Cooking can be easy and fun with right recipe

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/08/2016 (3702 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: If I don’t learn to cook soon, my new wife and I are going to starve. Before we were married, we always ate at her mom’s house, my mom’s place, at inexpensive restaurants or made sandwiches. Now we are living just out of town and plan to have a baby soon. She and I are both almost 30 and the biological clock is ticking. Neither of us want to cook, but there aren’t a lot options, and maybe next year only one of us will be working outside the house. What do you suggest?

— Clueless and Hungry, Winnipeg Outskirts

Dear Clueless and Hungry: Learn to cook. Hit a second-hand book store and buy a bunch of cookbooks together, plus a book on nutrition for your wife’s pre-pregnancy health buildup.

They say if you can read, you can cook — maybe not like a gourmet, but pretty well if you stick to the instructions and measure things accurately. Put on some music to make it fun and dance around the kitchen. You can do this! Good luck to you two clueless but happy honeymooners.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My husband and I serve great drinks and have always put on a nice spread at the lake. Our friends and his customers (he’s Mr. Super Sales) know they’ll be treated royally if they drop in at our place on their way home from an afternoon at the various beaches up and down the highway. But, it is now the middle of August and I’ve had it. Unbeknownst to him, I hung a big sign outside our gate last weekend when he was in the city working. It said, “Sorry, we are not open to company this weekend.”

My husband got phone calls in the city from the disappointed regulars who usually drop in to mooch, bringing only a frozen chocolate cake from the nearest store. Maybe. They asked if we were “sick or just sick of them.” He phoned me at the lake about the sign and yelled at me to take it down immediately.

I refused. I told him I was through entertaining his friends and customers for the summer, and hung up on him. We have hardly been speaking since I got home. He said he was embarrassed and angry because of what I did and he doesn’t trust himself to talk. He said I cost him a lot of money by turning people away. Well, I didn’t sign on for this lake job by marrying him, and I could sign off. Now what?

— Married Five Long Years, Lake Winnipeg

Dear Married Five Long Years: Your sign made sense, but it was worded in a hostile way. Maybe your husband does need to entertain to form relationships with people he wants to sell to, but he needs to see that it has gotten out of control and you can’t enjoy your cabin anymore. For instance, why should your cabin still be open to his friends and customers for entertainment when he’s not at the lake, or you two want to have a private relaxing weekend? That’s what you need to discuss.

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6

Miss Lonelyhearts
Advice Columnist

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