The Taming of the Shrew...d

I've always thought of myself as very independent, a tiny bit wild, a bit of free spirit, and often unconventional at times (I had a dream this morning that I was Britney Spears and Eminem was trying to kill me...that has nothing to do with any of the above, but I just remembered it).

But I'll tell you a secret. I've lately been becoming a little bit more domesticated. Don't go thinking that someone has roped this pony yet but...

I still hate cleaning and all of that, but ever since I moved into my own apartment (as in it's mine, I own it), I've been cleaning a lot more and lot more thorough than usual. Maybe I am starting to take pride in my humble abode, I don't know. But I do know that living on my own, in the big city has kind of brought a sense of stability and, gasp, responsibilty, to my life (still don't like the R word though).

I even took flowers that Ross had recently given me and made potpourri out of them. Granted, they don't smell like potpourri should but they sure are pretty.

I've also started experimenting with cooking. I'm starting to really like it. And I really like it when I make meals for my man.

Last night, he came over to my place after a hard day's work. I had spent the day doing fuck all and planning our meal for tonight. Usually we go out for eats at a restaurant we've never been to before, like last week when we went to the New India restaurant on Davie St. (which always intrigued me because of the doorman with the Indian hat outside) and Ross had boiling butter chicken spatter out of his dish and go in his eye.

But since buying yet another Rachel Ray cookbook (this one was low-carb and low-sugar for diet conscious people like myself), I was inspired to cook him something special.

Now I often cook for Ross or we cook together. It's a fun thing to do and a nice change from watching TV. Usually we make my special whole-wheat pasta with Vodka sauce but since I've been avoiding pasta as of late, I decided to do something a little more decadent.

Though the picture makes it look like a pile of turds, I can assure this tasted very good...as it should of since it was the most complicated meal I have ever made (probably because I made it all from scratch, including the sauces). How sad is that?

This is proscuitto-wrapped roasted endives with a balsalmic fig reduction, served with almond-crusted chicken and a sweet, caramelized zucchini sauce (sauce not shown in picture because it tasted better than it looked).


I followed the endive and fig thing to a T, while the chicken I kind of went off and did my own thing (I used almonds instead of hazelnuts, made my own zucchini sauce instead of gorganzola dressing).

Then we had this for desert:


The reverse of a chocolate-dipped strawberry, this is a roasted, dark chocolate stuffed strawberry (achieved by hollowing out the berry and filling with dark DARK chocolate). So damn good!

So as you can see, I've slowly warmed up to the idea of being an occasional adult, even though today I will probably bite into a hunk of cheese and eat olives out of the jar and call that dinner.

(and I certainly will not mention the fact that I later hemmed his pants. That would be too embarassing).