For whom the cook toils

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I'm lucky that DH will eat pretty much anything I make and the foods he doesn't like - primarily broccoli and cauliflower - I can't eat for medical reasons. He also doesn't like eggs, so no quiche or frittatas, or mushrooms, but I just work around it and substitute things we do like. I make quiche for me and eat it for breakfast, for example.
 
I cook whatever I want. GF will eat anything I make as long as there are no green peppers in it. Even then she has picked them out. I won't cook with them anymore. I just substitute red peppers. No probs. I try to cook and eat vegetables with every meal. Sometimes very little meat. Especially with Asian and Indian. I am still very interested in cooking things I have never had before. I search out authentic ingredients, cookware, utensils, and try to copy previous restaurant meals, or other dishes I come across on the web. Some are hits, some are misses. GF thinks she is spoiled. I hope she really feels that way and isn't just trying not to hurt my feelings. :LOL:

She is a meat and potatoes type cook. Her previous husband, along with her two boys(who are men now) were never adventurous, so she was limited in what she could prepare. She is enjoying my take on eating and cooking.

Someone like your GF and my husband really make cooking a joy...as it should be.
We are very lucky people Rock.
If I had to cook for someone who didn't appreciate it, I'd make nothing but reservations.
 
Someone like your GF and my husband really make cooking a joy...as it should be.
We are very lucky people Rock.
If I had to cook for someone who didn't appreciate it, I'd make nothing but reservations.

My DH, too. I can't remember what it was now, but there was something I used to make regularly and he didn't tell me for 20 years that he didn't like it :wub:
 
in reading back on this, i realized that i should add that dw would LOVE to have me cook to my heart's desire almost every night.

she is just a gym rat who keeps herself in great shape and doesn't want to make that harder by eating unhealthy stuff.

we eat out at least once or twice a week, and she goes out for lunch about another once or twice, so the rest of the meals have to be healthy.

i just wish healthy didn't necessarily mean bland.

and who do i have to shoot to get a steak around here? :cool:
 
in reading back on this, i realized that i should add that dw would LOVE to have me cook to my heart's desire almost every night.

she is just a gym rat who keeps herself in great shape and doesn't want to make that harder by eating unhealthy stuff.

we eat out at least once or twice a week, and she goes out for lunch about another once or twice, so the rest of the meals have to be healthy.

i just wish healthy didn't necessarily mean bland.

and who do i have to shoot to get a steak around here? :cool:
I don't think healthy has to mean bland.
 
my wife and i are very different cooks. while i'd say we both are foodies and have a fairly equal passion for food, what we cook tends to run in very different directions.

my wife is all about healthy cooking. healthy and plain.
plain, plain, healthy, and plain.

the only spices she uses are salt and pepper, and only a few dishes get some herbs if necessary like parsley or garlic.

she almost never cooks red meat, or adds fat or a fatty or cholesterol laden ingredient to anything. lots of chicken (plainly grilled, skin off, or roasted, with nothing but s&p) and fish. plainly broiled. on a very rare occasion breaded and fried in very little evoo.

it all tastes ok, but boy is it boring after so many years. i've tried to get her to cook things that i like, but i'm lucky if that happens once or twice a year.


now on the other hand, i cook to please both myself and my family. i've learned to make things healthier (or figure on eating all of it myself), but i find it very frustrating to love to cook all sorts of things and not be able to do so with any frequency.

my son mentioned to my wife recently that she needs to expand her culinary horizons like i do and make some new things, or at least make the things she cooks more interesting.

it got me to wondering how many other people here cook for themselves, or better said for their own tastes and reasons while turning a deaf ear to their family's requests, or do they cook what their family (spouse, so, kids, what have you) likes. do you mix it up, meaning one for you, one for them? is it all about one family member for health reasons? do you cook and whomever doesn't like it fends for themselves? do you just cook what they like and spite yourself?

i remember my mom making certain dishes 2 or 3 different ways in order to please all of my sisters, my brother, and my dad. but then she is a miracle worker with food.

so, for whom do you toil?
When I'm cooking for two I don't make anything the other person won't eat because it's wasteful if he's going to leave it on his plate. I certainly wouldn't cook one meal for me and another for the other person. If I'm cooking dinner for a crowd and one person is, for example, a vegetarian, everyone gets vegetarian but if I'm doing a buffet-style meal I'll do both veggie and flesh-based dishes.

