Sunday, July 20, 2008

My Favorite Meal

When Dennis goes out of town we always joke that I am going to eat icing and wine for dinner. I am sad to say that yes, I have had those two items for dinner when he was out of town, but I don't do it too often. I must admit, though, if I was ever in prison and had to choose my last meal...it would probably be icing and a glass of wine.

Every single one of my friends knows that I am a sucker for icing. Cake icing. Cupcake icing. Icing right out of the container. Homemade icing. I will happily scrape the icing off of just about anything. The cake isn't all that important - the icing is what counts.

Dennis is going on a Austin, TX for several days for a meeting. Earlier today he asked me a very good question: "What are you going to eat while I'm out of town?"

Without much thought, I replied, "turkey sandwiches".

"Do you realize that isn't normal? It isn't normal to have turkey sandwiches for 5 nights in a row. It's also not normal to have wine and icing as a meal."

"I wasn't going to eat just wine and icing for dinner... there would probably be a turkey sandwich before that."

I smiled and we both laughed but I came to an important realization: I need to learn how to cook. Don't get me wrong, I mean, Dennis and I have a wide variety of meals during the average week: grilled chicken, canned vegetables, shake-n-bake chicken or pork, grilled hamburgers, this 3 ingredient meal with chicken, rice & chicken broth, and don't forget the turkey sandwiches. Wait - we do go get Mexican food on Friday nights. And, oh yeah, the other night I decided to make blueberry pancakes for dinner. And margaritas. Add that to the list.

So, my new job in life is to branch out and learn to cook. I will expand outside of our long list of routine meals. Maybe I'll try something besides chicken.

The frustration that I have with most of the cookbooks is that they have TONS of ingredients. And, most of them are things that I've never seen before, much less know where to find in the grocery store. If I haven't seen them in the grocery store, I definitely don't have them in my pantry. So, I need to find easy to prepare meals with no more than 10 ingredients. That is going to be my focus atleast a few nights while Dennis is out of town. Who knows - he may return from his trip and find a new, cooking-crazed wife waiting for him. Probably not, but at least I can try a few new things. I'll see if Kelly wants to come over this week and try some of my fancy meals. Maybe I'll fix her a meal from the back of the Bisquick box.

This is a committment that I am taking very seriously. To prove it, after Dennis and I had our conversation about me needing to learn to cook, I went to http://www.bettycrocker.com/ and signed up for a weekly e-newsletter on easy-to-prepare meals. Now, if that isn't dedication, I don't want what is.

10 comments:

Katie said...

Krista, this sounds like a lot of fun. Good luck. I used to love to cook and did it alot more before the rugrats. I have a cookbook called 15 minute meals with 5 ingrediants (or something like that). I should send it to you b/c in my house these days if it is not microwavable....it does not get eaten. Oh and also Rachel Ray has some great recipies in her magazines.

Josh M. said...

Maya is an ever-growing whiz at this kind of stuff. Maybe we can have a double date where the womenfolk cook and the menfolk do something equally important like play Cornhole and drink beer.

Krista said...

Yes - let's do it! You know, though, Dennis doesn't "play" cornhole. He just "wins" cornhole.

Josh M. said...

Ooh, bitch, no you deden't - it's onnnnn.

Anonymous said...

Go to kraftfoods.com and subscribe to their free magazine. It's full of easy recipes and you can find easily everything in the grocery store. (because they want you to use KRAFT everything)

Yeah - cooking party!!

DAve said...

If you're really lucky, I'll teach you how to make goop. It's awesome. No, seriously. It's awesome.

Krista said...

These ideas are great! Goop? Sounds good. We can have a cook off - I can show you how I make "turkey blobs" and we can compare that to "goop".
Also, Julia emailed me and suggested allrecipes.com for good, easy-to-make meals. What did we do before the internet?

Anonymous said...

Don't believe Josh. He claims to like my cooking, but given the choice, he would prefer to eat turkey sandwiches every night. He also frequently requests that I make "Frito Pie" for him. No, I've never made it before.

Krista said...

maya, whatEVAH - you make a killer key lime pie! Frito pie... hmmm... haven't tried that one before!

Anonymous said...

Once you start cooking, it becomes your responsibility - they expect it, so maybe you should start slowly - maybe cook just once a week.