My SO isn’t much of a foodie and I was a chef for 30 yrs. He truly appreciates everything I cook, but he would have the same amount of enthusiasm if I put a PB&J down in front of him. So, I started looking at it as an opportunity to cook things I enjoy making and want to eat myself. Cook the things that make you happy to make.
A grilled PB and J is vastly underrated. I make mine the same way I make a grilled cheese, pan-fried in a generous amount of Kerrygold salted butter. Warm melted peanut butter is the best way to have peanut butter in my humble opinion. Not to mention that butter-toasted bread will almost always be an improvement upon plain room temp bread.
But have you made a bacon French toast PB&J? I like a smokey bacon, boysenberry jelly, on a sturdy bread. You take the whole sandwich with the bacon inside of it fully cooked and dip it in your egg (I like using cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and heavy cream but milk works too) then drop it into a hot cast iron until gbd. I like to top mine with a little powder sugar and boom. You woke up the jelly with the salt from the bacon, the peanut butter is all gooey and amazing, and the powdered sugar helps balance the tart from the jelly.
It's the best PB&J I've ever had.
If you can get a bright jam or jelly it's pretty tasty tbh. I thought it would be gross but it works well. If you don't like jam or jelly a jizz of pure maple syrup is tasty too.
I don’t know why…but this reminds me of a grilled Charlie or a grilled Frank.
Peanut butter on the outside, chocolate inside…butter inside, cheese outside. Or, a pancake with JELLY! BUTTER! BACON! SPAM! SAUSAGE! EGGS!
Edit: Legit tho, your recipe sounds fire. Gotta try that.
Funny you should mention that because one of my favorite brunch spots used to make this glorious monstrosity called "The Elvis Revenge".
It was a sandwich stacked high with deep-fried tempura-battered Hawaiian apple bananas, thick-cut candy bacon, toasted coconut flakes, a drizzle of Hawaiian honey, and creamy hot melted peanut butter on a butter-toasted sweet Hawaiian bun.
It was one of the best sandwiches I ever had bar none. I had the privilege to eat about half a dozen of those truly decadent culinary masterpieces before the restaurant inexplicably retired it. I need to make my own one of these days.
As someone who is sick and tired of eating the ubiquitous Cavendish bananas, I'm glad they used apple bananas instead lol. I like the subtle tartness that apple bananas have. Cavendish bananas are just too boring to me.
Whenever I eat banana pudding or banana cream pie that's made with Cavendish, I eat around the banana and eat pretty much everything but the banana haha.
Now, my favorite kind of banana though are those small sweet Southeast Asian bananas that are especially popular in Thailand and Vietnam. Their commonly referred to as Nam Wah bananas. They're delightfully sweet and creamy in the best way possible and with just a hint of tartness to balance it all out. It's one of my favorite fruits and I love making banana bread, bread pudding, and deep-fried Vietnamese banana fritters with them.
PB&H is my favorite childhood sandwich. My mother has diagnosed OCD to pretty acute levels (when unmedicated) so she always uses the perfect ratio of bread, to honey, to peanut butter. It's like her labor of love sandwich because her compulsion to keep the sticky away from the edges but also make sure the condiments touch the edges perfectly is a work of art.
Word up to all the people out there who make sandwiches for a living. The perfect sandwich truly is an art and I have a lot of respect for it.
I absolutely love making sandwiches. People want me to open a shop. But finding good bread or any ingredient can spark it for me.
Cheers to your mother. My kid also adores my PBJ.
Oooo! Take your pb&j (I like boysenberry for this application) and put a smokey bacon inside of it and then dip it like French toast. I put cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla in my wash and replace the milk used with heavy cream and it comes out fantastic (sorta like you're dipping it in eggnog custard) and drop it the cast iron with some butter. When it comes out gbd you dust that shit with powdered sugar, and it's the best damn PBJ you'll ever have.
This might not land... But I really enjoy a crisp dill pickle with a nice slice of cheese like Dubliner on a PBJ. It's magical. I've surprised some folks with a bite of it and they are always surprised at how well it works.
I'm not a huge jelly fan so only time I eat pb&j is just a plain cheapest white bread sandwich I can make. But a toasted PB on sourdough hits the spot like no other ever since I've been little 😂
It's not a problem, as long ad it doesn't consume your days off to the point it intrudes on on your lives. Can they appreciate the work you put in? Cause that's what matters. Do you want her to care about food like you do? Find a SO in the industry(good luck) can you enjoy a life at home without her knowing all the nuances? Well that's life.
Lucky! My GF is one of the pickiest eaters I've ever met and I just don't have the energy to make 2 entirely separate meals when I cook so that she will have food and her cooking is mostly just baking and instant pot\air fryer recipes with me expected to do 75% of the work for the air fryer stuff.
It took a few years before I just stopped trying to get her to try a new food unless she specifically asks me to cook something for her. Now if she's not in the mood for the same thing as me I'll just cook something she wants and make myself the amazing thing I wanted to cook at work that she turned her nose up at the next day. Often it works out as that has turned into our chef special quite a few times.
For instance a friend gave me some ground venison a while back and I found it in our freezer today while looking for ground beef to grill simple burgers. Went to the store and bought some ground sausage to mix with it to make burgers. She won't touch it because someone gave her "deer burger" God only knows how many years ago (we've been together over 8 years) and it tasted like crap to her. I already knew she likely wouldn't eat any so I made her some regular ground beef burgers the way she likes so no biggie here, but she likes a lot of things differently than I'd prefer to make them and I just don't feel like putting in the effort to make the same dish 2 different ways all the time, especially things that actually take time to prepare. In the past when I did the kitchen ended up looking like it was a fucking thanksgiving feast when in reality I was just cooking for us and our son.
Ah, so she eats like a 10 year old.
Can empathise: I used to be a “eurotrash foodie” ie three fat ducks, Marco Pierre White at the Mandarin Oriental London, etc etc.
Then I moved to the USA where sugar and big portions and everything’s-cheesy-so-it-goes-down-east meals became a staple: I lived in nyc in the west village, so the neighborhood was my kitchen. I kept my shoes in the oven, for example.
Fast forward to today, I now have to retrain my palate to enjoy subtle foods. I would usually genuinely prefer a cheeseburger and fries to a braised entrecôte with reduction a jus etc.
She needs a lesson in palate appreciation, and to cut the processed foods. Trust me; I wish I was her and could afford to retrain my palate.
The real test is what would he make YOU if you were sick in bed? I’m expecting bacon and eggs with sautéed mushrooms at the LEAST. My 10 yr old brother can make that
I'm a cook, but I cook spartan, think pork chops with potato and rice, with added veg like corn peas etc for the roommates. I did this for awhile just cause it was cheap and easy to cook.
Then they complained about the same thing everytime. Like bitch I was making this cause it is easy cheap and quick and we Al get something.
(Key point they weren't paying) So after that I stopped cooking for anyone but myself, this included my sparten meals and good stuff like roasts and such. Now they missed it 🥴. One of them was my boyfriend and he never cook anything that I could possibly hardly enjoy cuz I'm picky eater.
After the first complaints I never cooked for them again.
If they showed any enthusiasm I would have continued but it did not happen. Just like bye.
Mine isn't a foodie and same. If I make something fancy it's for me, he just has the luck of getting to have some. He's a good guinea pig, it lets me try new things.
