My husband, the chef

Growing up, I always assumed that when I got married, I would be the one cooking amazing meals every night and my husband would be in awe of my cooking abilities. He would ponder how on earth I cooked such meals, and swear that he could never manage to cook something without me.

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That's not exactly what happened.

Don't get me wrong, I know my way around a kitchen and can pretty much cook anything I put my mind to, but there's a major flaw I have: I need recipes. If you were to ask me to cook a meal with ground beef, mushrooms, and onions as the main ingredients, my first stop would be my trusty Good Housekeeping cookbook.

Stephen, on the other hand, doesn't need or like recipes. Using totally random ingredients, he can whip up a culinary masterpiece. One time he made a phenomenal casserole using mashed potatoes, spaghetti sauce, noodles, and American cheese (yes, really). Every time I say that we don't have food in the house, he proves my wrong by presenting some gourmet-worthy dish. Case in point:
One night, I had a rough day and was feeling particularly worn out. I took a pretty thorough look in our sans-shelf fridge and determined that we didn't have any food for dinner. Stephen innocently asked if I would like him to make dinner so I could relax.

1. MAJOR bonus points - how sweet is that?!
   
2. Who am I to come between my man and dinner?
3. Since he mentioned it, relaxing did sound nice...
   

A few minutes pass and all of the sudden he emerges with those. How he comes up with ideas like this, I have no idea. But one thing is for sure - I would have never been able to pull that off.

The result of his culinary prowess is a severe lack of culinary confidence on my part. When we go into stores and he asks what we should have for dinner, my mind goes blank. It doesn't help any that Stephen can be a picky eater (despite what he says), and he always seems to have a vision of what he ideally wants for dinner...and my vision usually doesn't align with that.

I'm sure we'll get into the groove of things as time goes on. Until then, he'll been busy cooking like a chef...and I'll be busy cooking with one hand on a cookbook.