I'm a pretty damn good cook. I say that, but I also say that anyone can be, as long as they follow directions. I don't understand when people say they can't cook. You pour some noodles in boiling water, take them out 8-9 minutes later, pour some marinara sauce on them, and you have cooked spaghetti.
Anyways, being a single girl that likes to cook, I frequently have leftovers. I'm fine eating leftovers, but when I'm on day six of eating something, I tend to not enjoy that. Take this weekend for example. I made this mediterranean macaroni and cheese with olives and fire roasted tomatoes that is eight servings. EIGHT. I made it Sunday, have had it with three meals, and I'm alread tired of it. But, there are five more servings to go. And I'm not even looking forward to them. In these situations, a lot of times, I will give food to my neighbors. They're two guys in college that can barely boil water for their Ramen. One day when I was coming home one of them stopped me and said the food smells coming from my apartment always smell so good. So ever since then, I give them my leftovers occassionally, when I make too much of something or go on a Pinterest frenzy and then don't end up liking what I make. College boys will eat anything.
So Sunday morning, while I was in the midst of my strep throat self imposed quarantine, one of the guys (we'll call him Roy) knocked on my door. I figured something was wrong so I opened it, fever and all. Turns out, he wanted me to cook dinner for him Monday night. Well, he wanted me to cook dinner for him and his girlfriend. But leave before the girlfriend got there. So he could pretend he did it. I thought that only happened on tv, and told him so, but when he offered me $50 I couldn't refuse. I figured out the menu, gave him a grocery list, and told him to call me if he couldn't find any of the ingredients. Apparently poor guy spent 20 minutes in the spice aisle trying to figure out why shallots weren't there. Probably should have explained that one.
The final menu ended up being pan seared scallops with a white wine reduction sauce, mushroom risotto, rosemary & lemon roasted asparagus, and cheesecake with strawberries. Let me let you non-cooks in on a little secret: scallops are the easiest thing to cook in the world. Just get your cooking oil of choice really hot (I prefer vegetable oil), season the scallops with salt and pepper, cook on each side for one minute (do not touch the scallop while cooking!) and there you have pan seared scallops. Seriously, done in two minutes. You don't even really need to make a sauce because they're delicious as is, but a sauce makes them seem even more fancy. Let's be honest. Scallops sound way better than chicken. Even though chicken takes like four times as long to cook. The more you know...
So, I went over to his place, with my arsenal of pots and pans and spices (spices are super expensive and I wasn't going to make him buy a $5 jar of paprika that he would never use again) and got to work. I've made all of that stuff several times, and the cheesecake had been made the night before, so it took no time at all. I even left the asparagus in the oven for him so he could take it out when his girlfriend got there, to really make it look like he had cooked the meal.
Around 2 a.m. this morning I received a text from Roy with the words "she said yes!" I had actually, for once, been asleep at this point and was slightly groggy and didn't realize what that sentence meant immediately. Holy shit, did I cook their engagement dinner?!?! I didn't even know dude was proposing!
After I finished mentally patting myself on the back for cooking such a delicious meal that the girlfriend had no choice but to say "yes" to the question of marriage, I started to think would I have cooked anything different had I known the true reason for the dinner. And I probably wouldn't. All of the things I made sound fancy, were actually easy, and look pretty on a plate.
So, if you're planning on getting engaged soon and need a meal cooked for you, I'm available. It's the easiest $50 I have ever made.
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