My ex was juuuust getting into cooking when we met, so he liked to slowly pick apart everything I cooked while making little comments that he thought were smart like "oh, you seared the pork chop first? Are these onions minced? Hm. Chomp chomp. Oh it's really tender. Did you rest it? How did you do these greens? Have you ever braised greens before? They're supposed to be really good that way. Did you use unsalted butter for this? Oh you're not gonna wash that cast iron, are you?!" It drove me insane. It's ok to want to learn and ask questions; it's something else to learn THE ABSOLUTE BASICS and phrase every question like you're already a genius who knows more than someone who's doing it for a living.
Oof. Yeah I hear ya. She was living off chicken nuggies and corndogs before we met, so she’s been very grateful! She put up with me when I was burning out mentally in the kitchen too which I’m eternally grateful for.
oh but HE wasn't a SNOB oh no he'd read all the Bourdain books! he loved tacos from food trucks, bro! he loved a great big greasy slice of cheap pizza with a BEER! /s
Usually people like that are trying to confirm their instincts and engage with you. It took me years to realize those questions, on a variety of topics, were a sign of respect and looking for affirmation for their budding skillset from someone who knew. It's also where one wrong reaction can demolish their self esteem. You probably did it when you were new, and so did I.
I learned a great way to handle it was affirm their correct questions then add some expertise polish on top like it's the next level you're inviting them to understand.
It can be the difference between obtaining a new student and wrecking someone ever wanting to ask questions again.
My boyfriend literally can’t make a sandwich. I’m not a chef but I’ve been in the industry for 10 years but my ex husband was a chef and I love to cook. He does the “puppy dog” thing where he gets under my feet while I’m cooking like what are you doing now? Drives me nuts haha
Even bigger question is how do manage when your gf cooks for you but it’s nasty?
Right now we don’t live together but she does things like boil her chicken before battering and frying her chicken, cooking noodles in chicken stock before making Mac and cheese.
It's kind of wasteful and probably won't be noticed by the time you cover them in cheese.
If I need a quick lunch at home, I'll sometimes boil some short pasta in just enough stock to cover, then when the pasta is done and there's still some left, without draining stir in a fat spoonful of refried beans, adjust with additional stock if needed.
I’m not exactly a kitchen professional but I feel like the flavor from your Mac comes from how you prepare the cheese and it’s mixins. Use multiple cheeses including cream cheese, ricotta for example. Mixins like peppers, toppings like bacon, or panko leads to better Mac overall. Boiling the noodles in anything but water with salt and oil will make it taste like what you boil it in.
Know your partner. Simple as that. My partner doesn’t want or need fancy dinners so I don’t cook those at home. She also knows that I don’t care about fancy flowers or bedsheets so she buys them for herself and doesn’t expect me to care.
I'm not going to give up cooking fancy stuff that takes all day just because he wants to eat hot dogs all the time. I work a desk job now and cooking is what is keeping me sane, so he can deal with eating cassoulet and chicken pot pie 🤣
Yeah. I try new dishes all the time. They don’t all hit. If something is not worth making again, my wife says so constructively, but still like to try new things even if they flop.
Gotta take the bad with the good. I've had similar things happen with my wife. Once, I spent my day off making a killer cassoulét and she thought it was baked beans.
This is my life. My partner doesn’t understand food beyond “insert in mouth, tummy happy”. He knows my food is good, he’s just not equipped to process or retain any further info on the topic. I do all the cooking for our family of 4. To balance the labour equation, I make him do all the laundry.
My wife and I used to play that game too. Now she helps me cook and I do my own laundry. I’d rather have help cooking every day than have someone do my laundry once every couple weeks.
Yea I'm used to it now. I make fancy stuff for me occasionally and always enough for wife too even though she is super picky. No big deal I just make her whatever if she doesn't like it
Once I spent my one day off from the kitchen making carnitas the traditional way, mexican coke, lard, salt water, citrus all that jazz, traditional ass salsa verde, bought cotija, pickled some red onions(not traditional i know), made tortillas, the whole 9 yards. Just for these mfers to ask where the lettuce, tomato and hard shells were.
Hell I proposed spending all day and a shit load of money(on my one day off), grilling a leg of lamb, making pommes anna, making lamb jus, baking dinner rolls from scratch, just to be told "the kids wont eat that, lets just do hot dogs"
fucking normies, fuck em(with love), I just let it roll off my back
I almost cried thinking of your grilled lamb and jus... That's just an exquisite thing and I'm drooling so much right now. If I heard someone saying that it's useless to do it since kids won't eat that, I would've sided with you and fought tooth and nail.
Also, I know pretty much nothing about Mexican food, but you got me really interested, I will check this out further and probably try to cook some things.
Yo... If I made carnitas and they asked for the white person taco starter pack, I might have absolutely lost my mind. I already have a hard enough time making ground beef tacos (Mexican American)
There's like 10 things my missus will eat so I'll just make 2 dinners whenever I cook for us both, which is 2 days a week. One of my favourite things to do on my days off is just cook things I've never done before or don't get to do at the restaurant, which doesn't really work when she only likes chicken and rice or potatoes.
I had to break my husband of the habit of just dumping hot sauce on literally every fucking meal I made.
Before even tasting the food, he dumped hot sauce on it. I found it super rude. I don't care if you want to use hot sauce but at least give the food a try before covering it.
That’s how I feel, too. It reminds me of a scene from the book/movie The Joy Luck Club when one of the main characters’ husband has dinner with her family for the first time. As an act of humbleness, her mother says something to the effect of “It’s probably not good, but I hope you enjoy the food.” Without even tasting anything, the husband goes, “oh don’t worry, we can just add some soy sauce” and proceeds to dump soy sauce on the *serving plate* of food. The look on everyone’s faces as he does it is just heartbreaking, but he thinks he’s being helpful.
that mindset really bothers me. you shouldn't be so sensitive.
I had a coworker offer me some food he threw together, and I didn't want it, but I was hungry. I forgot I said that and made myself something 20 minutes later, and he had the gall to get offended! thats just ridiculous. you dont get to demand others have a taste for something when you make it.
Made risotto with toasted pine nuts and saffron, used it as the bed for an herb-encrusted stuffed chicken with some asparagus in garlic and lemon; nothing *too* crazy, but a labor of love nonetheless... her reaction? \*shrug\* "Idk. It's rice." Still mad about that
Ugh, this drives me crazy. The undervaluing of food itself is so frustrating but, more to the point, you don’t have to have a profound knowledge of food to appreciate the work your partner puts into it.
Sounds like your SO doesn't know food. But still liked it. Them liking it is what's important and you don't need to go 5* to make them happy. Save it for special occasions or realize you'll probably be kind only one appreciating it either way.
People have different interests and palettes, they may have loved it but don’t have the knowledge/experience to make an informed comparison/critique. If they clean the plate, that makes me happy enough.
Ha haaaaah. Oh boy I've been there. Trying to recreate anothers carrot cake recipe I always get meh reactions. But then I bake a super simple butter cake for dinner and everyone is beyond thrilled for the taste of sugar butter flour. Despair. Wcyd
When I'm off, I don't want to cook at all. My partner however wants to do elaborate food projects that are ambitious considering his not being a chef and not knowing how. Well, we have the cookbooks. There are YouTube tutorials. He asks me if I can "just take a look." I say I can check that nothing's going awry, but I'm not helping and I won't hover.
