Since the W is having so much stress at work, I decided to cook her a nice dinner last night. BTW, I'm not much of a cook! So I went to the store, spent an hour finding all of the ingredients needed, then went home to make my culinary masterpiece. Just as I was getting started, I noticed that our horses (we have 2) were in my backyard, enjoying my lawn. My daughter & I chased them around the neighborhood for 45 minutes, trying to get them back into the pasture. So, I ended up not starting on dinner until that was done.

Of course, the recipe called for every ingredient to be diced, shredded or otherwise mangled, so that took another hour. Finally got to cooking, but didn't get dinner served until 2.5 hours after my original plan.

The food turned out great, but I had substituted garlic for shallots in the receipe (I cannot stand onions of any type, and found out after buying them that shallots are actually some sort of onion). Although my W enjoys the taste of garlic, it doesn't agree with her sometimes, and last night was one of those times. To top it all off, the carrot cake I purchased for her desert (no one else likes it) turned out to be too rich.

Lessons Learned:
1 - Make sure barn gates are always properly fastened!
2 - If you're going to cook a special dinner for your S, try not to use ingredients that make them ill!
3 - Start preparing early, particularly if your culinary skills are somewhat below Martha Stewart's standards.

I'm not complaining - she did enjoy the meal, and appreciated the thought/effort. I just thought it was funny/sad how sometimes the things we do for our spouses, even under the best innocent intentions (I was not trying to get laid by making dinner!) don't turn out the way we hoped.

Gremlin