Eating Out Of My Comfort Zone (standard:humor, 904 words)
Author: Godspenman	Added: May 26 2019	Views/Reads: 1649/1104	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The best part of a night out is not how much the meal costs, but who you are sharing it with.

One pleasure the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage and myself enjoy is
going out for a quiet dinner together. It does not happen often, at 
least not often enough. When it does, it is always a delightful time 
and we try to take advantage of it. 

The delight on my wife's side is that she does not have to cook the meal
and then clean up afterwards. I have offered to help clean up, but only 
once and I am now forbidden to get anywhere near the dishwasher. And, 
for good reason. 

Once in the early days of our marriage, I decided to surprise her by
cooking supper for her. She spent the afternoon shopping with some 
friends and so I thought it was the proper time for me to do this. 

Up until that time, I did not know how difficult cooking was. I've seen
my grandmother do it and my mother and now my wife, so I thought it was 
a rather easy thing to do. 

I must confess I have never studied these ladies while they were
preparing the meal. I enjoyed the meal when it was done and that 
satisfied me. 

I spent all afternoon that day preparing a very romantic dinner for us
to enjoy together. The kids were at camp or somewhere so we had the 
house to ourselves. I worked very hard doing what I thought was cooking 
a nice meal. 

As soon as my wife walked in the door, she stopped and said, “What is
that awful smell? What are you burning?” 

I must confess that the kitchen was filled with smoke and I am not sure
the source. What I was cooking that night escapes me at this point, but 
I thought I put enough time, thought, and it to do it properly. 

The whole meal that night was a complete and perfect disaster. I know
there is nothing perfect, but this came as close to perfect as I have 
ever seen. 

I must confess there was a nice balance to that meal. Some was
undercooked and some overcooked. If you balance them together, maybe 
something comes out right, I am not sure. Nothing, however, met the 
standard that my wife upholds in the culinary department. All the 
appliances in the kitchen were shocked by a disaster they had never 
seen before. And, never since, because I am banned from cooking in the 
kitchen. 

The only thing I can do in the morning his turn the coffee pot on, that
is the limit to my kitchen activities. 

As we were sitting at our table at the restaurant, I was smiling. My
wife looked at me and said, “Okay, what are you smiling about?” 

I have never brought it up since that time and I was very hesitant about
doing it now. Upon her insistence, I told her I was thinking about the 
time I cooked her dinner. 

She stared at me for a few moments and then burst out in hilarious
laughter. 

“I don't think,” she said between laughter, “you cooked anything that
night except your goose.” 

That is the only expertise I have, I suppose, cooking my own goose. 

We chuckled about that as we looked at the menu to see what we were
going to order. Everything on the menu sounded delicious. Of course, we 
had worked all day and so were quite hungry and I suppose anything 
would look delicious at that point. 

The waitress brought us our drinks, I had coffee and she had lemon tea,
and we went back to studying the menu. 

It was then that I noticed something. It had never crossed my mind until
this point. I'm rather observant in life, particularly noticing the 
little things. But this night I was shocked. 


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