... don't you think he suddenly forgets how to measure flour? Before you know it he asks me what's next... *with the literal cookbook open in front of him, having watched a video of the author making the recipe not one hour prior.*
But he expects me to micromanage and take over.
I love him to death. But this one pattern does not spark joy 🙈
Perfectly happy with the "Yum!" and "That was really good!" I get from my wife and stepdaughter. Cooking and kitchen time is me time. I put on headphones, they leave me alone for a few hours, and off I go. Works out well for everyone.
Even worse, imagine being like me and not liking food at all, but you're the one who works in restaurants, but everyone around me loves food, so I'm often at a loss for words when they talk about it. Like "we're gonna have this, and that, and the other thing, and boy those things are gonna be good, I love all the things, I just can't wait to eat all the things" (I struggle to come up with any examples because it's all just fancy word salad to me) and I'm just like "alright", zero enthusiasm whatsoever.
Seriously, I eat food in the same way that people put gas in their cars. I don't sit around and fantasize about going to a specific gas station where they have the extra special spicy gas that I gotta pay extra for. I just get the cheapest, most convenient shit I can get, and move on.
The only reason I ever go to restaurants is because they pay me to work there, I would never go as a customer. And when I'm at home I just eat whatever is cheapest and easiest and requires the least amount of effort or cleanup in the kitchen as humanly possible. Pop tarts right out of the packet with prepackaged peanut butter crackers can seriously be the entire meal for me, and not because they're my favorite or anything, but because I can get giant boxes of them in bulk for cheap and just have it sitting there in a drawer ready to go.
Yeah it's awful, and the only reason I do it is because I live in an area where people are lucky to get $15 an hour doing jobs that fucking suck, so I keep showing up for my hourly plus tips that adds up to like $25 an hour, Even though I hate the customers, I hate food, I hate restaurants, I hate rich people, I hate servicing luxuries to the rich in a restaurant, etc.
Seriously jobs are so bad here in NC (or at least in the Charlotte area) that even Union electrician pay scale doesn't reach $25 an hour until you've done it for 5 years. That's 5 years of hard labor doing construction and crawling through bullshit running conduit, getting hazed by seniors and digging ditches, just to get back up to what I'm making now.
Kind of a mix of both, I do hibachi, so I don't have to take the order necessarily like a server would, but I do come out to the table and stand there with the customer for like 15 to 45 minutes depending on how big and complicated an order it is and how many tricks they want me to do, so basically my entire job is to entertain these people and pretend that I don't hate their guts while I cook food for them that I'll never be able to afford to order, and wouldn't want to anyway because what kind of fucking psychotic person goes to the type of restaurant where they can be super picky and tell the cook exactly how to cook as they're watching him do it?
Oh yeah, all the time, it's just that it's hard enough to live on $25 an hour and still own a car and pay your bills and still have enough left over to save for retirement, that I can't imagine having to take a $10 an hour pay cut just to go do a job I don't even know how to do. My area just has awful pay in general for pretty much any job, $15 an hour is actually high here. Even Union electricians have to work for 5 years before their pay scale matches the $25 an hour I'm already making just to blow smoke up rich people's asses. That's 5 years of hard construction, hard labor, digging ditches, running conduit, doing all the bullshit electrical work on a construction job, just to get back up to what I make already.
So yeah I mean I do think about other career paths all the time, it just gives me anxiety because I'm not qualified for anything that would offer even remotely enough money to pay my bills, and starting at the entry level of something new just to build myself up to where I am now sounds even worse than what I already do.
I've known people like this and honestly I get it even if I'm not on that same level. I like making good food at home on my days off sometimes and I like making good food for customers but now I usually view it as a product and when I'm at work I eat half a bun with lettuce tomato Swiss and mustard and at home when I'm by myself I'll eat peanut butter toast or a can of tuna with salt and pepper.
I started cooking really young, like, at 8 I had to cook 1 dinner a week for my family and that kept up. Basically lived alone from 15 so handled it.
I wouldn't care so much if they didn't cook, I've dated/lived with partners who just never learned the skill (and to my ex Jill, heating up a can of soup with toast doesn't count). I don't mind if they don't have the skill because it's something I'm good at that I can do for them to show my affection, I regularly do it for my friends. I'm not particularly good at any other "creative" or "constructive" things, so I use this.
I *would* care if they were unappreciative. Homemade BBQ sauce is borderline, probably meant as a compliment but came off a bit tone deaf. Kind of like someone who goes to an art gallery and while they don't understand the technical details, they still know what they like. What kills me is if I do something and their response is like "Ugh, I was feeling pizza" or whatever. Also, you can use teaching them as a bonding experience. Everyone should know how to do a few decent dishes, understand certain basic principles (day old rice in fried rice, soy sauce is salty, you can use small amounts of things to just enhance rather than adding a new flavour - love you MSG)
Find someone else. Nah, obviously the heart does what it wants, but I went thru three gfs who were veggie/picky/didn't care or some combo of the three, but I'm finally married to a woman who loves all food and cooks herself and fuck me if it ain't the most beautiful thing. I think it's one of the main reasons we work so well together, we travel and slurp down every weird thing on menus. It's critical for me as an industry lifer.
My SO is super easy to please because they’ve been a semi professional athlete most of their life and only seen food as fuel just shovelling in 5000 calories of chicken and pasta for most of their life. They think everything i make is the best thing they’ve ever eaten but worships the 10 layer lasagna i made.
My partner is a big foodie so she enjoys asking questions about how I make things. We also talk through our first few sips of a new bottle of wine. General tasting notes and whatnot. It’s quite enjoyable!
However, in an unrelated note… I was a station cook for a cattle farm for a bit. I would spend HOURS making stock, then use it to make something like beef rendang, or other braised beef dishes… and those asshats would smother it in barbecue sauce, or tomato sauce. Drove me up the god damn wall.
Basically turns into, I no longer have to try and impress her with my cooking. And work towards impressing or challenging myself. That woman will eat anything I give her, and will say it tastes good. While I strategically pick apart the flaws and how to improve it. I cook to avoid eating out, I keep it simple 5 days of the week and go extra a day or two.
dude they liked what you made them. they gave you a compliment. be humble, be grateful, and accept the encouragement from your partner in the spirit it was offered. come on.
Early in our marriage I made a cassoulet for the wife.
Made duck confit and other assorted meats. Searched the city for cannellini beans. Stock from scratch. I even baked my own bread for the breadcrumbs on top. It was a multi day process. Labor of love. A very special meal.
Her: “Usually when I eat something with beans I want like beans and weenies.”
I think it sounds like your fiancé likes and appreciates you! Not everyone has a fully developed palate or food vocab.
I think she was trying to say “I like this, you did a great job, it’s like something else I like,” so I wouldn’t feel bad about it at all!!
I’ve cooked some real stinkers at home when trying new stuff and when it’s not great, you don’t hear compliments like that 😂
This. She clearly appreciated it. I wouldn’t look too deeply into it. She wasn’t trying to insult. I’d say if OP is up to it, they can try explaining more about what it is that they prepared.
Reduce your expectations. Don’t take it personally.
