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Wednesday 13 February 2013

Dinner For Two?


  Now I like to completely ignore Valentines day so you won't be getting recipes for a suggested meal of love here. Sorry.

  To me there is nothing worse than paying over the odds for a mediocre meal somewhere surrounded by bored looking couples who only go out together on Valentines and spend the rest of the year in front of the TV, or young lovers in the first throes of romance displaying far too much public affection for my liking. And the thought of 6 courses of red, pink and heart shaped food and a rose for the "lady" just turns my stomach. The whole thing is a horrible and those that fall for it are just lacking imagination. You can call me cynical........

 But I digress back to the topic of food. In my kitchen there are rarely times when my Mr and I will share the exact same meal. This has always makes the whole dinner for two thing slightly more work but hey ho at least I know nothing will be heart shaped!

  As mentioned in posts previously Mr My Deliciously Healthy Kitchen is somewhat a fussy eater. It has taken me many a year to get him eating adult food and a reasonable array of vegetables. I suppose its been my own vanity, love of cooking and passion for good food that has kept me cooking a variety of dishes at meal times.

  It would have been easy to eat the processed food items, creamy jarred sauces and other rubbish from packets he had become accustomed to eating in his younger days but I refused to let myself become unhealthy and overweight due to his bad eating habits. So I have continued to cook two separate meals each day and after 17 years together and much, much cajoling and force feeding Mr now eats a reasonably healthy diet and our meals are now similar if not always quite the same. But it's better than its ever been so I can't complain.

   What I do now is start with the same carbs then work it out from there. Although I'm not technically a vegetarian I prefer to eat veggie meals 99% of the time and Mr is most certainly of the carnivorous variety. So every meal I cook there is a vegetarian and a meat eater version, I replace the meat in the veggie version with pulses, beans and nuts and bulk all the meals out with extra veg. Why chefs in restaurants can't work this out I will never know! We both eat fish so that's an easier meal option but when it comes to the veg its a difficulty.

  I like to buy seasonal produce and I eat everything, but my fussy eater will only eat a handful of veg. Here's the dilemma, either he doesn't eat veg for 6 months of the year or we buy imported vegetables? I would rather he ate healthily so I buy the imported stuff when its not in season here. It has take forever to get him this far and there is no way he is ever gonna eat everything so its a necessary evil in my eyes.

  But I can only assume I am not alone in this situation and children and men (I know not every man, but all weird eaters I know are men!!) seem to share a lot of fussy eating habits and the trick is to tread gently right? And when you come across something they don't hate make them have it but use your imagination and try out some different recipes, its the only way. Don't give up!!

   To prove a bit of a point I will wrap this up with a little anecdote from my previous Friday night when we had some lovely friends for dinner:



SCENE:    Friends, Canapes and Prosecco

MR:          "Mmmm.... this dip things nice, what is it?"
ME:          "It's artichoke and pesto dip"
MR:          "But I don't like artichokes??"
ME:           "Clearly you do"
MR:           "Anyone else want that last bit of dip?"

   See what I'm up against?? Aghhhh, that's love I tell ya!!!

THE DIP!