If you're a regular reader of this blog, you will know that Dennis taught me as much as he could about kitchen issues during his last five weeks of life, as he was worried that I wouldn't be able to feed myself in the manner in which I had become accustomed (he was a wonderful chef). While I have honored him by making my dinner each night since his passing, it is becoming more and more depressing as time moves forward because I'm only doing it for myself. Last night was the latest example. I'm just so tired of only cooking for myself. Those last five weeks he was alive, I was learning and I was doing it for the two of us, because he could no longer do things for himself, I was able to keep us reasonably fed during that time period. And having the "shoe on the other foot" made it more so, as he had always been the one who prepared dinner during our entire life together.
Part of the problem is the fact that by the time I get home from a day of work, I'm usually pretty tired and then I have to go through the process of figuring out what to fix for dinner. I will admit, I don't do everything from scratch any more. I use a lot of prepared pasta (ravioli, tortellini, etc.) that only requires me boiling water and adding a sauce. But I don't feel guilty about it because we used to use these same items when Dennis was alive; I'm just using them more than he did. At most, when he was the chef, we'd only use them once a week. I find myself doing it three or more times a week. I still make my enchiladas by hand (using pre-made tortillas), grating the cheese, chopping Italian parsley, making the roue into a great sauce and so forth, but I'm not doing them as much as I used to do.
So what's the solution to the depressing part of preparing dinner? I could invite more people to dinner, but I don't want to have to cook for more than one during the week, so it still leaves five of the seven days fending for myself. Just another one of those "Catch-22" situations that have cropped up since his death.
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