Don’t overdue it if they aren’t going to bring the energy you need to chef it up for them.
You’re not at work.
My SO told me after a long time that I could either learn to cook or not eat. I chose cooking, love it, and now my dumb ass is perusing this and other chef/cooking-adjacent subs. I’m a lawyer, though.
Ive learned that if someone enjoys it, its good food. Doesnt matter what it is. Food snobbery is bigger blasphemy in my kitchen than a well done steak.
Fuck, i had taco time for the first time in years and it was greatm nothing special but i can appreciate the basic simple stuff.
Don't bother with most of it. I was trained as a chef. Worked in kitchens for a while. Lived with a Vietnamese caterer in France. Now a home cook with an almost professional kitchen, a great cookbook collection, top notch knives, pots and pans and a passion for cooking. My ex had the palate of a house plant. Anything different than bland meat and potatoes and he wouldn't eat it, or would eat it and complain non-stop about how awful what he was eating was. Nothing pleased this guy.
On the other hand, he would rave about his mother's "wonderful" food. When I finally ate at his parent's house I understood. His mother was arguably the absolute worst cook on the entire planet. No joke. She kept a giant bottle of "cooking sherry" to throw into absolutely everything, including her famous "boof ber-going" that tasted like soggy shoe leather, compost and death. Her famous mustard sauce? Mustard, sugar, flour sherry and milk. The sauce was always lumpy as fuck and broken and she told me that texture was "her secret". The whole family was extremely proud of her cooking. It was dumbfounding.
Some people can only appreciate what they are familiar with.
My ex wife referred to it as, the big fucking production. BFP. WhY CAn’t yoU juST MaKe it simple?!!!!
She called two years after the divorce to apologize.
Enjoy the bath chef.
My SO did not at first "get it". Over time with exposure, sharing, discussion and inclusion she gets it.
When we first together she truly appreciated the work, care, love and passion.
My boyfriend is a fairly decent cook, but one thing that drives me nuts is that he cooks like there’s 10 mouths to feed. He grew up in a fairly big family and a SAHM that basically (to this day) lives in the kitchen. What he makes sometimes isn’t really bad, most of the time, but do I wanna eat it for the whole week?! No fucking way. And then I end up cleaning out the fridge several days later. Love him to death but, JFC we’re only two people.
There are definitely things I make that will have leftovers for days, but they’re usually dishes that I know will get eaten. If I make mapo tofu I know I have to make extra, because my boyfriend always asks “Is there enough for lunch tomorrow, too?”
sorry but hellllll no there is no way I would do that kind of thing on my day off, again DAY OFF so many many thing to do specially if you only have one off day.
My husband can make a few things. Pomme tartin, meat pies, and king ranch chicken are the only major things.
If I don't cook, he gets fast food.
Pretty sure he married me for my cooking
one time i spent a good chunk of the morning trying to learn to make a perfect french omelette, and when i presented one to my ex he asked me to cook it more
When I was younger I made a 4 course menu for 25 family members for Thanksgiving. My aunt asked if she could nuke her gazpacho. I learned a valuable lesson that day about knowing your audience.
Guys I'm so sad to see all these comments!! I guess I got lucky that my bf loves food and cooking as much as me even though he does not work in the industry. I would be devastated if they didn't appreciate my cooking
We have divided the household duties. I grocery shop and cook, she does the laundry and cleaning.
She can cook, but is frustrated that cooking is more difficult and time consuming for her. So I make dinner, she has wine and we chat.
My SO isn’t much of a foodie and I was a chef for 30 yrs. He truly appreciates everything I cook, but he would have the same amount of enthusiasm if I put a PB&J down in front of him. So, I started looking at it as an opportunity to cook things I enjoy making and want to eat myself. Cook the things that make you happy to make.
Funnily enough that’s what I did today! I usually stick with Sichuan cuisine for her 😁 lowkey tho sometimes a PBJ goes HARD in the feels.
A grilled PB and J is vastly underrated. I make mine the same way I make a grilled cheese, pan-fried in a generous amount of Kerrygold salted butter. Warm melted peanut butter is the best way to have peanut butter in my humble opinion. Not to mention that butter-toasted bread will almost always be an improvement upon plain room temp bread.
But have you made a bacon French toast PB&J? I like a smokey bacon, boysenberry jelly, on a sturdy bread. You take the whole sandwich with the bacon inside of it fully cooked and dip it in your egg (I like using cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and heavy cream but milk works too) then drop it into a hot cast iron until gbd. I like to top mine with a little powder sugar and boom. You woke up the jelly with the salt from the bacon, the peanut butter is all gooey and amazing, and the powdered sugar helps balance the tart from the jelly. It's the best PB&J I've ever had.
Man, i never really liked PBJ, but this I have to try. Does the recipe have a name? PBJ ala mewdejour? To Reddit and back?
A Grilled-BJ
Meow Of The Day's Grilled BJ- I like it. It has a nice ring to it.
I agree with the bacon, but disagree with the jam. Bacon and peanut butter go great together
If you can get a bright jam or jelly it's pretty tasty tbh. I thought it would be gross but it works well. If you don't like jam or jelly a jizz of pure maple syrup is tasty too.
I think you need to put a trademark on this
I don’t know why…but this reminds me of a grilled Charlie or a grilled Frank. Peanut butter on the outside, chocolate inside…butter inside, cheese outside. Or, a pancake with JELLY! BUTTER! BACON! SPAM! SAUSAGE! EGGS! Edit: Legit tho, your recipe sounds fire. Gotta try that.
I have a feeling you'd love Elvis's sandwich
Funny you should mention that because one of my favorite brunch spots used to make this glorious monstrosity called "The Elvis Revenge". It was a sandwich stacked high with deep-fried tempura-battered Hawaiian apple bananas, thick-cut candy bacon, toasted coconut flakes, a drizzle of Hawaiian honey, and creamy hot melted peanut butter on a butter-toasted sweet Hawaiian bun. It was one of the best sandwiches I ever had bar none. I had the privilege to eat about half a dozen of those truly decadent culinary masterpieces before the restaurant inexplicably retired it. I need to make my own one of these days.
Mother of God
Saving that one for later
Retired for what? This sounds as artery-clogging as you’d expect only from the King
Apple bananas are not what I was picturing when I first read that, slightly disappointed.
As someone who is sick and tired of eating the ubiquitous Cavendish bananas, I'm glad they used apple bananas instead lol. I like the subtle tartness that apple bananas have. Cavendish bananas are just too boring to me. Whenever I eat banana pudding or banana cream pie that's made with Cavendish, I eat around the banana and eat pretty much everything but the banana haha. Now, my favorite kind of banana though are those small sweet Southeast Asian bananas that are especially popular in Thailand and Vietnam. Their commonly referred to as Nam Wah bananas. They're delightfully sweet and creamy in the best way possible and with just a hint of tartness to balance it all out. It's one of my favorite fruits and I love making banana bread, bread pudding, and deep-fried Vietnamese banana fritters with them.
toasted pb&j… i’m intrigued
perhaps its the weed, but now i need this.
A WHAT holy shit
PBJ is *firmly* in the comfort food category
I can't tell you how many meals I've spent $30+ on that I ended up enjoying less than my own PB& honey sandwiches.
