If It's Not One Thing...
*April 30, 2007
One new addition to our apartment has been attracting a lot of attention lately. It's Chad's and my Dinner Tally. Even our closest friends who are rarely surprised by anything Chad and I do anymore can't seem to wrap their minds around it. I tell them that, see, Chad's got this complex where he thinks he decides dinner every night, just because I ask him every night what he wants for dinner. His stock response is, "I decide EVERY night. Can't you decide for once?" Which means that every night I end up deciding, with the unfortunate side effect of Chad assuming he's the one who made the choice just because I asked him.
So last week after the thirty-thousandth exchange of this sort, I began the Dinner Tally. The way it works is: whoever decides on and prepares dinner gets a mark. My goal for the Dinner Tally is to be able to prove to Chad that I'm the one who decides on dinner every night, not him. Chad's goal for the Dinner Tally is the opposite. We decided that it's a win-win. If a couple weeks go by and it's clear that Chad decides dinner most of the time, well, he will have been right, but I also would have been able to go a couple of weeks without having to worry about dinner. Same goes for the opposite. I can't decide which would be better: being right, or having successfully figured out a way to get Chad to make dinner every once in a while.
Dinner at our house has been comically bad lately. We took turns cooking those Bertolli pasta dinners, which are cheap and super low maintenance and taste pretty good, for weeks on end until we both got sick of them. Then we moved to the frozen chicken and various boxed sides: scalloped potatoes, Rice-A-Roni, Pasta Roni. We tried frozen chicken pot pies for a week or two. Finally, one day last week, I popped a disgusting mexican frozen dinner in the oven that cost $1.99. Chad told me to take it out of the oven, things were obviously out of control, and we were going to Chipotle for actual food. You know things are bad when McDonald's-owned fast-food burritos count as actual food.
We can pinpoint the problem easily: Chad and I don't eat to enjoy food, we eat for sustenance. We do enjoy a good meal out occasionally, but we don't like to waste money on eating out more than a couple of times a week. When playing a board game called Loaded Questions with our friends last Saturday, one question asked us to describe our eating habits in one word. I chose "Necessary." Chad chose "Chomp."
My struggles with eating properly have been well documented, and it's taken me a long time to get to the point where I don't think about food all the time anymore. Except now the opposite has happened and I don't give food any thought other than "I'm about to pass out; what can I put in my stomach that will prevent this?" Of course, contributing to the problem is that neither of us cooks. We CAN cook pretty well, actually. But we choose not to, instead opting to, I dunno, sit on the couch and watch that Gilmore Girls episode I've seen 87 times (me) or play Eve on the computer (Chad).
And now we've resorted to keeping tally of who decides on dinner every night. Things could be worse, I suppose. We could be vegetarians. But I can't help but feel that we've reached a slight turning point, similar to when we finally figured out our dirty dish woes. I feel a compromise on the horizon. And something tells me that compromise involves preservative-free Whole Foods frozen dinners.
Hey, Chipotle is freakin' awesome, association to McDonald's aside.
I'm interested to hear what your dish war invlolved. Bryan and I had a dish war that consisted of him not washing the dishes for 8 days, and me finally freaking out about it. I hate doing dishes, but I love to cook, so usually, I cook and he does the dishes. It has been working out okay so far.
Someone told us that marriage is fun for the first three months, then you hate each other for the rest of the first year, then you like each other again. Thoughts?
- Posted by Deborah | April 30, 2007 3:02 PM
We figured out that dirty dishes on the counters drive me CRAZY while not having clean dishes drives Chad crazy, so it worked out quite well: I load the dishwasher, he unloads it. Ta da.
Chad and I hated each other the first three months and now we like each other okay. So I think we're the opposite of that saying. Hopefully that doesn't mean that we'll end up hating each other for all ever after our first year.
- Posted by Spring | April 30, 2007 3:13 PM
Hilarious. I love these standoffs.
What about just making a monthly meal calendar? I know that sounds anal, but maybe it would help if you sat down and mapped out your food.
- Posted by Coy | April 30, 2007 4:00 PM
My goal is to eventually get Tyler to cook all of the meals for us like his dad does for his mom. It is a very lofty goal ;) Do you have Let's Dish or Super Suppers in your area? You go in once a month, pick up pre-made ready to cook meals made with fresh ingredients or assemble them together yourself. Then you freeze them and cook them when you want them. I've been wanting to try it but have yet to justify the cost. I've heard that the Let's Dish meals are fantastic though.
- Posted by Julia | April 30, 2007 4:11 PM
Hey, Chipotle is real food! C'mon! :) And actually, if this makes you feel better (and it should), McDonald's no longer owns or has anything to do with Chipotle. It was a temporary investment to help the fledgling company get off the ground and create more locations. Now that it has, it bought back shares or whatever from McD's and is its own company.
- Posted by Lindsey | April 30, 2007 4:21 PM
You need a Wok. For real. I throw some protein (meat or tofu), carbs (cooked rice or pasta), vegetables (nuked frozen works great), and flavor (tamari sauce or Trader Joe's red curry, etc.) in the Wok, shake my little heart out, and that stuff is always hot and delicious. I just totally saved your marriage. I assume the check's in the mail.
- Posted by littlewhiteliar | April 30, 2007 7:43 PM
congrats on the townhome. that is so exciting. and now rufus will have a yard all to himself!
- Posted by jessie baucom | April 30, 2007 9:17 PM
OMG SUCH a good idea! Michael and I have that argument all the time. I'm starting a tally!
- Posted by Molly | May 1, 2007 9:01 AM
I love reading about ya'lls interaction. So much of it is familar - well, mostly the idea that Newlyweds aren't all lovey-dovey all the time. We don't argue about dinner. I just decided and cook it. He does dishes and cleans the kitchen. I figure if he has a problem with the cooking then he's welcome to take it over. But he's to aimiable for that, I guess. We argue about assundry other stupid things. I kinda wish someone had told me that I would spend alot of my first years of marriage arguing about soggy bathroom mats and where to put bookshelves. Good luck with the Dinner Tally! ~ L
- Posted by Lauren | May 1, 2007 9:09 AM
Oh, honey. Best friends are for moments like these!
Julia is totally right - you should look into SuperSuppers. We've got several in our area, and had I known you were resorting to Chipotle, or worse: store-bought frozen dinners, I would have grabbed you two weeks ago and dragged you with me to my latest SuperSuppers romp.
I have so much more I could say about SS here, but won't, because holy cow - that's a 1,000 word entry in itself. So I'll email you. Be on the lookout.
- Posted by chirky | May 1, 2007 12:02 PM
Chipotle is real food - don't feel bad! They even use Niman Ranch pork for their carnitas...true story. You can read about it in David Kamp's "United States of Arugula" - a good read for foodies and food fighters alike.
- Posted by Annie | May 1, 2007 3:51 PM
Actually, we have a super supper right next to our building Spring. We should all try it out. (Anything to stop you from eating that Mexican meal)
- Posted by Ry | May 1, 2007 5:06 PM
This happens to us all the time!!! I love it!
- Posted by Heather | May 1, 2007 6:50 PM
Can we talked about how I BAWLED during Lorelei's karaoke performance tonight? Oh my god.
- Posted by littlewhiteliar | May 2, 2007 1:03 AM
Lol. I watched it through my fingers and begged for it to be over. I couldn't stand her voice! So terribly awkward. But also: so sad. In a bag lady kind of way.
- Posted by Spring | May 2, 2007 9:02 AM
I'm assuming Super Suppers is like "Pass Your Plate" here in Wal-Martville?
I need to check this out.
- Posted by Coy | May 2, 2007 9:47 AM