Cooking for the other half

Lately I have been doing some more cooking at home and the boyfriend is my guinea pig. I have been doing more cooking lately because of work and it turns out I quite enjoy it but the trouble is I am not a very adventurous eater so my own dinners are unlikely to excite most people. At the same time I have been chastising the other half for the paltry amount of vegetables he consumes. So this is when I had the genius plan of cooking one big thing for him a week and putting it into foil containers so he gets a few portions of it.

The idea is that he buys the ingredients and one day a week I made a big pot of whatever it is and then happy eating for himself for a few days after. He's still alive and in good health so I am not doing a terrible job of it. Plus he's still asking me to do it so unless he's a glutton for punishment, I can declare myself an okay cook. 

I have always quite enjoyed baking, there's something quite soothing in the preparation and I find the same thing when cooking. I switch off and chop all the veg (very slowly) and its all quite relaxing. My first venture was a chicken pasta bake. My favourite part of that was sorting all of the ingredients into separate containers, like so 

and lining them all up. I made the boyfriend cut the chicken. I don't mind cooking meat provided I don't actually have to handle it. I once had to stuff a chicken at work and did so using gloves and a spoon and was mildly traumatised after. That turned out so well that I got really brave a few days later and made a gluten free vegetarian one that we both enjoyed.

My next venture was shepherds pie. That almost turned out to be a disaster because when I was adding water to it, I got confused by the jug and put in too much. I had to drain some water out but in the end it turned out so lovely that it was gone in two days. 

So far so good, I get to experiment with cooking and my boyfriend gets to eat some proper meals, happy out. So for week three he requested chilli con carne. I have never in my life made a chilli before and I will probably not repeat the experiment. I have ascertained at this point that spicy food is not for me so there will not be a vegetarian version in the making. I did once try tasting a piece of chilli but it burned my lips so badly that I didn't end up eating it. Anyway I was making the chilli from a recipe that was made to feed 20 people (about 8 servings really) and we halved it which was fine but we made some other substitutions. It contained chilli powder but it was decided by himself that we could just use some fresh chilli instead. I said fine and put him on onion cutting duty while I cut the three chillis. The recipe turned out lovely and he's had two helpings since. I however had to put up with several hours of feeling like my fingers were on fire and nothing could get rid of the chilli oil. I tried washing up liquid, soap, coconut oil, milk and savlon. I was afraid to touch my face all night in case I burned that as well. I ended up taking two painkillers going to bed and fell asleep once they kicked in. When I woke my fingers were  back to normal, hurrah.

So I am not sure what's next on the menu but I can tell you it won't contain any chillis.