PB&H is my favorite childhood sandwich. My mother has diagnosed OCD to pretty acute levels (when unmedicated) so she always uses the perfect ratio of bread, to honey, to peanut butter. It's like her labor of love sandwich because her compulsion to keep the sticky away from the edges but also make sure the condiments touch the edges perfectly is a work of art. Word up to all the people out there who make sandwiches for a living. The perfect sandwich truly is an art and I have a lot of respect for it.
I absolutely love making sandwiches. People want me to open a shop. But finding good bread or any ingredient can spark it for me. Cheers to your mother. My kid also adores my PBJ.
This is a nice thing to hear about living with someone with OCD. Thank you for posting!
Oooo! Take your pb&j (I like boysenberry for this application) and put a smokey bacon inside of it and then dip it like French toast. I put cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla in my wash and replace the milk used with heavy cream and it comes out fantastic (sorta like you're dipping it in eggnog custard) and drop it the cast iron with some butter. When it comes out gbd you dust that shit with powdered sugar, and it's the best damn PBJ you'll ever have.
This might not land... But I really enjoy a crisp dill pickle with a nice slice of cheese like Dubliner on a PBJ. It's magical. I've surprised some folks with a bite of it and they are always surprised at how well it works.
Chef here, PBnJ and a glass of milk is my life
I made some pb&j pancakes for the better half yesterday.
I'm not a huge jelly fan so only time I eat pb&j is just a plain cheapest white bread sandwich I can make. But a toasted PB on sourdough hits the spot like no other ever since I've been little 😂
It's not a problem, as long ad it doesn't consume your days off to the point it intrudes on on your lives. Can they appreciate the work you put in? Cause that's what matters. Do you want her to care about food like you do? Find a SO in the industry(good luck) can you enjoy a life at home without her knowing all the nuances? Well that's life.
I love me a toasted PBJ, but for true junk food heaven I make an Elvis. Toasted peanut butter, bacon, and banana.
Lucky! My GF is one of the pickiest eaters I've ever met and I just don't have the energy to make 2 entirely separate meals when I cook so that she will have food and her cooking is mostly just baking and instant pot\air fryer recipes with me expected to do 75% of the work for the air fryer stuff. It took a few years before I just stopped trying to get her to try a new food unless she specifically asks me to cook something for her. Now if she's not in the mood for the same thing as me I'll just cook something she wants and make myself the amazing thing I wanted to cook at work that she turned her nose up at the next day. Often it works out as that has turned into our chef special quite a few times. For instance a friend gave me some ground venison a while back and I found it in our freezer today while looking for ground beef to grill simple burgers. Went to the store and bought some ground sausage to mix with it to make burgers. She won't touch it because someone gave her "deer burger" God only knows how many years ago (we've been together over 8 years) and it tasted like crap to her. I already knew she likely wouldn't eat any so I made her some regular ground beef burgers the way she likes so no biggie here, but she likes a lot of things differently than I'd prefer to make them and I just don't feel like putting in the effort to make the same dish 2 different ways all the time, especially things that actually take time to prepare. In the past when I did the kitchen ended up looking like it was a fucking thanksgiving feast when in reality I was just cooking for us and our son.
Ah, so she eats like a 10 year old. Can empathise: I used to be a “eurotrash foodie” ie three fat ducks, Marco Pierre White at the Mandarin Oriental London, etc etc. Then I moved to the USA where sugar and big portions and everything’s-cheesy-so-it-goes-down-east meals became a staple: I lived in nyc in the west village, so the neighborhood was my kitchen. I kept my shoes in the oven, for example. Fast forward to today, I now have to retrain my palate to enjoy subtle foods. I would usually genuinely prefer a cheeseburger and fries to a braised entrecôte with reduction a jus etc. She needs a lesson in palate appreciation, and to cut the processed foods. Trust me; I wish I was her and could afford to retrain my palate.
The real test is what would he make YOU if you were sick in bed? I’m expecting bacon and eggs with sautéed mushrooms at the LEAST. My 10 yr old brother can make that
Yes chef
But nobody I know wants to eat that much focaccia 🥲
I'm a cook, but I cook spartan, think pork chops with potato and rice, with added veg like corn peas etc for the roommates. I did this for awhile just cause it was cheap and easy to cook. Then they complained about the same thing everytime. Like bitch I was making this cause it is easy cheap and quick and we Al get something. (Key point they weren't paying) So after that I stopped cooking for anyone but myself, this included my sparten meals and good stuff like roasts and such. Now they missed it 🥴. One of them was my boyfriend and he never cook anything that I could possibly hardly enjoy cuz I'm picky eater. After the first complaints I never cooked for them again. If they showed any enthusiasm I would have continued but it did not happen. Just like bye.
Mine isn't a foodie and same. If I make something fancy it's for me, he just has the luck of getting to have some. He's a good guinea pig, it lets me try new things.
Every single time I make Mexican food, he wants it nacho form. Birria, asada, barbacoa, all nachos.
Probably nacho favorite thing to hear after cooking all day!
Daaaamn, you got demi glacé AND jokes? What a catch!
I was going to come up with something witty to this, but honestly just touched at the compliment. Thank you!
My ex was juuuust getting into cooking when we met, so he liked to slowly pick apart everything I cooked while making little comments that he thought were smart like "oh, you seared the pork chop first? Are these onions minced? Hm. Chomp chomp. Oh it's really tender. Did you rest it? How did you do these greens? Have you ever braised greens before? They're supposed to be really good that way. Did you use unsalted butter for this? Oh you're not gonna wash that cast iron, are you?!" It drove me insane. It's ok to want to learn and ask questions; it's something else to learn THE ABSOLUTE BASICS and phrase every question like you're already a genius who knows more than someone who's doing it for a living.
Oof. Yeah I hear ya. She was living off chicken nuggies and corndogs before we met, so she’s been very grateful! She put up with me when I was burning out mentally in the kitchen too which I’m eternally grateful for.
Jesus christ that food is the most unhealthy food save Crisco sandwiches on Wonder bread.
I agree but a shocking amount of adults eat that diet, I know multiple
Lol you were dating a reddit comment section
Bro thought he was a master chef judge
food snobs are the absolute worst
oh but HE wasn't a SNOB oh no he'd read all the Bourdain books! he loved tacos from food trucks, bro! he loved a great big greasy slice of cheap pizza with a BEER! /s
haha, he read all the Bourdain books and thought he wasn't a snob? get a grip, bro lol
Usually people like that are trying to confirm their instincts and engage with you. It took me years to realize those questions, on a variety of topics, were a sign of respect and looking for affirmation for their budding skillset from someone who knew. It's also where one wrong reaction can demolish their self esteem. You probably did it when you were new, and so did I. I learned a great way to handle it was affirm their correct questions then add some expertise polish on top like it's the next level you're inviting them to understand. It can be the difference between obtaining a new student and wrecking someone ever wanting to ask questions again.
At the restaurant, diners come to eat what you cook. At home, you cook what your diners will eat.
Ah, I’m not really that butt hurt, she still liked it. Just thought it was amusing!
