Monday, February 16, 2009

home cooked holidays

Amy decided that for Valentine's Day we should share a home-cooked meal rather than make reservations. “These fancy restaurants," she told me, "all raise their prices to take advantage of people on Valentine's Day."

I pointed out that the price of a Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast was the same on Valentine's Day as it was on any other day.

"We are not going to Denny's...and I for one refuse to fall prey to this type of blatant exploitation that nice restaurants employ,” she announced.

Though she really didn't mean 'I for one' but rather 'we for one'.

“Besides,” she continued, “I think it would be very romantic for the two of us to cook a meal together. It's very domestic, you know? They say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and if we're going to be together I want to make sure that you enjoy the type of things I can cook. So I'll come over to your place on Valentine's Day and bring all the ingredients that I'll need to make my eggplant parmesan.”

That Saturday, she arrived with a multitude of bags filled with pastas, sauces, and other foods that I had no idea even existed. She set all her bags down upon the counter, unpacked and, once ready to begin preparation of her masterpiece, looked over to me and asked where I kept my cooking ware.

I headed over to the far cabinet and pulled out a pot, a pan, and an old cookie sheet.

“Where do you keep all the others?” she asked.

“The other what?”

“All your other pots and pans...you do have other things to cook in, right?”

“Well, no,” I said. “I mean, I used to have a Tupperware bowl but it broke when I tried standing on it to change a light bulb. So this is now the entirety of my kitchen supply inventory.”

“You used a Tupperware bowl to change a light bulb?” she asked. “Why didn't you use a chair?”

“The bowl was right there...so instead of walking all the way over to the table to grab a chair and drag it into the kitchen, it just seemed...at the time, anyway...more practical. Besides, I thought that Tupperware was supposed to be unbreakable.”

She just rolled her eyes and stood thinking, with arms crossed, in the middle of my kitchen. Finally, she said, “I'm just not going to be able to make anything for us with one pot, one pan, and a cookie sheet. How in the world are you able to cook anything? What do you usually eat?”

So I revealed my culinary secret to her. Which is why, this Valentine's Day, we enjoyed a romantic dinner of Chinese take-out.

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