SOL Day 5: Cooking

I'm not a good cook. I don't enjoy cooking. There are a few basic dishes that I can make for dinner, but for the most part my expertise ranges from casseroles to hot dogs and macaroni and cheese; a child's idea of gourmet. I used to like to bake, but I'm pretty limited to cakes. The one thing I do like making is appetizers. If you told me I could make dinner out of just a bunch of appetizers every night, I'd be all set. I thrive on New Year's Eve when we have a family get-together at our house and I prepare a buffet of appetizers. Other than that, I'm pretty hopeless in the kitchen. I cringe whenever we have a potluck at school or there is a sign-up to provide meals for someone. Not because I don't want to help. I just don't want to inflict the pain of my cooking on them.

I am fortunate however, because I married a man who enjoys cooking. Kevin likes to experiment with cooking. He is not afraid to stray from a recipe. He's even been known to open the pantry, survey the contents, and create a fantastic meal from whatever he finds inside. He truly does like it. He isn't one to browse Pinterest looking for a great recipe, but he is familiar with some other recipe sites on the internet. (I, of course, have a huge board of recipes on Pinterest that I can only dream of preparing some day.) He cooks, I dish it up and then put away the leftovers. It's a great system.

Now that our boys are getting older, he wants them to learn to cook too. We don't want them to grow up to be men who can only make frozen dinners, macaroni and cheese, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for themselves. He first started showing our oldest son how to cook. Liam was interested at first, but when his dad got a little too "instructive" for his tastes, he kind of bowed out. Now, our middle son has expressed an interest in learning to cook. I think Ben may stay with it a little longer than Liam did. For dinner tonight, Ben is helping his dad cook spaghetti. I will gladly handle some of the other tasks around the house and let the men do the cooking.