My husband isn’t what you’d call and adventurous eater.
And he’s been anti-vegetable since I’ve met him. Basically, if it was green and it wasn’t salad, it shouldn’t be on his plate.
This was extremely limiting to the cooking process. Coupled with my lack of culinary skills and I was left with about 6 recipes that we could all agree on.
And I was BORED. So, so bored.
I was so bored that I felt bitter every time I had to cook dinner again.
Through a series of unfortunate events involving a scale, Chris and I both concluded that we had to start eating healthier, and we stumbled across a plan that intrigued us. Problem was, it cut out all grains and processed sugars.
Did you know pasta is made out of grain? And tortillas are made of grain? And rice is a grain? I mean, there went ALL my recipes.
But my husband said the most beautiful, magical words to my ears, “All bets are off. I’ll eat anything.”
A blank slate! And no veggie was restricted (except artichokes, because I once sneaked them into a meal and he still hasn’t forgiven me).
As exciting as this was, I was also dreading the experiment a bit, because of past trauma with feeding Chris food he didn’t like. During an offensive meal, he didn’t talk. He just concentrated on choking down the awful food and he didn’t talk at all. Awkward silence.
So I kind of started out slow, sticking to veggies I knew he tolerated. And then I got brave and reckless.
I made roasted broccoli. And he said it was so good he could eat it every night. He took a second helping. I cried a few happy tears.
I made “spaghetti” and meatballs with zucchini noodles. He declared it delicious.
I made bacon wrapped asparagus that I didn’t even like. He loved it (OK, I did say bacon, so…).
All this acceptance kind of went to my head. I decided to have a treat night of pancakes and my recipe had me make cinnamon apples to put on top, instead of syrup.
I thought, “Well, that will never fly.”
Chris wasn’t a big fan of anything apple related. But it looked delicious to me, so I thought maybe I could smooth things over by having real maple syrup on the side that could be drizzled over the apples to sweeten the deal.
He took a bite and exclaimed, “What did you do to the apples?”
“Nothing. Just cinnamon and butter,” I hesitantly admitted.
“They are SO good! They’re so sweet!” (By the way, these were Granny Smith apples, which probably don’t get described as “sweet” very often.)
Honestly, it’s a pretty big thrill for my less-than-skilled-cook heart to hear my husband extol my cooking. But I have to admit. The most exciting part is that the things he is enjoying are items I’d been trying to convince him to eat for years.
I win.
