dan-the-man watson

Dan has been a HUGE help as I work to complete my 101 items in 1,001 days. I recently marked #88 off my list by joining a gym and am working towards completing #26 (exercise at least 3 times per week for 6 straight months). For those of you who know me, you know how ridiculously hard this is for me to do. I hate exercise, hate sweating and am slightly (read: completely) robotic when it comes to my daily schedule; any changes to such schedule throw off my entire day, often resulting in a mild (read: unreasonable) hissy fit sometime that evening. This usually takes place in the kitchen when dinner is, goshforbid, served later than 7pm. Thankfully, I am also obsessed with being organized and prepared so with the help of Dan, the schedule change has caused more laughter than tears.

Because I’ve been going to the gym right after work, I haven’t been getting home until 7/715pm each evening which has caused a little stress in my life (see above re: dinner after 7). Fortunately, I have Dan, unequivocally the best husband ever. Every evening when Dan gets home, he plays with the dogs for a bit then finds the slip of paper on which I’ve written his instructions for that night’s dinner. He then goes to the fridge, pulls out all of the food I’ve prepped and gets to work. The first night was great: chicken stir-fry. I’d marinated chicken in a healthified teriyaki sauce and already cut the chicken and veggies into bite sized pieces. All Dan had to do was spray the wok with olive oil, add the chicken and stir, then add the veggies when I got home and stir some more. When I got home breathless and exhausted, he was doing fabulously and had just added the 1 cup brown rice + 1 cup water to the rice cooker and hit “start.” By the time I got out of the shower, dinner was ready! Dan grinned ear-to-ear as I complimented his gourmet dinner (hehe).

The next night was equally a success. Dan took the prepared Salisbury steaks out of the fridge and had them slowly simmering in the healthified gravy when I got home. He threw in the fresh mushrooms then boiled the water for the whole wheat egg noodles while I showered and we had another fantastic weeknight dinner. On the third night, I learned my instructions needed to be slightly more specific. I’d prepared chicken parmesan for Dan to cook. The chicken was already breaded and on the pan, the sauce was made. Dan placed the pan of chicken in the oven, boiled water, heated the sauce and was doing great until he got to my line item that stated “when the timer goes off, spoon a little sauce over each chicken breast and sprinkle some mozzarella on top then put it back in the oven for 10min.” When I got out of the shower and headed towards the dinner table, the timer went off to indicate all was ready. Dan drained the whole grain linguine while I went to take the chicken out of the oven … it went like this:

Me (laughing): how much cheese did you use?
Dan (serious): just the one bag
Me (still laughing): baby, the instructions said “a sprinkle!”
Dan (still serious): no, the instructions said to sprinkle some on top, I sprinkled it on top like the instructions said!! (points to instructions; he was right, damn!)
Me (giggling): but honey, isn’t this a bit much?
Dan (snippy): well you never use enough when you make it!!!

Now I pre-measure out cheeses for him so as not to leave any room for interpretation. He used an entire 2 cup bag of shredded mozzarella for 2 chicken breasts!! True it was part-skim, but still, wow!

Night 4, Dan ruined my chicken satay. Hungry Girl emailed out a recipe swap earlier that week so I decided to try it. Everything was prepped and ready except for the final step: stir in ¼ cup plain yogurt. Dan came home, played with the dogs, put the chicken skewers in the oven, heated up the peanut sauce and steamed the veggies. While I showered, he set the table and completed the final steps for dinner. That was the night I learned that plain is synonymous with vanilla in Dan’s world. To me, plain is plain, vanilla is a flavor but nooooooooo, in Dan’s mind plain = vanilla and vanilla = plain … or “vanilla is totally plain, it sucks.” Can you tell he’s a chocoholic?? Let’s just say the peanut sauce was a tad too sweet for my taste (but he loved it).

Night 4 also happened to be the night I started having Dan come back in the kitchen after I finish prepping the next night’s dinner to have him walk through the instructions with me while pointing at what is what in the fridge, and we haven’t had a similar incident since! Dan was very happy to have the weekend off from “cooking” and did a fabulous job last night. I’m hoping he keeps this up so that I can complete #79 in the near future (don’t complain about anything for a week). Wish me luck!

Oh!! I owe you some recipes ... check out the facebook page to see my most recent note, a chicken corn chowder that is FAB! I'm still working on interpreting the chicken scratch that is Dan's handwriting so I can post the cookie recipes :)