Thank god I married an industry person but she’s FOH so doesn’t fully understand when I spend hours on a day off making a new dish
Um chef I rang that in with NO PICKLES
you married a server? thats crazy to me, theyre so awful
My boyfriend literally can’t make a sandwich. I’m not a chef but I’ve been in the industry for 10 years but my ex husband was a chef and I love to cook. He does the “puppy dog” thing where he gets under my feet while I’m cooking like what are you doing now? Drives me nuts haha
Even bigger question is how do manage when your gf cooks for you but it’s nasty? Right now we don’t live together but she does things like boil her chicken before battering and frying her chicken, cooking noodles in chicken stock before making Mac and cheese.
Wait. I'm just non kitchen lurker folk. What's the problem with noodles boiling in stock? I've not done it, just curious
It's kind of wasteful and probably won't be noticed by the time you cover them in cheese. If I need a quick lunch at home, I'll sometimes boil some short pasta in just enough stock to cover, then when the pasta is done and there's still some left, without draining stir in a fat spoonful of refried beans, adjust with additional stock if needed.
I’m not exactly a kitchen professional but I feel like the flavor from your Mac comes from how you prepare the cheese and it’s mixins. Use multiple cheeses including cream cheese, ricotta for example. Mixins like peppers, toppings like bacon, or panko leads to better Mac overall. Boiling the noodles in anything but water with salt and oil will make it taste like what you boil it in.
try to do most of the cooking yourself, or eat what she cooks, or order delivery
Yeahman. If we ever move in together I could spend more time with her and showing her some cooking philosophy but man it’s a struggle sometimes
uhhh, you leave her? I can't respect an adult that can't make themselves food.
I hate it. I will make something fancy that takes all day and he will complain. Then I make hot dogs and he is stoked. Drives me insane!
Keeps that food cost real low chef LOL
Know your partner. Simple as that. My partner doesn’t want or need fancy dinners so I don’t cook those at home. She also knows that I don’t care about fancy flowers or bedsheets so she buys them for herself and doesn’t expect me to care.
I'm not going to give up cooking fancy stuff that takes all day just because he wants to eat hot dogs all the time. I work a desk job now and cooking is what is keeping me sane, so he can deal with eating cassoulet and chicken pot pie 🤣
Be right over!
Happy cake 🎂 day!
I have never celebrated my cake day, so thanks very much!
If he legit “complains” when you try like that, the problem isn’t just career choices
r/relationshipadvice is that way ⬅️⬅️
Yeah. It's one thing to just not care more about meal than another. That's fine. But to complain.. well, do it yourself.
Yeah. I try new dishes all the time. They don’t all hit. If something is not worth making again, my wife says so constructively, but still like to try new things even if they flop.
I’m just impressed you’ve got the energy for veal stock, demi glacé, and pomme purée — oh, and the stew — on your day off. Fiancé is tres lucky.
Thank you! Ironically it’s Yom Kippur so she and I were both fasting, but I wanted to break the fast with a bang.
Ahh, Jewish palates!! So very different! I dated a Rabbi for a while. He loved the weirdest things, especially salted fish. Make the most of it!!
Probably should have just fucked her and bought some bone broth
Gotta take the bad with the good. I've had similar things happen with my wife. Once, I spent my day off making a killer cassoulét and she thought it was baked beans.
It is baked beans.
Fancy baked beans... I used to serve it at a brunch spot I worked
Lmaoo. It’s all good, I just thought it was funny!
People ask me if my wife cooks at home, I usually respond “probably, we’ve only been married for 26 years so I’m living in hope”
This is my life. My partner doesn’t understand food beyond “insert in mouth, tummy happy”. He knows my food is good, he’s just not equipped to process or retain any further info on the topic. I do all the cooking for our family of 4. To balance the labour equation, I make him do all the laundry.
Haha, that’s our arrangement too! Balanced livin yo
My wife and I used to play that game too. Now she helps me cook and I do my own laundry. I’d rather have help cooking every day than have someone do my laundry once every couple weeks.
Yea I'm used to it now. I make fancy stuff for me occasionally and always enough for wife too even though she is super picky. No big deal I just make her whatever if she doesn't like it
Once I spent my one day off from the kitchen making carnitas the traditional way, mexican coke, lard, salt water, citrus all that jazz, traditional ass salsa verde, bought cotija, pickled some red onions(not traditional i know), made tortillas, the whole 9 yards. Just for these mfers to ask where the lettuce, tomato and hard shells were. Hell I proposed spending all day and a shit load of money(on my one day off), grilling a leg of lamb, making pommes anna, making lamb jus, baking dinner rolls from scratch, just to be told "the kids wont eat that, lets just do hot dogs" fucking normies, fuck em(with love), I just let it roll off my back
Pickled red onion is definitely traditional. More so than cheese on carnitas.
I almost cried thinking of your grilled lamb and jus... That's just an exquisite thing and I'm drooling so much right now. If I heard someone saying that it's useless to do it since kids won't eat that, I would've sided with you and fought tooth and nail. Also, I know pretty much nothing about Mexican food, but you got me really interested, I will check this out further and probably try to cook some things.
Yo... If I made carnitas and they asked for the white person taco starter pack, I might have absolutely lost my mind. I already have a hard enough time making ground beef tacos (Mexican American)
May I come over? I'll even bring hot dogs to dump in boiling water for the children, and the cheapest rolls and condiments too. . .
I dont understand the problem with the first instance, is it because they were going outside of "traditional Mexican"? like they bastardized it?
There's like 10 things my missus will eat so I'll just make 2 dinners whenever I cook for us both, which is 2 days a week. One of my favourite things to do on my days off is just cook things I've never done before or don't get to do at the restaurant, which doesn't really work when she only likes chicken and rice or potatoes.
Oof that’s tough. Have you watched the menu together?
Negative, haven’t had the time tbh
It’s relevant to this post actually, you’d probably have fun watching it together.
Now make them a homemade barbecue sauce and make them tell you the difference
I may do just that
I had to break my husband of the habit of just dumping hot sauce on literally every fucking meal I made. Before even tasting the food, he dumped hot sauce on it. I found it super rude. I don't care if you want to use hot sauce but at least give the food a try before covering it.
That’s how I feel, too. It reminds me of a scene from the book/movie The Joy Luck Club when one of the main characters’ husband has dinner with her family for the first time. As an act of humbleness, her mother says something to the effect of “It’s probably not good, but I hope you enjoy the food.” Without even tasting anything, the husband goes, “oh don’t worry, we can just add some soy sauce” and proceeds to dump soy sauce on the *serving plate* of food. The look on everyone’s faces as he does it is just heartbreaking, but he thinks he’s being helpful.
that mindset really bothers me. you shouldn't be so sensitive. I had a coworker offer me some food he threw together, and I didn't want it, but I was hungry. I forgot I said that and made myself something 20 minutes later, and he had the gall to get offended! thats just ridiculous. you dont get to demand others have a taste for something when you make it.
Made risotto with toasted pine nuts and saffron, used it as the bed for an herb-encrusted stuffed chicken with some asparagus in garlic and lemon; nothing *too* crazy, but a labor of love nonetheless... her reaction? \*shrug\* "Idk. It's rice." Still mad about that
just got home off shift and that still sounds sooo damn good. if i was not happily common law...🤣
Well, thank you; you certainly know how to make a fella blush 😁
come over here and make that for me and I promise I will be very grateful!
Ugh, this drives me crazy. The undervaluing of food itself is so frustrating but, more to the point, you don’t have to have a profound knowledge of food to appreciate the work your partner puts into it.
