Cooking is a Labor of Love

I'm always amazed when I hear someone say that cooking is a chore. I've always loved to cook and missed it when I was working on the road and even more when I was single with no one to share it with.

I would spend weekends in the kitchen filling the freezer for my teenage kids. For the last several years I've owned a licensed home bakery and cottage food operation in Central Ohio and practically lived in the kitchen. Now, my boyfriend and I regularly spend two to three hours in the kitchen sharing our love of each other and great food.

Harry didn't always give me the impression of liking to cook. For the first couple of years we were together, his typical answer to "What would you like for dinner?" was usually "I don't care - anything is fine." He would pull up his announcer's chair and watch while I chopped, mixed and cooked.

One day, Harry decided to cook a pot of chili. The recipe came from a long-ago and far-away girlfriend and it was delicious and different from any chili I had ever had. The only help I gave during that all-day session was chopping the onions and garlic and making the rice we served it over. And I am convinced - that day sealed our love forever.

Neither of us really likes to go out to eat for different reasons. While I enjoy a good restaurant meal on a rare occasion, my years of traveling and eating nothing but restaurant food for weeks at a time did me in. For Harry - he has better things to do than spend three to four hours in a restaurant. He'd much rather spend that time in our own kitchen, together, creating and enjoying the company.

I fully believe that the way to a person's heart is through their stomach and not over a restaurant table. The couple that cooks together can stay together. The act of preparing a meal becomes an act of love, of sharing the creation of that basic necessity of life. Plus, with proper shopping and planning we spend much less on food than if we were to eat out at restaurants.

Here are some tips for keeping love alive in the kitchen!

Share the entire process
Fill a pantry that you both enjoy! Shopping together, planning the meal together, splitting the meal prep duties and sharing the cleanup duties makes cooking a joy not a chore.

The biggest debate we have in our kitchen is vegetables. Harry loves raw or stir-fried and I've got some Southern roots and Canadian roots that give me a craving for mashed rutabaga and holy green beans ("cover them with water and boil the hell outta 'em!") We compromise by eating a lot of salads or nibbling on fresh veggies while we're preparing the rest of the meal.

There's more than one way to chop an onion
Harry and I have very different knife skills. I can mince a few cloves of garlic in a snap but can't cut meat worth a darn. He, on the other, can sharpen a knife and practically shave slices of turkey but needs more than 10 minutes to chop an onion.

There is no "right" way to do anything in the kitchen. Harry is a stickler for measurements, I tend to wing it and taste along the way. As long as I let him taste it and help me decide what the dish needs, we get along fine.

Dance in the kitchen
What do you do while you're waiting for the stew to simmer? We often have music playing while we're cooking and I am always overwhelmed with feelings of romance when Harry puts his arms around me and we dance around the kitchen.

Cooking together is a time to talk, debate, share a glass or two of wine and laugh. Creating the meal is the ultimate outcome but it's the time spent together that keeps the relationship strong.