CoupleMemes

As my life has progressed, there is a growing list of restaurant genres that I no longer visit, because I can make it so much better at home.

For instance, Italian. Italian restaurants tend to be very expensive, and I am nearly always disappointed, because I can probably make anything they offer better than they can. So why spend a lot of money for mediocre food, when I know how cheap it really costs, and how easy it is to prepare (generally)?

On the other hand, I am not in a place where I could easily smoke meat, so I have become a connoisseur of BBQ, because I can't do that myself.

But expensive burgers? I can make a first rate, hand-pressed burger on a George Foreman grill in a few minutes, and incredible fresh cut fries in the air fryer (lightly dusted with garlic powder, rosemary, and coarse ground salt & pepper) for a fraction of the cost of going out. Spend the money on great buns, good cheese, sauteed fresh mushrooms, and thick cut bacon, and have the burger of your life, and it will cost a quarter of going out.

And I can watch a great movie while I'm eating.

Ah, the lasagna problem. My lasagna is better than the restaurants, but then I would have to put in the time to make a lasagna.

Learning to recreate (and even improve) a restaurant dish is such a great feeling

If genuine kindness and support is a “mind trick” then trick me, baby.

We were in a fancy restaurant and my partner leaned over to me and said mine is better. I also like cooking which probably helps.

And that's how he jedi-mind tricked you into not wasting so much money eating out. $65 for two burgers is daylight robbery.

One of my exes told me all the time, that the meals are missing some salt (literally telling me "all the time you add too few salt, even while I almost oversaturated the meal, just for her), the steak is not "done" enough, fished out all kinds of vegetables... Then she took the salt, goes to the kitchen and cooked the meat again or something else... I find it kind of rude being like that, tbh.

65 dollars on 2 burger fries combos??

Idk guys my ex wife basically acted like she was the only person who was capable of preparing meals other than breakfast, and I was young and just kinda accepted it. She always acted incredibly skeptical and negative toward me if I suggested making dinner.

After we divorced I had to learn to cook and got pretty good at it. My current wife appreciates my cooking and I cook just as much if not more than she does. None of my kids have died due to anything I cooked them, although you'd think they came pretty close by the way they act sometimes, especially when I was vegan.

It is a special thing to be skilled in the kitchen.

Whenever I get (genuine) compliments and appreciation for something I've turned out, my gut reaction is to go "hey, no problem, it's whatever, nothing special -- literally anyone can make it like this with really basic instructions and stuff -- it's easy!"

I always have to remind myself that, while I was raised with humility as a virtue, that's not necessarily the whole story - that I took an interest in food very early, am going on two decades cooking most of my own meals, am always experimenting in the kitchen, hunting (literally, sometimes) for new ingredients, acquiring new equipment and techniques, just constantly deepening in this area. It connects me to my surroundings, my forebears, my own body, the land, and (while it confuses militant vegans everywhere when I express this) the animals who walk/swim/fly on that land, who nourish us in return for our stewardship. People are attracted to this even if they might not know what exactly it is. it's ineffable, a thru-line all the way back to the heart of human-kind.

I have to remind myself that it's not particularly normal to spend hours holding produce and reading labels whenever I find a cool new store. Or, for that matter, to spend five years of one's life as a manager at an indie natural foods store with "immersion in the local food scene" as the primary goal. I didn't give a flying fuck about our EBITDA on a given day, or how much cash was in your drawer that night, but I sure did pretend well enough.

Truth is, I just wanted to move myself up the literal food chain -- quite literally lmao -- to get closer to the source. I enjoyed knowing what was going on before your average Joe, knowing where the trends were going, where the struggles and opportunities lay, who the up and coming producers were. Going out to farms, and to meet vendors and get nerdy and technical with my people about something we were all passionate about. (I did also just need a job, tbf.) And, guess what, EBITDA was fucking great; exceeded expectations because people are moved by passion and will buy things.

If you've read this far, cheers. I didn't, and don't, do all that because of some ambition. I'm not a chef or a restauranteur or an influencer. I do not own a crunchy grocery store - I don't even work at one anymore! I'm a simple nobody who knows the location of every single fruit and nut tree within a mile radius of where I live, and that's how I prefer it, and it's enough! And I love it when my wife asks for my cooking. Because it reminds me, yeah, I have put in the work, and it matters to people, and it's good!

I used to think the foodie thing might be a phase - but it's clearly not. I'm obsessed. I mean, we're literally fucking made of food god dammit!

This is how you set the stage for destroying his ability to trust ever again.

I do most of the cooking. That’s because I dislike boxed or processed foods and my other half seems unwilling to learn basics about seasoning and temperature.

Sometimes it just works out that one person is better at it or enjoys it, but there should be load sharing. The cook shouldn’t have to do the dishes for instance.

Stop using SkipTheDishes and DoorDash.

A 17$ in-store order costs over 30$ delivered through Skip.

She'd be blown away at how we work the kitchen. We don't care who does the cooking, our recipes rock. We just need one of us to figure out what to make.

Whoever has the bandwidth cooks, or we split it, or we talk about it - like adults.