My Husband Can Cook?

Today at my house we’re playing a game called Scott Cooks From a Recipe.  Now, to the layperson you’d think that this would be an easy endeavor, one that many have mastered with ease seeing as it’s all laid out there in black and white.  Don’t get me wrong, Scott cooks dinner about as much as I do.  It’s just that his cooking consists completely of throwing things together instead of actually measuring and combining ingredients in a prescribed fashion.  He usually does something like marinated chicken breasts and mac n cheese and broccoli.

I do plenty of that myself, but usually around once a week I’ll cook something from a recipe.  Most of them I get from allrecipes.com which I loooove because there’s such an extensive community of reviewers and most recipes even have recommendations for making the recipe even better.  Or I’ll look to the Murphenway Family Cookbook my sister got us as a wedding present.  It’s a compilation of recipes handed down from both of our families and it was one of the most thoughtful (and therefore best) presents we got.:

Murphenway is a combination of my maiden name and our married name...it's our unofficial family name.

 

 

"May your dinner plate be full of delicious food. May your table be full of a healthy family. And may your cooking be full of love from the recipes and traditions sent down through the generations. All my love, Amber"

 

 

So back to Scott Cooks From a Recipe.

He’s going this afternoon to pick up his new smoker so obviously we have to cook something in it tomorrow.  Scott’s a sales rep and one of the benefits of the job is that we get to use samples of a lot of the products he represents.  So this is a Masterbuilt smoker…oh shit!  I hadn’t seen it until I just went to link it, it looks sweet as hell and now I’m excited!  So yeah, the owners of Masterbuilt  cowrote a cookbook with Paula Deen and we got one to work with.  I guess they’re playing into that Southern mentality  because the cookbook is called “DADGUM…That’s Good!”  Pretty specific target marketing, eh?  But if Scott cooks with the smoker and uses the recipes then he knows more about the product and can sell it better and I get to eat amazing food.  Win/win.

Last night he told me that he wanted to cook a brisket, two full racks of ribs, and a pork tenderloin.  Now there’s two of us eating here…that’s a little bit of overkill right?  I told him that was a little zealous and he assured me that we could freeze it and eat bbq for the rest of our lives the week.  We compromised on one large prime rib roast and pork tenderloin.  I think it’s still too much but he’s excited and it’s cute so we went and spent a gazillion dollars at the grocery store to get the stuff.  (For those in StL…I usually shop at Shop n Save but we went to Dierberg’s because they have a butcher.  Holy hell that place is so much more expensive!)

Before we left for the store Scott was trying to evaluate what we needed.  But he was doing it from the comfort of the dining room table while I was trying to enjoy my Saturday morning waffles.  “Babe, do we have ginger?”  “Babe, do we have rice vinegar?”  “What’s black pepper?”  “Babe, do we have garlic?  Are you sure we have enough?  I don’t think we have enough garlic.”  Aaaaahhhh go in the kitchen and look for yourself you psycho!  What makes you think that I have our entire kitchen inventory laid out in my head??  So after taking every-single-thing out of the baking cabinet he was able to evaluate what we had and what we needed.

When it came time to actually measure out the ingredients that threw him for a loop too.  “Tsp is teaspoon right and Tbsp is tablespoon?”  To be fair, one of the recipes called for 1/8 of a tablespoon of garlic powder.  As if anyone has a 1/8 tablespoon to measure that out.  He then broke up a head of garlic, producing about 10 cloves and  asked “Should I just mince all of these?” when the recipe calls for three.

There was also no sense of organization.  He had the recipe on the dining room table, the roast on one counter, and all of the seasonings on another counter out of reach.  I suggested that he put it all within grabbing distance.  Once that was settled he seemed to fall into a much easier routine and I was able to take this adorable picture:

He said “Are you posting that on facebook?”

“No.”

“Oh.” (Disappointed look)

“Umm you want me to?”

“Yeah!”

I tried, but actually I can’t because for some reason fb mobile craps out on me pretty often and won’t let me post photos, so I have to delete and re-download the program.  Anyone else have this problem?  Either way, he can’t post it himself because that wouldn’t be cool, so he’ll have to deal with it only being seen by those who read my blog.