My Meals vs Your Meals

The weirdest thing about working in and dating someone in kitchens for me is probably the fact that I rarely, RARELY, cook anymore. Nor does J. In fact, I have never tried J's cooking- I've eaten at his restaurant, but he wasn't in the kitchen that day. His line cooks did an excellent job, though.

I've got stuff I can cook with at home- nothing compared to the culinary playground that a commercial kitchen is, but a decent, serviceable work area and ingredients. The biggest trouble is, after cooking and caring for 8+ hours, followed by clean-up, I am too tired to give a shit. I shop and buy food that I specifically don't have to cook. Another guy I work with told me that, outside of family meal, he subsists on chips and pizza rolls.

"Never trust a skinny cook"- what a load of crap that is. We're whippet-thin by virtue of the fact that, while we eat, it is never enough to support our high-energy lifestyle. And we usually supplement our diets with beer- liquid bread. It worked for monks, so it's gotta be a halfway decent idea, non?

Anytime J and I are together, we always end up going to at least one restaurant, if not 2 or 3 (depends on how many meals we end up sharing). It's been awesome- while we have our favorites, we also manage to try a lot of cool places! The trickiest part of our evenings is usually trying to figure out where to go- it's always, "What do you feel like eating?" "Oh, I'm not picky. Anything is fine. Are you in the mood for anything?" "Nah- where's a good place?" "...hm... Well, there's x-and-such, restaurant x, blah-blah-blah..." And it always takes almost 15 minutes of that on repeat to figure anything out. Why don't we cook together? Because our time together is far too short to be bothered with dishes. Would it be amazing to get a home-cooked meal from him once? God yes, but to be fair, it would make my day to get *any* home cooked meal. Don't underestimate the power that a regular dinner has over a cook- can we cook better than you? Probably. However, none of us are picky, and frankly none of us want to cook post-shift. The way to our hearts is through our stomachs- just so long as our meats aren't burnt leather hockey pucks. Cheers~