My Valentine doesn’t think I’ll be able to keep this up all month. He said soon I will have to start complaining about him. Well, I sure hope I don’t do that!
One of the things I really like about my husband is his willingness to eat a lot of different foods that I cook. He likes good ol’ meat, potatoes, and vegetable; stir-fries, stews, Moroccan Beef with Couscous, Asian foods, Italian foods, soups, sandwiches, salads, eggs and his all-time very favorite–cold cereal. He even willingly eats oatmeal. He isn’t a picky eater, and he does eat leftovers. I don’t have to make something entirely new and fresh each meal or else risk him running to Hardee’s. When I try a new recipe, he’s very willing to try it and we both evaluate it and decide if we ever want to make it again.
Andrew is willing to eat a lot of things, and he has made my life pretty easy in the cooking department by telling me what he won’t eat. That is zucchini or squash of any kind (no matter what it’s in or how well it might be disguised–and he has asked me not to “trick” him by hiding it in things. I have promised never to do that, and so he trusts my cooking.), cream cheese (except there is one casserole that he likes that has it in–and he eats it with full knowledge of the cream cheese in it), and aged food. If something is out of date, or starting to mold, or if it’s leftovers that have been in the refrigerator a week, they are to hit the trail, not the plate. So, I just don’t keep more leftovers in the refrigerator than we’ll eat in a few days (if I have more, I move them to the freezer). If I really want to make a stir-fry with zucchini or squash in, I know I’ll get to eat all of the zucchini and squash, and that’s o.k. And, since I love cream cheese, I use it for myself, but I don’t make dishes for him with them in. Pretty much everything else, he is willing to eat. Some things are raving favorites, and some things are just standard fare. We like to have our raving favorites often, but sometimes we just have some solid standard fare, and he’s content with that too.
Along the cooking line, Andrew has done an excellent job of teaching me how to make good pizza and good lasagna. Soon after we were married, he showed me how to make pizza. Not only is it the toppings (sausage, pepperoni, onions, peppers, mushrooms, black olives, sauce, and cheese), but you have to layer them just right. The brown and non-colorful things go under the cheese, and the pretty things (red pepperoni, green peppers, and black olives) go on top the cheese. Another thing that Andrew says makes a difference is sprinkling the dough with Parmesan cheese before putting on any of the toppings. The sauce is another important ingredient. I had been having him taste each batch of sauce to tell me when it was right as I added a little of this and that. Finally, I wrote down the ingredients and amounts of how he liked it, and I’ve been using that recipe to can up lots of pizza sauce in the summers. And we have excellent pizza around here! For the lasagna, the biggest difference he made to improve it (besides marrying me so we could eat it together!) was to have me add mushrooms and black olives to my existing lasagna recipe (which is one from my Grandmother). We have some really good lasagna around here too.
Andrew loves pizza very, very much. I think I could serve it 4-5 times a week and he’d be happy. He often helps me make it when I am making a turn of pizzas (usually 8 pizzas–to stock our freezer), helping put on the toppings, which can be time-consuming.
I’m really happy I married a man who likes lots of different and good foods.
This is Andrew making pizza back in the summer
of 2006. Doesn’t he look impressive?
