Burton: Evenings to savor

Unfortunately, I carried that attitude well into adulthood. After all, I only needed to feed myself and my elderly yet feisty feline roommate. Cereal in one bowl, cat food in another … dinner was served.

I also worked through dinner most of the time, which made the most complex meal of the day an afterthought. Whatever I threw in my bag on the way out the door became my third meal. An apple, a yogurt dredged from the back of the fridge, a handful of Cheez-Its, takeout leftovers from the night before …

But time has brought adjustments. Now, dinner is the meal that matters. When my boyfriend and I started living together, we discovered that as we walked in the door after work, we were ready for real food, to catch up and unwind and enjoy being together.

This, obviously, was devastating.

The logistics were overwhelming. Now there were two people to worry about! How much food do you make for two people? What if one is late and the meal is cold yet also scorched? How do you manage to have the right ingredients on hand, the ones that all correspond to the same recipe and also didn’t expire three months ago?

Clearly, many members of the world make this work, and they do it with far more responsibilities than I contend with. I knew there had to be a solution.

So I turned to the Internet, which helped me plan and procure ingredients for three healthy, quick meals a week. Now, we could come home and start dinner. We could chop – in our signature I-never-actually-learned-how-to-do-this kind of way – and talk about our days and remind each other to preheat the oven and that yes, if the chicken breast is supposed to feature a crust of chopped nuts, we should probably remember to actually chop the nuts and not just jam them whole into the surface of the chicken and hope for the best. (We did that only once. It created a very artistic effect that we do not hope to replicate.)

That quickly became the weekday routine. We pull out chicken, vegetables and knives and start the evening together. We share stories and talk about the next movie we’ll see. We laugh at our cats and show each other funny YouTube clips. Most of the time, that’s how our workdays end and our evenings together begin.

But that was still only three nights a week. What about the others?

I returned to the Internet. (What did people who needed to feed themselves do before that was an option? You are much cleverer than I will ever be.) This time, it alerted me to the phenomenon of slow cooking.

If the food blogs were to be believed, you could fill the crock, flick the dial and return after a day’s work to a hot meal that would definitely not have burned down the house during your absence.

The first time I tried it, I was skeptical. In fact, I fled home to finish the workday because I was positive I’d find the house in flames.

Nightmare visions ripped through my mind – the burned ruins of a lovely house, demolished in my quest for domesticity. In the middle of the swirling ashes, though, where the kitchen counter used to be, a rotund slow cooker would be contentedly simmering away, cooking the chicken, carrots and potatoes that I had prepared the day before.

My fears, as you already knew because you’re much smarter and more reasonable than I am, were unfounded. The little gadget had cooked everything perfectly. I opened the door not to a smoldering wasteland but a cozy, clean kitchen that smelled like actual food. Dinner, magically, was moments away.

Now, we have a real chance at actually feeding ourselves seven nights a week. It might be a little harder and require more effort, but coming up with real meals and making them together – no matter how simple – has been incredibly worthwhile. I find myself looking forward to dinnertime, because it’s time we spend together.

And as we cook and clean and create our evenings together, there’s only one last thing to do: head upstairs and sling some cat food in the bowl. Some things don’t change.

Dinner is served.