The Other Elephant in the Room

After 10 years of marriage I have to admit, it's getting boring.

The same thing, over and over again. I sometimes roll my eyes when my husband asks and lately, I've even sighed loudly. He's fine with same plain vanilla, but sometimes when he's not around, I dabble in the more exotic, the foreign. 

Of course I'm talking about dinner.

My hub was raised in Cleveland. He'd not seen a fresh vegetable or "non-stick" fish until he left home and his palate never expanded after 18. He's happy with his four food groups: potatoes, pizza, chicken and dessert. This never mattered before we had kids because we just ate out--I'd get tuna tartare and he'd get a pizza Margarita, or I'd get seaweed salad and he'd get chicken Teriyaki--four plus nights per week. These days we are lucky to get take out one night per week, a visit to a restaurant is even more rare. Did I mention he doesn't cook?

I'm sick of What's for Dinner and I'm bored of making the same six meals over and over again. We are in a food rut and I don't see any easy escape. After ten years of marriage you can spend a long erotic weekend learning Tantric methods to spice up the bedroom (I'm neither confirming or denying we've done this, although we do live within driving distance toEsalen), but a cooking class or some new herbs are not going to change the fact that I cannot eat another combination of cheese, potatoes, chicken and/or tomato sauce even if Thomas Keller prepares it for me (okay, maybe I'm taking that a little to far, I think I might eat gravel if TK plated it).

So I've gone the route analogous to a flannel nightgown and granny underpants: frozen food. And now, when I say we are having breakfast for dinner I mean cereal. 

I'm being silly, but I do think that food is up there with sex when you list things that keep a marriage afloat. My husband looks at me differently the nights I've made a slow-cooked meat and mashed potato meal. And I think one of the reasons he asked me to marry him was the chocolate-chip cookies I made when we were dating. I hope this kitchen boredom is just a dull spot and I'll find a way out of it, but for now, it is an elephant in the room when he comes home and the pots are cold.

This is an original post to the Silicon Valley Moms Blog. Aimee is thankful that her husband doesn't seem too grumpy that she spends more time blogging than making family meals.