Does Your Partner Like Food?

[BigDog]

This has been an interesting topic. Ironically, dining was never an issue for either Mrs. Big Dog or me until I rekindled my passion for food/cooking. We both grew up with very plain palates, me in Massachusetts and her in a SSW burb of Chicago. Worse for her, her father had dietary limitations due to various medical conditions (he still does, moreso even).

I grew up with a passion for food and cooking, and recall fond years working at a summer camp in the kitchen. For a while, duing the fall, I actually ran the kitchen myself serving some 75 to 100 guests all three meals! I loved it! I digress.

My passion was rekindled when I started looking for a contingency plan to my educational career field of law enforcement. That coupled with the Food Network re-ignited my passion. I started watching shows and leaning towards favorites. Emeril was the first, mainly because I grew up about 30 minutes from where he did. Then I watched ICA, and got keyed on Mario and Bobby. The Italian in me drew me to Mario, but his presentation (not the plate, but the monologue during prep/cooking) was so fast I couldn't follow. Also, while his plate presentation is quite elegant, even with "standard" dishes, I found most of the recipes require tools I don't have (yet). Nothing against Mario; I do have some of his recipes, but I just didn't jump on the Mario bandwagon completely.

On the other hand, I went hook, line and sinker on the Bobby Flay bandwagon. Both he and Emeril helped me find my love for southwestern style flavors and foods. I absolutely love Emeril's Southwest Essence, and make it at home (better then bought in a jar pre-made, IMHO). Bobby's mastery of the grill was icing on the cake for him to be my favorite celebrity chef, closely (but not too closely) followed by Emeril.

I then started watching Paula and Rachael, mainly because other then SW flavors, I love Paula's country style cooking. With Rachael, her 30 minute meals I hope to incorporate into our current menu, which brings me back on topic (sorry for the tangent).

Our menu is pretty repetitive, and frankly kinda blech. Not blech as in flavor, but redundancy. Unfortunately, even if I forwarn of a pinch of something added to a recipe, Mrs. Big Dog doesn't like it. I've tried just adding and saying nothing, but that didn't go over well either. One of these days I am going to check out Rachael's cookbooks at B&N or somewhere and see if it would be worth the investment.

[Peachcreek]

My spouse loves my food. In fact she would rather have me cook than anyone else. She has a very unusual diet with some real interesting dietary restrictions. And I'm one of the few people she knows who can navigate through all that and still come up with food she likes. And after all these years of cooking professionally for all those countless people I still get all butterflies when I make her something she really likes...