God Bless That Man!

I love my husband.  He’s the most wonderful, supportive and loving person I’ve ever known.  And I know he loves me if for no other reason than his enormous patience. 

When Keith and I married, I didn’t cook.  I knew how to cook (following a detailed recipe to the “T”) but just thought it was a big ole’ waste of time.  A few months into our marriage, I decided I wanted to make him a delicious dinner.  So many people gave me cookbooks as a wedding present (including Keith ) so I figured they must be trying to tell me something.

So I pulled out the cookbook with the most interesting cover, best colors and pictures throughout and decided that would be the day I’d cook for my honey.  The cookbook I chose…drumroll please…Emeril Lagasse’s, “From Emeril’s Kitchen.”  Couldn’t I have at least started off with the Betty Crocker book someone bought me?

Of course not, because I love a good challenge.  Which is also the reason I didn’t choose something simple like roasted chicken.  I had to try the Lamb & Feta Cheese Lasagna recipe.  Really?  Out of all the recipes to choose from I pick one that involves lightly roasted pine nuts, freshly chopped rosemary and oregano leaves and something I’d never heard of before that day, prosciutto.

So let me tell you how my cooking adventure went that day.  I got up with all the excitement in the world and pulled out Emeril’s cookbook.  I created my grocery list and headed to Gelson’s supermarket.

Tomato paste.  Check.  1 1/2 pounds of lamb.  Check.  1 pound of lasagna noodles.  Check.  1 pound of ricotta cheese and 6 ounces of feta cheese.  Check, check.  I was feeling good until I realized there were certain things on the list I simply couldn’t find at Gelson’s like the prosciutto.

So I headed to the second store, Vons, and continued my shopping.  Why couldn’t I find prosciutto there either?  Nowhere in the fresh produce section was prosciutto to be found (okay, stop laughing at me).  And why could I not find fresh rosemary or oregano leaves in the seasonings section?

Finally, I purchased all the groceries I could find and headed home to take inventory of what I still didn’t have.  28-ounce can of diced tomatoes in their juices.  Check.  Oh, wait…why does the recipe also call for a 14-ounce can of diced tomatoes?  Didn’t see that one.  But why didn’t the recipe just say I needed 42-ounces of diced tomatoes.  I was already starting not to like cooking and I hadn’t even fired up the oven yet.

But I wasn’t going to let anything keep me from preparing this special dinner I set out to make for my hubby, so I returned to the store — for the third time — to pick up the remaining items on my list.  Up and down the produce isle looking for the prosciutto, I finally broke down and asked the produce man where I could find it.  Looking a bit baffled he said, “Ma’am, the proscuitto is in the deli section.”  What would it be doing in the deli section, I thought to myself.

Ah ha!  Prosciutto is a meat not a vegetable.  Okay, one problem solved.  Now, about those lightly toasted pine nuts and fresh rosemary and oregano leaves.  After realizing the fresh leaves were in the produce section (not the seasoning isle) and the pine nuts would have to be purchased untoasted, I finally had everything I needed to begin cooking.

By now, it’s in the middle of the day and I’ve been shopping for ingredients in this one recipe for several hours.  So I begin to prep.  First, I needed to determine how to toast the pine nuts since that wasn’t in the recipe.  Do I put them in the oven or the skillet?  I decided toasting sounded like something I could do easily in a skillet.

Chopped the fresh leaves, cooked the lamb, boiled the noodles and began to pull everything together.  Somewhere in the midst of all this, Keith called to see how my day was going and boy did I give him an earful.  Not only did it take me three trips to the grocery store but now that I’ve prepped the food, there are literally pots, pans and dirty chopping boards all over the kitchen.  What a mess! 

Keith could hear the discouragement and frustration in my voice so he gave me a gentle “I love you” and I got back to cooking.  After an hour or so of prepping came the moment of triumph.  I could finally layer all the ingredients into the 9″ square glass pan and exclaim “Victory!”  Then I looked at the dish and thought, “All that for this tiny amount of food?” 

Nonetheless, I was finally done and could put the lasagna into the preheated oven (at least I knew how to preheat an oven ) for 50 minutes.  Halfway through the baking, and in the middle of me cleaning two sinks full of dishes, Keith returned home with a beautiful bouquet of white roses.  I thought, “God bless that man!”

The end of the story is the lasagna came out and was one of the tastiest either of us have had and it all seemed worth it.  Sort of.  Keith swears that experience traumatized me because it took me another 5 years or so to even attempt to make another recipe and even then I’d make the same recipe over and over and over again.

When my sisters and I were growing up, my mom was similar in that she only cooked a few meals.  Oddly enough, Keith’s mom was the exact same way.  Now, both my mom and his mom are two of the best cooks around but neither of them really learned to cook until we were grown.  Thus, I never found cooking to be important.  The funny thing is once my mom learned to cook, she wrote a book entitled, ”God is in the Kitchen Too,” containing all of her favorite recipes.

Almost eight years after my first adventure into cooking for my new husband, I’ve probably cooked eight times (I know, I know) and although Keith teases me about it, he’s never made it a big deal.  Which is why I want to do something special and begin cooking for him on a weekly basis.  But I need your help!

I need really tasty recipes that don’t involve toasting or roasting anything in advance, no chopping fresh leaves and a simple recipe to follow.  Prep time and the ingredient list have to both be extremely short.  So I’m asking all of the readers of this blog to help me fall in love with cooking (or at least to like it a little more).

Do you have a recipe your family absolutely raves about but is so simple to make it astonishes you how much they love it?  Great!  That’s the recipe I’m looking for .  I’m hosting a contest over the next two weeks.  If you’ll send me your recipe, you’ll be automatically entered to win a $25 gift card of your choice for Starbucks, Barnes & Noble or Amazon.  The drawing is completely random, automated and done through a third party site.  Just post your recipe here in the comments section and then click on this link to enter your full name and email address so I can contact you in two weeks if you’re the winner.

I’m so stoked about this.  After 8 years of takeout, I’m going to battle the kitchen again but this time I’m determined to win!

Until tomorrow…make it a great day!