cooking...pride...cooking...

I used to think of myself as being a pretty good cook. I LOVED to find new recipes. Books, magazines, friends, strangers, moms, grandmas, my imagination, Food Network... you name it. Cooking was fun to me. You could be creative. Add a little of this, a pinch of that and you have something new every time. There was a lot of joy in cooking for myself but honestly (and any cook will agree) the greatest pleasure was pleasing and impressing other people. It was so fun to plan get togethers and parties just because you found a new recipe/creation you think they'd love. I would receive compliments often and it made cooking all the more exciting to me. People actually wanted me to teach them somethings and ask my advice on things. It was my style, I could choose what I wanted to make and how I wanted to make it. Another thing that made it so fun for me was that I was picky. Weird, right? I like it because I would see a recipe that was everything I loved except for maybe 1 or 2 ingredients. But the picture looked SO good that I would make it anyways. Maybe that was my own way of 'growing up.' So when I prepared the dish and picked out one less tomato than I had the last time, it was a success. I had made something and because I made it, I wanted to eat it. And from eating it, I learned to like new things.

Okay that was a lot of background... now to today.

I'm dating a chef. A straight up 'in love with creating dishes, trying new ingredients, voila!' chef. He is an amazing cook and I love it. I mean what girl wouldn't. It only brings 2 problems to our relationship.

For me: it's so INTIMIDATING to cook for him because I'm always thinking that he's thinking how it could be better. (Not that he always is thinking that, that's just how my mind works)

For him: it's so FRUSTRATING wanting to cook something new but knowing his picky girlfriend won't enjoy it as much.

Again, it comes down to my pride. I used to live in a small, little world where I knew how to cook. Now in all reality, have I forgotten to cook like I used to? No. Have I fewer or different ingredients than I once had? No. Do I have less recipes to look through and choose from? No. In fact all of those have increased in the past year or so. But now I live in this brand new world. A bigger world. A world where someone I am close to is better than I am. A world that I sometimes don't feel I entirely fit into because it is different. It is new. It is big. But I can grow up, I can adapt. There is nothing wrong with that. There is no one who has told me I have to get rid of all my past experiences as I enter this big, new world either.

Now that feels like an abrupt ending to me, but I am out of written thought for now. I just want to leave on this note - my boyfriend is one of the best cooks I know, even if I don't necessarily love the things he loves. It is still very impressive. I am learning a lot. I am expanding, slowly, to fit into this big, new world. And it is good. It makes me happy.