“Gah, I feel like Chef Boyardee!”

My cooking patterns lately have been incredibly up and down.  Sometimes I go a week or two cooking exciting meals with new ingredients every night, and then other weeks my dinners will consist solely of canned soup or frozen lean cuisines.  Oddly enough, these trends don’t seem to coincide at all with the amount of school work I have.  In fact, some nights, I have SO much work to do but I allow myself an hour or so break to cook a nice meal for myself–it’s actually a great way for me to unwind after a long day.  As a person who has an extreme Type A personality, I get so much satisfaction out of the systematic process of cooking–finding all of the ingredients I need, washing/chopping all the veggies, following the directions  of a recipe step-by-step, cleaning the mess I make, etc.  The whole process is somehow therapeutic for me.  However, there are still some nights when I have SO much to do that I can hardly even allow myself a ten minute break to eat anything!  Recently I had a night like this, and Brad volunteered to make dinner for me!  While it’s very hard for me to relinquish control and let someone else cook for me, I decided to give it a try…and let me tell you, it. was. (surprisingly) wonderful.  Somehow I was able to be incredibly productive while Brad was cooking, and I didn’t find myself peering over his shoulder every few minutes to make sure he is doing things correctly (yes, as much as I hate to admit it, I have a bad habit of doing this).  He made us whole wheat pasta with shrimp, minced garlic, chopped onions and a light cream sauce!  Brad even bought actual garlic cloves to peel and mince, just to impress me.  I always buy the jarred minced garlic…super easy!  Needless to say, I was impressed with his cooking.  He was too, because as I was studying, I heard him exclaim from the kitchen, “Gah, I feel like Chef Boyardee!”  I’m glad to say that he actually put Chef Boyardee to shame with this tasty dish:

When Brad found out that I was going to blog about this, he was very upset he didn’t put spinach or something green in the pasta.  He thought the pasta would look bland and tasteless.  Well, spinach or no spinach, I can assure you that it tasted delicious.

The chef in action!

He even surprised me with a bottle of white wine!  Overall, the meal was fantastic, and it was great to eat a home cooked meal on a night where I would usually eat a lean pocket.  I think maybe I’ll let him cook more often!