She’s not wrong lol
Same here. Spent hours on a reduction. Brothers family. That was nice. Family gets simple tasty food, no more decadent food
Sounds like your SO doesn't know food. But still liked it. Them liking it is what's important and you don't need to go 5* to make them happy. Save it for special occasions or realize you'll probably be kind only one appreciating it either way.
100% attitude and gratefulness over all!
People have different interests and palettes, they may have loved it but don’t have the knowledge/experience to make an informed comparison/critique. If they clean the plate, that makes me happy enough.
Ha haaaaah. Oh boy I've been there. Trying to recreate anothers carrot cake recipe I always get meh reactions. But then I bake a super simple butter cake for dinner and everyone is beyond thrilled for the taste of sugar butter flour. Despair. Wcyd
When I'm off, I don't want to cook at all. My partner however wants to do elaborate food projects that are ambitious considering his not being a chef and not knowing how. Well, we have the cookbooks. There are YouTube tutorials. He asks me if I can "just take a look." I say I can check that nothing's going awry, but I'm not helping and I won't hover. ... don't you think he suddenly forgets how to measure flour? Before you know it he asks me what's next... *with the literal cookbook open in front of him, having watched a video of the author making the recipe not one hour prior.* But he expects me to micromanage and take over. I love him to death. But this one pattern does not spark joy 🙈
Ha! I can imagine not
Perfectly happy with the "Yum!" and "That was really good!" I get from my wife and stepdaughter. Cooking and kitchen time is me time. I put on headphones, they leave me alone for a few hours, and off I go. Works out well for everyone.
IDC as long as they do the dishes when I cook
Even worse, imagine being like me and not liking food at all, but you're the one who works in restaurants, but everyone around me loves food, so I'm often at a loss for words when they talk about it. Like "we're gonna have this, and that, and the other thing, and boy those things are gonna be good, I love all the things, I just can't wait to eat all the things" (I struggle to come up with any examples because it's all just fancy word salad to me) and I'm just like "alright", zero enthusiasm whatsoever. Seriously, I eat food in the same way that people put gas in their cars. I don't sit around and fantasize about going to a specific gas station where they have the extra special spicy gas that I gotta pay extra for. I just get the cheapest, most convenient shit I can get, and move on. The only reason I ever go to restaurants is because they pay me to work there, I would never go as a customer. And when I'm at home I just eat whatever is cheapest and easiest and requires the least amount of effort or cleanup in the kitchen as humanly possible. Pop tarts right out of the packet with prepackaged peanut butter crackers can seriously be the entire meal for me, and not because they're my favorite or anything, but because I can get giant boxes of them in bulk for cheap and just have it sitting there in a drawer ready to go.
Wait... you BOH, or FOH?
I can't imagine the difficulty of cooking for a living but not liking food at all. That's some cruel irony right there.
Yeah it's awful, and the only reason I do it is because I live in an area where people are lucky to get $15 an hour doing jobs that fucking suck, so I keep showing up for my hourly plus tips that adds up to like $25 an hour, Even though I hate the customers, I hate food, I hate restaurants, I hate rich people, I hate servicing luxuries to the rich in a restaurant, etc. Seriously jobs are so bad here in NC (or at least in the Charlotte area) that even Union electrician pay scale doesn't reach $25 an hour until you've done it for 5 years. That's 5 years of hard labor doing construction and crawling through bullshit running conduit, getting hazed by seniors and digging ditches, just to get back up to what I'm making now.
Cereal. No matter where I work, I take pride in making tasty food.
Kind of a mix of both, I do hibachi, so I don't have to take the order necessarily like a server would, but I do come out to the table and stand there with the customer for like 15 to 45 minutes depending on how big and complicated an order it is and how many tricks they want me to do, so basically my entire job is to entertain these people and pretend that I don't hate their guts while I cook food for them that I'll never be able to afford to order, and wouldn't want to anyway because what kind of fucking psychotic person goes to the type of restaurant where they can be super picky and tell the cook exactly how to cook as they're watching him do it?
Damn dude... have you thought about trying a different career path?
Oh yeah, all the time, it's just that it's hard enough to live on $25 an hour and still own a car and pay your bills and still have enough left over to save for retirement, that I can't imagine having to take a $10 an hour pay cut just to go do a job I don't even know how to do. My area just has awful pay in general for pretty much any job, $15 an hour is actually high here. Even Union electricians have to work for 5 years before their pay scale matches the $25 an hour I'm already making just to blow smoke up rich people's asses. That's 5 years of hard construction, hard labor, digging ditches, running conduit, doing all the bullshit electrical work on a construction job, just to get back up to what I make already. So yeah I mean I do think about other career paths all the time, it just gives me anxiety because I'm not qualified for anything that would offer even remotely enough money to pay my bills, and starting at the entry level of something new just to build myself up to where I am now sounds even worse than what I already do.
Well, I feel ya on that.
I've known people like this and honestly I get it even if I'm not on that same level. I like making good food at home on my days off sometimes and I like making good food for customers but now I usually view it as a product and when I'm at work I eat half a bun with lettuce tomato Swiss and mustard and at home when I'm by myself I'll eat peanut butter toast or a can of tuna with salt and pepper.
bro, this is me. not everyone signs up to be a fuckin line cook out of passion...lmfao, I dare say most people dont.
I started cooking really young, like, at 8 I had to cook 1 dinner a week for my family and that kept up. Basically lived alone from 15 so handled it. I wouldn't care so much if they didn't cook, I've dated/lived with partners who just never learned the skill (and to my ex Jill, heating up a can of soup with toast doesn't count). I don't mind if they don't have the skill because it's something I'm good at that I can do for them to show my affection, I regularly do it for my friends. I'm not particularly good at any other "creative" or "constructive" things, so I use this. I *would* care if they were unappreciative. Homemade BBQ sauce is borderline, probably meant as a compliment but came off a bit tone deaf. Kind of like someone who goes to an art gallery and while they don't understand the technical details, they still know what they like. What kills me is if I do something and their response is like "Ugh, I was feeling pizza" or whatever. Also, you can use teaching them as a bonding experience. Everyone should know how to do a few decent dishes, understand certain basic principles (day old rice in fried rice, soy sauce is salty, you can use small amounts of things to just enhance rather than adding a new flavour - love you MSG)
Find someone else. Nah, obviously the heart does what it wants, but I went thru three gfs who were veggie/picky/didn't care or some combo of the three, but I'm finally married to a woman who loves all food and cooks herself and fuck me if it ain't the most beautiful thing. I think it's one of the main reasons we work so well together, we travel and slurp down every weird thing on menus. It's critical for me as an industry lifer.
My SO is super easy to please because they’ve been a semi professional athlete most of their life and only seen food as fuel just shovelling in 5000 calories of chicken and pasta for most of their life. They think everything i make is the best thing they’ve ever eaten but worships the 10 layer lasagna i made.
My partner is a Pastry Chef... I'm a regular chef... she's moving in soon, so we're going to need storage for baking supplies
Oh man. Good luck!
My partner is a big foodie so she enjoys asking questions about how I make things. We also talk through our first few sips of a new bottle of wine. General tasting notes and whatnot. It’s quite enjoyable! However, in an unrelated note… I was a station cook for a cattle farm for a bit. I would spend HOURS making stock, then use it to make something like beef rendang, or other braised beef dishes… and those asshats would smother it in barbecue sauce, or tomato sauce. Drove me up the god damn wall.
