cooking with david

yesterday, david announced that he wanted to have dinner, and when i started asking more questions, he said, "don't worry your pretty little head about such important matters. i'm taking the lead."

let me back up. david and cooking. cooking and david. no matter which way you order those words, they never come to mind when one considers david. his close friends will wink and joke about his obsession with beige foods, yet it is known that to prepare them, the verb "to cook" simply isn't used.

so this "lead" statement was a first, and a delight to consider.

i shared with my mom david's plan to use the Joy of Cooking as his muse. she admitted there were a lot of favorites in that book, and suggested he look at one she particularly liked, called Rijsttafel.

well, this was a very unusual recipe, but in the spirit of experimentation, we decided to forge ahead and see what happened.

here's the scene:

the shopping: david crafted a list which made the trader joe's experience swift and efficient.
the cooking: the actual cooking part was a joy :) we drank wine while dancing around the kitchen, we deftly managed all burners on the stove, and we chopped, stirred, and strained as if we'd been doing this all of our lives.
the eating: we toasted to our new-found skills and ate our creation, satisfied by the entire experience.

thanks mom!