How we went from eating in to eating well. (First of three posts)

So, just to be up front about it, as a couple we ate out quite a bit.  By that I mean that going out 2-3 times a week didn’t seem like much. 

Yes, we cook at home, meaning both of us together in the kitchen.  Both cooking, both cleaning up, both eating everything we cooked.  One of us has discovered that this was the key.  We both ate the successes and the failures.  When there were failures ( some spectacular! ) we ate it anyway, and always laughed about it.  Our inside joke is “Catastophic fail!”  and others look at us funny when we say that to each other, but we laugh.

First, we make dinner enjoyable and food is fun for us.  Maybe that’s why we don’t need any other entertainment at the table.  We have no TV’s, no screen devices what so ever, no giant sheaf of paper with vast amounts of editing going on, neither work nor toys at the table.  (Bunny, by the way is not a toy, he’s a companion.  Looking back on this, he should have had his napkin in his lap.) We are evidently ridiculous enough to be our own entertainment.

Then we started to shop a little differently, enjoy some new flavors, and were able to have dinner ready with better speed.  We had stumbled across, or dredged up from family memories, some cooking skills.  But we not necessarily skilled at cooking.

 “Why do you mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients, and then combine the two?”

“ You just do , it’s the dry wet thing….”

And this was a screwed up conversation about making vindaloo paste! A complete misappropriation of buried dusty baking memories. 

Along the way however, dinner when it wasn’t vindaloo was getting to the table fast, and Faster (thank you Ludwig Bemmelmas)

We also noticed a change in how we ordered in restaurants.  Yes, we still ate out every weekend, and once during the week also.  Looking back, I’m surprised that learning to cook a bit better didn’t change the number of times we ate out.  I can’t say that eating out less was our intent either, so perhaps this steady habit is not a shock.   Instead, it did change the way we decided what to order, and that was unexpected.