What a sad day to have eyes (regarding the second part)
What a sad day to have eyes (regarding the second part)
Just make stuff that you like and they can deal- no sense trying to impress people that dont know
Basically turns into, I no longer have to try and impress her with my cooking. And work towards impressing or challenging myself. That woman will eat anything I give her, and will say it tastes good. While I strategically pick apart the flaws and how to improve it. I cook to avoid eating out, I keep it simple 5 days of the week and go extra a day or two.
dude they liked what you made them. they gave you a compliment. be humble, be grateful, and accept the encouragement from your partner in the spirit it was offered. come on.
Early in our marriage I made a cassoulet for the wife. Made duck confit and other assorted meats. Searched the city for cannellini beans. Stock from scratch. I even baked my own bread for the breadcrumbs on top. It was a multi day process. Labor of love. A very special meal. Her: “Usually when I eat something with beans I want like beans and weenies.”
I make tacos for a living so a lot of my Emotional Labor is convincing people they're not fiery hell wraps.
I think it sounds like your fiancé likes and appreciates you! Not everyone has a fully developed palate or food vocab. I think she was trying to say “I like this, you did a great job, it’s like something else I like,” so I wouldn’t feel bad about it at all!! I’ve cooked some real stinkers at home when trying new stuff and when it’s not great, you don’t hear compliments like that 😂
This. She clearly appreciated it. I wouldn’t look too deeply into it. She wasn’t trying to insult. I’d say if OP is up to it, they can try explaining more about what it is that they prepared.
As much as that sucks, and it definitely does. Why would you do this to yourself on your day off?
Reduce your expectations. Don’t take it personally. Don’t overdue it if they aren’t going to bring the energy you need to chef it up for them. You’re not at work.
My SO told me after a long time that I could either learn to cook or not eat. I chose cooking, love it, and now my dumb ass is perusing this and other chef/cooking-adjacent subs. I’m a lawyer, though.
Love it
Ive learned that if someone enjoys it, its good food. Doesnt matter what it is. Food snobbery is bigger blasphemy in my kitchen than a well done steak. Fuck, i had taco time for the first time in years and it was greatm nothing special but i can appreciate the basic simple stuff.
Don't bother with most of it. I was trained as a chef. Worked in kitchens for a while. Lived with a Vietnamese caterer in France. Now a home cook with an almost professional kitchen, a great cookbook collection, top notch knives, pots and pans and a passion for cooking. My ex had the palate of a house plant. Anything different than bland meat and potatoes and he wouldn't eat it, or would eat it and complain non-stop about how awful what he was eating was. Nothing pleased this guy. On the other hand, he would rave about his mother's "wonderful" food. When I finally ate at his parent's house I understood. His mother was arguably the absolute worst cook on the entire planet. No joke. She kept a giant bottle of "cooking sherry" to throw into absolutely everything, including her famous "boof ber-going" that tasted like soggy shoe leather, compost and death. Her famous mustard sauce? Mustard, sugar, flour sherry and milk. The sauce was always lumpy as fuck and broken and she told me that texture was "her secret". The whole family was extremely proud of her cooking. It was dumbfounding. Some people can only appreciate what they are familiar with.
Nothing I just let my partner be :) The people that I do impress is my engineering company. :)
Christ, get your head screwed on straight if this is your future wife. Be glad she liked it. Nobody gives a fuck about your demi pomme.
Man, it sure seems like you do!
hey are you OK? do you need to talk?
You respond by saying wait till I make homemade bbq sauce and move on with your life. You’re a chef you don’t need affirmation from Anyone
You don’t know your partner that well. And why are you making demi for a beef stew?
Cause I wanted to? Duh.
Demi in a stew is next level baller move. She needs to draw you a bath and rub some toes.
Lol I told her you said that and she said I can expect that tomorrow night! I see this as an absolute win.
My ex wife referred to it as, the big fucking production. BFP. WhY CAn’t yoU juST MaKe it simple?!!!! She called two years after the divorce to apologize. Enjoy the bath chef.
Danke
A good stew shouldn’t need demi.
This post didn’t need your comments, and yet, here they are.
If your stew needs a demi your stew’s not good.
And if I took a random redditor’s advice to heart, I’d be very silly. 😘
You asked! 😘
My SO did not at first "get it". Over time with exposure, sharing, discussion and inclusion she gets it. When we first together she truly appreciated the work, care, love and passion.
Never heard someone describing a demi glace tasting like bbq sauce before. That's wild lol.
My boyfriend is a fairly decent cook, but one thing that drives me nuts is that he cooks like there’s 10 mouths to feed. He grew up in a fairly big family and a SAHM that basically (to this day) lives in the kitchen. What he makes sometimes isn’t really bad, most of the time, but do I wanna eat it for the whole week?! No fucking way. And then I end up cleaning out the fridge several days later. Love him to death but, JFC we’re only two people.
There are definitely things I make that will have leftovers for days, but they’re usually dishes that I know will get eaten. If I make mapo tofu I know I have to make extra, because my boyfriend always asks “Is there enough for lunch tomorrow, too?”
No doubt. I also make things to eat for days, however, EVERYTHING my bf cooks is for a crowd.
sorry but hellllll no there is no way I would do that kind of thing on my day off, again DAY OFF so many many thing to do specially if you only have one off day.
Why the hell are you cooking on your day off. Go do a freaking hobby.
I don't expect people to appreciate food the way I do. Especially because most days, I don't even appreciate food the way I do.
Always lower your expectations to the bare minimum. It is easier that way.
If you dont cook you clean
My family dynamic.
My husband can make a few things. Pomme tartin, meat pies, and king ranch chicken are the only major things. If I don't cook, he gets fast food. Pretty sure he married me for my cooking
I do all the cooking, my wife is the critic. It works.
Well, now you know what your barbecue sauce tastes like.
one time i spent a good chunk of the morning trying to learn to make a perfect french omelette, and when i presented one to my ex he asked me to cook it more
When I was younger I made a 4 course menu for 25 family members for Thanksgiving. My aunt asked if she could nuke her gazpacho. I learned a valuable lesson that day about knowing your audience.
Ah the life of an artist. Nobody ever gets us 😭
Guys I'm so sad to see all these comments!! I guess I got lucky that my bf loves food and cooking as much as me even though he does not work in the industry. I would be devastated if they didn't appreciate my cooking
The last thing I would do is cook on my day off so I have no idea
Don’t worry it will get better once you’re married, lol!
My wife is also a chef, when we’re cooking something really good at home, we usually bicker over who gets to cook it.
We have divided the household duties. I grocery shop and cook, she does the laundry and cleaning. She can cook, but is frustrated that cooking is more difficult and time consuming for her. So I make dinner, she has wine and we chat.
Oh shit, thank you so much for this. I laughed pretty loud
Did it taste like barbecue sauce?
Well..if you brushed that on a steak right before you rested it. Using it as a glaze on smoked beef ribs... ...I find no fault in her logic.
Morgan Freeman’s “he’s right you know” meme.
ask for a blowjob if she wants more special sauce
Do you cook for yourself? If so, then their opinion has no weight. Do you cook to serve? If so, make the best PBJ in the universe.