Now I Tell Him

The man and I went out to have lobsters for dinner. Plied with a really good pinot noir, I finally confessed to the man what I never told him then. At that first meal he cooked for me in 2004, he made spaghetti in mushroom cream sauce. I thought it sucked.

Well, it didn't royally suck. It was just....baaah. Too much butter, too little cream, strange taste to the mushrooms. But I still told him it was great. (I mean, I can't even cook!) He already said he loved to cook, just that he didn't have the time to potter about in the kitchen. He was so enthusiastic about cooking for me. "I want to cook for you!" Awwww, so sweet. I didn't have the heart to be so brutal.

After that dinner, he set about translating recipes into full meals. As a result, we had alot of meals at home. By and by, the relationship progressed to something deeper, something meaningful. We've weathered a fair bit stuff together. We found honesty and support in our emotional bond. But I never told him what I really thought about the first meal he cooked to impress me.

Imagine how amused I was to see him so earnestly cooking.

By and by, I grew bold and began to be more vocal about what I liked in his cooking and what I didn't like. But I never told him that I thought that first meal sucked. Thank goodness the cooking improved vastly to something quite decent and we weren't embarrassed to have friends over to share our food.

So that evening, I felt brave enough to tell him that that first meal was kinda off. He laughed and laughed. He admitted that on hindsight, that was such an amateur attempt. He ruffled my hair and merrily told me that he could taste the improvement in his food between then and now. It's almost like, because I never told him that his cooking was bad, he was inspired to cook even more and through frequent practice, he actually improved!

That's a good thing, for me. :)