To eat or not to eat...

Paige is asleep so I will take a moment to commandeer her role as postmaster. You may have noticed an abrupt end to my cooking posts a couple of months back. Allow me to explain. First, Dave spent 5 weeks on a dental rotation in DesMoines, IA and was only home on the weekends - thus no cooking ( I wasn't going to mess up the kitchen just for me!) Then we left on vacation for 5 weeks - again, hardly any cooking. After that I decided for a whole month to refrain from eating refined sugar and flour, which simultaneously resulted in little cooking. I lived off of strawberries, blueberries, cherries, bananas, Greek yogurt, and whole wheat tortillas with peanut butter and fruit and cinnamon. I'm afraid Dave's meals were pretty bland. To be honest, while on that "diet" my usual cooking style seemed very unappetizing. Everything was so heavy. Since starting this diet I have just wanted light, cool foods.

Well, tonight I decided to cook something interesting. These recipes come from Ina Garten, aka (The Barefoot Contessa.)

I made Linguine with Shrimp Scampi which is sauteed garlic and shrimp with freshly squeezed lemons and fresh parsley. I complemented it by adding a dish of Arugula with Parmesan salad, which is arugula leaves, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and very good shaved Parmesan cheese.

So... to eat or not to eat? Rather than tell you straight out, let me relate a few of the comments from the dinner table and you decide.

Dave: "Is this the arugula? Hm, it taste like a weed."

Dave: "Well, the strawberries are good!"

Dave: "Do we have any macaroni and cheese?"

OK, OK, before you go thinking I have a totally ungrateful and tactless husband, please understand that first, I didn't care for the meal much either (not a fan of store-bought arugula). Second, I agree with him that the lemon in the pasta was way overpowering.

Third: I knew before making this dish that Dave doesn't care for shrimp.

So why not stick to cooking boring, safe foods instead of daring to experiment? Two reasons: you never know when you'll be pleasantly surprised, and discovering new flavors and textures is what keeps cooking fun.