that is! Any suggestions?

I'd also like to point out that my husband fended for himself for a dinner this week and made this awesome stirfry that I got to have for lunch the next day:

                                             With hoisin sauce!

And, just to make this post worth reading, here's adorable picture of my cat. I think she's smiling, don't you?

                                           Meow! I like food!

A Tale of Two Dinners

So far, I haven't burned anything this week! Hooray! I've also figured out how to use my small stainless steal pan to cook eggs without having a stuck-on, hard-to-clean mess to scrub off. That was actually pretty exciting!

But after Sunday's chorizo-stuffed acorn squash, I had plenty of chorizo left over. But my poor Northern husband is about as welcoming to spice as my cat is to any dog. (That is, she loathes them.) I will give him credit though: after I had smothered the chorizo in sour cream and hidden it with cucumber, tomato, arugula, a tortilla, and more sour cream, he did all right and ate those tacos like a champ. On the other hand, I love spicy food to the point where I have to blow my nose every couple of minutes when we get Thai take out. My native-California self misses Mexican food like crazy, though, so making tacos was probably more of a treat than I realized. I loved the chorizo with the cooling cucumber. I also used dubliner cheese, instead of more traditional cheddar.

(And I may as well state here, that unless otherwise indicated, photo credit goes to my husband, who apparently likes the pre-dinner photo shoots.)

                                            Yum! Tacos!

Tonight, I tried steak with cognac sauce, another recipe I found on Real Simple. I was so excited about this one. I mean, when I hear "any-kind-of-alcohol + sauce," I think, yay! more alcohol! Kidding, but usually, that means it's gonna be something special. Well, maybe I did it wrong, but this sauce had pretty much nothing to it! Maybe an experienced chef would have known that from just looking at the recipe; or maybe it really depends on the cognac you buy; or maybe you really do need heavy cream at 40% milk fat, instead of the 30% milk fat cream that I used. I mean, it could have been anything, but I was pretty disappointed in the flavor - or the lack thereof. The salad was simple and good, and the red potatoes I baked with basil and garlic were also tasty. I think that next time I would make a port-reduction sauce of some kind instead,  hoping for fuller flavor, and I'm determined to go on a sauce recipe hunt! Other than that, I could have cooked the strip steak a bit longer, and perhaps I should try a marinade next time to help keep it a bit more moist.

                                             Pouring the sauce on the steak.

So while this didn't turn out perfectly, isn't that a great picture? Live and learn!

Dinner: Chorizo-stuffed acorn squash

So, I have to give credit where credit is due. Real Simple magazine and their website have more or less saved my first few weeks at home with the new hubby. If you need help, too, check out: http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/recipe-collections-favorites/month-of-dinner-recipes/

When I first picked up the magazine with "Month of Dinners" on its cover, I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I felt deep in my bones that it was going to be important for my up-coming domestic life.

But giving me a list of ingredients is about as good an idea as giving my cat a ball of string. She will probably strangle herself, and I will feel like strangling my husband. After I edited and simplified each of the recipes for the week suggested by Real Simple, taking out ingredients that I don't like, or he doesn't like, or that just sounded too strange, we headed to our local supermarket, where we had to purchase crazy sauces and vinegars (considered "basic" by the magazine) and all the other actual food bits. If the grocer was out of something, I had to improvise on the spot! Can you imagine my fledgling inner chef's mental gymnastics!? This is where I picked out basil instead of the called-for parsley, and instead of cooking collards as a side for one dish, decided artichokes would be more fun.

But on to the chorizo. The recipe called for cured chorizo, chopped. The guy at the meat counter didn't know what cured chorizo was. So we just found some chorizo. Turns out, cured chorizo is hard sausage (I think...still not sure). But I bought regular ground chorizo. And basil. So tonight while I was half-grieving over whether or not we would have something eatable for dinner, hoping I hadn't absentmindedly reset the timer on the acorn squash to cook the bulgur (yea, didn't know what that was until a week ago), and doing the math wrong and putting two times as much cheese in (not that that is a bad thing!), I was in slight panic mode.

But I cooked those acorn squash and Bam! Dinner. 

                                          Hubby approved! Photo credit to him.

You can see the original recipe here. My only real (however accidental) changes were the fresh chorizo (which I cooked through before adding it to the bulgur/cheese mix) and chopped basil instead of parsley.

You're doing it wrong...

A year or two ago, I was at home, attempting to bake something. Probably banana bread. I was chatting online with one of my roommates, who was a work, and who happens to be a whiz at baking (or maybe she just knows how to read a recipe). I can't find the chat in my history, but it went something like this:

me: Ugh, I don't have any baking soda. Do you have any?
her: I dunno, you can check.
me: I don't see any.
me: I'll just use baking powder.
her: what? you can't do that...

This solidified my reputation as the worst baker and cook in the house, and gave my roommates hours of entertainment. I know now that baking is chemistry, so the difference between baking soda and baking powder is a big deal. Incidentally, I'm also terrible at chemistry. I haven't really baked since.

But cooking is more of a necessity, and you can do that pretty minimally. Sometimes all it meant was making a baked sweet potato and calling it a night. I never starved or anything. But I recently got married and I have this other person who will likely starve if I don't make dinner consistently.

Unfortunately for both of us, this requires a bit of work. It means going to the store and buying a full week's worth of ingredients. I know this is, like, normal for people. But then you have to know what to do with the ingredients. And before all of this, you have to look up recipes so you know what to buy and what you're gonna cook. It's like writing an essay where you have to know what your paper is going to say before you write it! Except I like writing essays. 

Again, these are all normal things. I'm just bad at them. I have the unique talent of buying the wrong thing for the recipe, or something slightly different than what the recipe calls for (sometimes this is on purpose, because basil is sorta like parsley, right? *and all the real cooks fainted!*). So then I have these ingredients, but they don't exactly match the recipe. So I improvise. And that's where the adventure really begins.