Cooking for couples

Whether you are newlyweds or just reinventing your relationship, you may find cooking together an enriching experience. If you play your roles right, this can be a therapeutic exercise for your marriage because it opens an avenue for teamwork. By cooking as a couple, one learns how to give way while his or her partner leads, and the result is a harmonious interplay between two loving individuals.

This harmony, of course, takes quite some time to master. When my husband and I cooked together for the first time, I went close to hitting him in the head with the skillet he asked me to wipe. I thought to myself, WE are supposed to be cooking, not cleaning kitchenware! Why was I the one left to do menial things while he had all his creative juices running?

I wiped the skillet, beat the mixtures, and measured the ingredients albeit against my will. All afternoon that we were cooking, I was grumbling like the devil.

But one appetizer, two entrées and one dessert later, we were a couple again. He, the food scientist, created a sumptuous meal. Had I let my pride get the best of me, we would not have finished in the kitchen, and our guests would have starved to death.

I realized that it was not easy for him to see me struggling the way I did either. I was then an amateur in the kitchen, while he had been practically making a living working in it. In all fairness, he warned me before we cooked that the kitchen has room for only one chef, and one of us had to give way and be the sous-chef. When it was my turn to be the chef, he so politely did what I asked him to do—without any devilish grumblings in the background, mind you.

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How to cook as a couple:

Start with simple meals. If it’s the first time for both of you to cook, start even simpler, like breakfast during weekends or a stir-fry meal for lunch. A pasta entrée makes for a good division of labor; one of you can take care of the pasta while the other cooks up the sauce.

About three cookbooks that have different menus for different occasions and seasons should be enough. (We have Italian, Asian, Simple Pasta, and Old-fashioned Holiday cookbooks at home). The Web is rife with recipes of sorts, but I suggest finding Web sites that would best suit your needs and lifestyle. They also have to be sites that were recommended by those who have tried and "tasted" them. Most of my recipes were lifted from Unilever Food Solutions and Unilever. These two sites have a multitude of recipes that range from special holiday meals to everyday dinners, and were contributed by an army of seasoned culinary experts. Plus, I never have a hard time looking for the ingredients in their recipes. That is a definite bonus especially if you and your partner have little time to run to the supermarket.

Here’s a simple entrée you and your partner can try together.

Shrimp Creole

2 tbsp. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter
2 tsbp. all-purpose flour
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp. green pepper, chopped
1 tbsp. red pepper, chopped
1 tbsp. celery, chopped
1 jar (16 oz.) Tostitos salsa (mild or medium, depending on your palate)
1 can (8-oz.) tomato sauce
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 ½ shrimp, cleaned, deveined

1. Heat butter and flour in a non-stick saucepan until brown, stirring constantly.
2. Add garlic, green pepper, red pepper and celery. Sauté for 2 minutes or until tender.
3. Stir in salsa and tomato sauce. Mix evenly. Simmer for 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Stir in shrimp. Cook for 7-10 minutes or until shrimp are pink and cooked through. Stir in soy sauce and simmer for one more minute. Serve warm over rice.

Note: The adjective "creole" refers to a type of food prepared with rice, tomatoes, peppers and sometimes, okra.

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Photo credits:

Pot and veggies: www.platinumcookware.com at http://www.platinumcookware.com/product%20images/EnhJumbo.jpg

Shrimp creole: www.mountainhighyoghurt.com at http://www.mountainhighyoghurt.com/images_recipes/ShrimpCreole.jpg

Freedom in Your Marriage

Marriage is bittersweet. Sometimes, you feel as though you are going to implode because of too much love, sometimes you just want to explode because of anguish, guilt, annoyance, confusion … name it. There are just many things that come with marriage that make you want to pack your bags and run crying to mommy.

Many of you know that my husband and I are practically newly married. The fact that I am writing this makes it obvious that we have a lot to learn. As we enter the first years of cohabiting as a married couple, we discover a whole slew of things that we would have otherwise ignored.

I notice that I fret over small matters that merit no attention from other people. For example, I consider dinnertime as sacred, almost equal to going to church on Sunday mornings. The dinner table and the kitchen are a temple to me, and when they are violated, I hear voices in my head telling me to knock over bottles, pots and pans. My eleventh commandment is plain and simple: "Thou shall only bring food to the dinner table. No remote controls, newspapers, magazines, books or laptops."

As I quell my unrest, I realize that’s just the way it is in marriage. Trivial things become a matter of sanity and derailment. To be fair, I am sure that my husband has his own “things,” too. And I wouldn’t be surprise if I found out he also hears voices telling him to run his car over the garage. He is a good man, husband and friend.

As individuals, we are all allowed to have autonomy over things that we consider sacred. For some, it is going to church, or watching Sunday night football, or visiting the bookstore on a Saturday afternoon. But as a “better” half of a whole, we are expected to give up a certain amount of the autonomy we knew when we were single.

So I ask you, women, this question: How much of this autonomy are you willing to give? And when you do give up something, do you always have to sell yourself short? In marriage, when is it right to be bitter over small things rather than sweet?