My conversation with the protein muffin in the refrigerator

ME (opening fridge door): Hey.

MUFFIN: Hey.

ME: So I'm probably going to eat you.

MUFFIN: What?

ME: I'm probably going to eat you. You look delicious. Thought you should know.

MUFFIN: You can't do that.

ME: Why?

MUFFIN: Because Terry made these muffins for herself. You're not allowed to eat us.

ME: Says who?

MUFFIN: Says your wife. She even told you that when you asked whether the muffins were fair game.

ME: Doesn't seem right.

MUFFIN: What doesn't seem right?

ME: Her eating all the muffins.

MUFFIN: But we're her muffins. She made us, put us in little containers, and placed us in the upper right corner of the fridge with the other Terry-only food.

ME: I just want one muffin. There are six of you. She won't miss it.

MUFFIN: She will miss it. Nothing escapes her. You know this.

ME: I just feel like anything she makes and puts in the fridge should be available to all of us.

MUFFIN: And that's how it works 99% of the time. For all the incredible meals she has made for the family over the years, being able to reserve 1% of the food for herself isn't asking much.

ME: Well, I paid for the ingredients. I should be entitled to at least one muffin.

MUFFIN: That's not necessarily true. What if she used the cash she makes at the library to buy those ingredients?

ME: It's impossible to say. It all goes into the same bank account, so you can't know whether it was "her" money that bought those ingredients.

MUFFIN: Nor can you know whether it was "yours." The point is, let her have her muffins.

ME: But you look delicious. And I'm hungry for some sweet carb-y goodness.

MUFFIN: What happens every time you eat something she wants for herself or that she's saving to use in a recipe?

ME: When have I ever done that?

MUFFIN: The chocolate chips, the block of Swiss cheese, the muesli cereal, countless restaurant leftovers. Shall I go on?

ME: No.

MUFFIN: Should you have eaten those things?

ME: No.

MUFFIN: And when you did, was she happy?

ME (cringing as I recall each incident): No.

MUFFIN: Back away from the fridge and find another snack, Hamburglar. We're hers.

ME: Just one muffin?

MUFFIN: No.

ME: How about half a muffin?

MUFFIN: No.

ME: One bite?

MUFFIN: NO! Taking a bite out of a muffin and leaving the rest in the fridge is going to make her madder than if you had taken a whole muffin. Now go away.

ME (resigned): OK.

MUFFIN: I'm glad you're finally listening to reason.

ME: Do you think it's OK if I only eat half the block of Swiss cheese and leave her the rest?

BLOG RERUN: I generally don't cook because I end up bleeding into the food

I prompted the AI Blog Post Image Generator with the phrase "man bad cook," and it returned this. Which is...actually pretty good, though it appears that steaming pot is not in fact resting on top of either stove burner.

NOTE: Today's Blog Rerun was originally posted here four years ago today on December 20, 2020. You will note that I continue not to cook.

As I type this, I have a batch of Moroccan Lentils bubbling in the slow cooker on the kitchen counter.

This is an extraordinary sentence in that I very rarely have anything bubbling, cooking, roasting or otherwise being turned into something edible through the application of heat. I don't cook. Or at least, I hardly ever cook.

There are reasons for this, the chief one being that I married an incredible cook and she feeds me and my family delicious food every day. Terry and I laugh over the fact that in 28 1/2 years of marriage, she has made exactly one dish I didn't like. And for the record, she didn't like it, either. It was an eggplant thing, though I generally like eggplant.

That means she's batting something like .99998, which is a championship-level culinary performance by any measure.

To be fair, I am also the least picky eater you may ever run across. I like everything. I really do. You would be hard pressed to name a food I haven't eaten and enjoyed, or at least wouldn't be willing to try. So that helps.

Still, she's a great home chef.

So I don't really have a need to cook. Plus (and maybe this is just because I haven't done much of it and therefore haven't developed the knack) I don't really have the talent or inclination for cooking. It doesn't interest me. Only the eating part does.

