Lilac Colored Glasses

When I first moved in with CB here in the lovely city of Gent, we often split cooking detail. Every other day one of us picked a dish we wanted to try and the other person happily helped prepare it.
Aww, sweet, no?
Now, about five months later, with CB working on his doctorate, teaching psychology labs, giving exams and working on house construction with CabanaDad most weekends and some evenings, I have pretty much taken up the mantle of meal planner, supper preparer, and food gatherer. Don’t get me wrong, CB still makes dinner (last night he made sauteed salmon steaks, steamed asparagus roasted with cherry tomatoes, black olives and eggplant on brown rice…YUM), I just tend to make it more often. Which leads me to my latest dilema, how the friggity frack do moms/wives plan meals every single day?! Seriously, I want us to eat healthy and also with variation so as not to get bored or start snacking just for different tastes but it doesn’t take me long to totally run out of ideas for suppertime.

As a single person I never did a ton of cooking. If I had to impress a guy I could do basic marinated chicken or grilled salmon with a canned veggie like green beans that I could toss some slivered almonds in and a side of rice. And of course I could do any of those premade casseroles, tacos, hamburger helper, etc. But that’s basically all there was to my repertoire. On top of that, as I’ve previously stated, I’m a creature of habit, so it’s not a big deal for me to eat pretty much the same thing for a week. I still do that now for other meals. My breakfast is usually a piece of fruit and/or scrambled eggs (drinkable yogurt when I don’t have time to sit down), my lunch is typically some form of vegetable soup (I’m not huge on salads…I’ll eat one if you put it in front of me, but make one for myself? nah) and some chicken or turkey slices. If I snack it’s most likely on a piece of cheese or fruit, or a handful of unsalted nuts. And really, if I showed you the food journal I’ve been keeping the past week or two, you’d see I’m not lying, that’s really pretty much exactly what I eat every single day. Needless to say, coming up with a different meal every day has become rather trying. I attempted to illicit some input from CB by asking him before he went to work, if there was something he wanted for dinner. Every single time he answered me with, “Whatever you make is fine.”*

Well that doesn’t help much, now does it.

So finally the other night I said something along the lines of,”how the friggity frack do moms/wives plan meals every single day?!”
CB looked at me kindly and said, “If you run out of ideas I can suggest some things to cook.”
To which I replied testily,”I’ve been asking you to do that every day and you always say that whatever I make is fine!”
“Oh,” he said, “I misunderstood. I thought you wanted to make something that I liked.”

Heh, silly silly man…assuming I was asking because I actually wanted to make something that he liked. He could’ve said “Hot snot over a bed of poached planaria” and I would’ve given it some consideration (the snot I got…planaria I might have to special order…).
But anyway, I’ve sort of taken this as a new challenge, the finding new things to try for dinner. Last night was honey mint glazed grilled chicken and caulifower puree. Any suggestions from the devoted peanut gallery?

*We won’t talk about earlier this week when CB got a headache, told me he was craving something unhealthy like fries. I recomended the compromise of going to the Turkish grill around the corner but he said his headache was bad enough that he didn’t want to go out for food. So I went and made quinoa pilaf, roasted eggplant and sauteed shrimp. He came down, looking like death, ate the shrimp and went back upstairs, leaving the rest. Two hours later after sleeping off the headache he ignored the plate I’d saved in the fridge and went out for fries instead.