However, when he married my mother my dad came with a list of things he didn't like. Mum quickly realised that most of the things he "didn't like" were things he'd been told by his mother and grandmother that "Oh, you wouldn't like that, dear" because they didn't. In some cases, such as mushrooms which he'd only ever had boiled in milk (yuck!), it was a revelation when Mum got going in the kitchen - he realised that mushrooms were very good fried in butter!
 
and wine! and herbs! and soups! and stir frys! so many things.

i guess your dad, after he met your mum, became a funghi to be with. :)

as far as cooking different meals for the family goes, my most vivid memories from childhood were of pork chops.

mom made some breaded and fried, some broiled until medium rare or medium,.and some pan fried until cooked into shoe leather. all in order to please 4 girls, 2 boys, and my dad.

only my dad and i would eat anything presented to us.
that's not because we're great, but it does explain my love for mustards, aiolis, and hot sauces. something discreet to help it out.
 
For whom the cook toils...

I live alone, so it's mainly just cooking for me. I happily welcome the opportunity to cook for my family members when we get together, and we usually end up grilling steak or chicken, with several sides. In CA we grill all year long. :) Most of my family members aren't very adventurous eaters and want to stick with the fam faves and not stray from them, so I do my best to make what they like. I love to try new things but don't experiment on them very often. :)

The hardest part for me when I'm normally on my own, is when I'm wanting to make a new dish that calls for a family of eight, and scaling it down to a family of two. I can only eat on the same dish so many times. :ermm::LOL: It's not easy when you want to make an eggplant parmesan, or chicken tikka masala, or my newest interest I want to make - Country Captain - without making a boatload. Saw it on Bobby Flay a couple of years ago and it's been stuck in my mind. :yum:

Interesting topic, bucky. :)
 
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Thanks, GG. I so want to try this. I've looked at many recipes online.

ATK has a really nice sounding one, too. I saw it in my new Cooks Country cookbook I recently got at a yard sale for $1. It calls for the addition of Major Grey's chutney. :yum: I might need to start a new thread about Country Captain to see if others have made it and what they think. ;) I couldn't find one here.
 
I've been cooking since I was 8 and, at that time, I cooked to feed my siblings. They didn't seem too picky and were desirous of volume over quality. :LOL::LOL:

When I married the first time, my then husband thought himself a gourmand, which I suppose he was...in a way. He preferred to eat rather than to cook so cooking was left up to me. Except for onions in any form, the sky was the limit with him. He even had issues with onion powder. Sheesh! How does it go...first, chop an onion! Oh, well.

Then I married Buck. He was like the all-food channel, all the time. He loved to eat; loved to cook; loved to talk about food; enjoyed food shows on TV. You name it.

We spent many hours as a team in the kitchen in our 32 years together. Most of the time he acted as my sous chef and loved it. He would eat just about anything, prepared any way.

Now, there's Glenn. He's not a kitchen kind of guy and prefers to leave that domain to me. He excels in eating what I produce. He has definite "no" items but those are few, so we have been eating quite happily. He says I've been trying to kill him with food. Nah! The way to a man's heart is through his stomach, right?

I introduced him to Cornish game hens and he often asks if we can have "those little birds" for dinner. No problem. Happy to oblige.
 
the next time i get married (in my next life, of course. dw is part preying mantis. i'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop), i'm going to marry a woman likes to eat and has a metabolism of a chihuahua.
 
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