Today I Ate Mayonnaise

...which is only fair because I made Jeremy eat eggplant yesterday. Guess what. I lived. So apparently my long-held belief that the creamy, sour-smelling goo would jump off of my burger-- like a mini, dinnertime resurrection of The Blob-- and kill me was, in fact, not true. That's what my little experiment is all about (learning something new everyday... not how to eat mayo. Hopefully I won't have to revisit that lesson for a while.)

Jeremy and I recently sat down to review our budget and spending habits. What we discovered is that we spent an exorbitant amount of money on eating out, mostly on the same pizza and cheese sticks special from the nearby Pizza Hut (Don't judge. Those cheese sticks are good.) To save money we decided to start cooking more, so we switched to frozen pizzas. It seemed like an acceptable dietary evolution to me at first, but on our fourth night of Totinos topped with my gourmet mix of red pepper flakes and Kraft parmesan cheese, I realized that I ate healthier when Adrienne and I went on the Adkins diet our junior year (we lived on cheese slices, scrambled eggs, Jello and sugar free whipped cream. Yes, seriously.) This didn’t make any sense to me. I’m married. I’m an adult (“adult.”) I was recently given thousands of dollars worth of amazing kitchen gadgets as wedding gifts. WE… I mean WE were given wedding gifts… Semantics. I digress.

So, to get to the point— I will be documenting our foray into legit, at-home dining. I will be cooking a different meal everyday for thirty days from Real Simple’s 30 days of meals.  Like most things in my life, I’m stealing this idea from a book, though this will not be as lofty or advanced a project as Julie’s—as my timeline and source would indicate. I would destroy Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking, and Jeremy and I would surely suffer an early demise at my hand were I to attempt duck boning or beef bourguignon. I have never been a friend of the kitchen (though the freezer and I are besties… that’s where the ice cream is,) so Real Simple recipes will have to do for now. I will be sharing this with everyone for no other reason than I think this could be seriously entertaining, and, since Jeremy will be here to witness all of it, I need to have a people to whom I can pass along the hilarity. Making him listen to my full recounting of each work day is bad enough. Forcing him to listen to my comedic rendition of an event he was actually present for would probably result in early marital counseling. I will also be posting the link to the Real Simple website where the recipes can be found, just in case you want to attempt to match my skills.

In the 7^th grade I was forced to read a book written by Michael Jordan on goal achievement. Since I have a 7^th grade understanding of the culinary arts, it seems an appropriate book with which to outline my intentions for the project and this blog (again—stealing from books. I smell am impending copyright suit.) Jordan says you should state an ultimate goal and then break it down into smaller milestones. So, here goes:

GOAL: For Jeremy and me to eat healthier and cheaper than we would if we were eating Pizza Hut or Totinos with the red-pepper-flakes-and-grated-parmesan wonder topping.

•  Milestone 1: Cook actual food from scratch like an adult (“adult”) at least 5 nights a week for 30 days, allowing for frozen pizza only in the event of total culinary crash-and-burn or involuntary, physical reaction to the evening’s Real Simple suggestion.
• Milestone 2: Cook what Real Simple tells me to cook no matter what it is—as scary as that may be for a mayocremaphobe (person afraid of lumpy, oozy substances that smell rotten when actually fresh) and veggiephobe (Jeremy.)
•  Milestone 3: Share the cooking/eating experience everyday with friends and family via this blog, which will serve to prevent me from bailing after my first kitchen fire and will provide me funny family feedback to buoy my spirits when I cook three days of dud dinners.
•  Milestone 4: Stick with this for more than a week.
• Milestone 5: Make this experiment less about making food and more about learning something new every day, getting over my preconceptions (and fears) about food and cooking, and convincing Jeremy to eat vegetables before I become an inflated version of myself (and I don’t mean my ego.)

            Admittedly, I’ve already failed on count four. I started the cooking portion of the experiment on Wednesday, but found decorating the blog more important than actually writing it… so here we are on Friday with the first entry in my pretty blog. (OUR pretty blog… OUR…dammit… I’ll get that one day.) I posted the links to the first two meals on the right (>>> over there>>>). Quick report on nights one, two and three:  Night one was AWESEOME and really easy. Night two was so bad I had to eat mayo today to make up for it. Note to self: mint and eggplant sounds gross—because it is. Night three was a success! I ate mayo, and Jeremy really liked the turkey burgers. I think I may have actually convinced him that turkey burgers aren’t just fake hamburgers. It’s a miracle!

            In spite of my concern that our fire extinguisher isn’t big enough, I am really excited to start cooking. I am ready to be comfortable in the kitchen. I want to broaden our dietary horizons. I hope the guy at Randalls won’t know me as the “frozen pizza and new Twilight greeting card” girl anymore. (Randalls has all of the good greeting cards with Edward’s face on the front. Big Randalls fan here.) Mostly, I’m looking forward to my evenings cooking in the kitchen with my new husband while he's busy keeping my wine glass full. We really need another fire extinguisher.

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoy the journey.

Love and Blessings

Look at me using my wedding monograms.