One of the last times I tried cooking a full meal for my family, I think the main dish was fennel chicken. As I was chopping ingredients, I sliced my finger and, despite my best efforts to staunch the flow, managed to bleed directly into the pot.

I look at it as added protein.

Anyway, these Moroccan Lentils caught my eye when I saw the recipe in one of Terry's cookbooks, so I bought the ingredients and am making them. And really, there's no "making" involved. It's a slow cooker recipe, so you measure everything out, dump it in, mix it, set the slow cooker going, and that's pretty much it, other than occasionally wandering over to smell your creation and stir it.

If that was all there really was to cooking, I would be the Gordon Ramsay of our house.

You marry a great cook, you reap the benefits (and sometimes endure the consequences)

My wife is an outstanding cook. She cranks out these amazing dinners day after day, year after year, and I have to remind myself never to take it for granted (yet, being human, I still do).

I've often said that having a spouse with this talent is a supremely mixed blessing. On one hand, good food, and the only thing I have to do to get it is the dishes. On the other hand, good food, which if you're not careful can mean high calorie intake, which in turn has you playing Santa Claus at the mall within a couple of years.

I do not blame Terry for the fact that my weight has yo-yo'ed somewhat over time. That's a product of my own habits and, frankly, laziness.

But sometimes I do think, if her food was consistently bad, I would probably be the size of an Olympic marathoner by now, which I realize is looking a gift horse square in the mouth.

She and I often laugh over the fact that she has made exactly one meal in our 29-year marriage that I didn't like. And as I'm always quick to point out, she didn't like it, either. It was an eggplant thing, and it probably wasn't that terrible, but it was such an anomaly that over time it has unjustly taken on the mantle of Worst Meal Ever.

When you're the one relatively bad apple in a huge orchard full of good apples, that's a bad rap you have to live with.

Don't worry, though. If God forbid something should happen to Terry, you'll be pleased to know that I make the meanest bowl of cereal you'll ever encounter. I distribute the cereal with extreme precision, I cover every bit of it through a refined milk-pouring technique, and I have an uncanny ability to hit the exact cereal-to-milk ratio every time.

So I'll be fine.

I generally don't cook because I end up bleeding into the food

As I type this, I have a batch of Moroccan Lentils bubbling in the slow cooker on the kitchen counter.

This is an extraordinary sentence in that I very rarely have anything bubbling, cooking, roasting or otherwise being turned into something edible through the application of heat. I don't cook. Or at least, I hardly ever cook.

There are reasons for this, the chief one being that I married an incredible cook and she feeds me and my family delicious food every day. Terry and I laugh over the fact that in 28 1/2 years of marriage, she has made exactly one dish I didn't like. And for the record, she didn't like it, either. It was an eggplant thing, though I generally like eggplant.

That means she's batting something like .99998, which is a championship-level culinary performance by any measure.

To be fair, I am also the least picky eater you may ever run across. I like everything. I really do. You would be hard-pressed to name a food I haven't eaten and enjoyed, or at least wouldn't be willing to try. So that helps.

Still, she's a great home chef.

So I don't really have a need to cook. Plus (and maybe this is just because I haven't done much of it and therefore haven't developed the knack) I don't really have the talent or inclination for cooking. It doesn't interest me. Only the eating part does.

One of the last times I tried cooking a full meal for my family, I think the main dish was fennel chicken. As I was chopping ingredients, I sliced my finger and, despite my best efforts to staunch the flow, managed to bleed directly into the pot.

I look at it as added protein.

Anyway, these Moroccan Lentils caught my eye when I saw the recipe in one of Terry's cookbooks, so I bought the ingredients and am making them. And really, there's no "making" involved. It's a slow cooker recipe, so you measure everything out, dump it in, mix it, set the slow cooker going, and that's pretty much it, other than occasionally wandering over to smell your creation and stir it.

If that was all there really was to cooking, I would be the Gordon Ramsay of our house.