My wife likes to joke that I lured her in with my cooking. At least, I think she is joking.

I use to cook quite often. But a promotion last year ate up a lot of free time (which led to eating out more often). This happened right before we got married. She stepped up, cooking more often than I did for the first year of our marriage. It wasn’t like that before we got married.

Now that I’m free more evenings, I’m trying to step my game up once again. So, that means, hopefully, you will be seeing more food porn on here.

Exhibit A:

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Banana pancakes were a regular part of our mornings early on in the relationship. Enough so, that I mentioned them in my wedding vows. These are fairly simple: 1 banana, 2 eggs, 1 tablespoon coconut flour, 1 tablespoon coconut oil, dash of cinnamon. Pulse in Ninja, heat in 8-inch pan. This one had some slivered almonds tossed in as well. We usually top with either maple syrup, honey or peanut butter.

Sunday is our biggest cook day. It was the only day of the week generally we were not at a ballgame most weeks. I had a duck in the freezer I planned to smoke Sunday. I’ve smoked duck before, and it turned out pretty well. I say planned, because the smoking didn’t happen. Pro tip kids: if you are going to smoke meat on a Sunday in your gas smoker, check both your propane tanks. Both of mine were empty.

So, I threw the duck in the oven, cooked at 325 until the breast was 165. And I put this on here to show it doesn’t always turn out great. The rub was nice, parts of the bird were tasty, but I just have not been able to nail a duck in the oven yet. Looking back, I should have just Instapotted it like we usually do our whole chickens.

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Still, all in all, enough of the bird was decent for a solid meal with air-fried pataters and some frozen corn from the family garden. There just wasn’t a ton of meat left over.

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Sarah has been making this egg salad the last few months. It gets eaten pretty quickly. I’m stealing this straight from her Facebook post:
“Egg Salad is something simple that I make for meal prep for an upcoming week. Hard boiling eggs have exponentially gotten easier since purchasing an InstaPot – seriously 1 cup of water and 5 minutes BOOM perfectly cooked eggs that are easy to peel. In the second photo, I chopped some red onion, added Primal Kitchen Avocado Mayo and my Mother’s homemade Zucchini Relish. Spices I have added are dill, chives, paprika and salt/pepper to taste. Easiest meal prep recipe for the week!”

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While banana pancakes are a fun divergence on occasion, the go-to breakfast when I cook is still the old tried-and-true: bacon and eggs. I bake the bacon in the cast iron, using the speed bake option to crisp it up in about 12-13 minutes.

While that is going, I dice up whatever veggies are on hand/sound good that day. And with Sarah recently joining the Misfit Mafia, I had options this morning.

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And then tonight, we tried an old favorite with a new twist: spaghetti squash with deer burger meat sauce. Sarah took care of this one tonight. She baked the squash with olive oil, browned the deer in a giant pot with onion, garlic and olives, and added some Classico marinara sauce. Watching her cook tonight, I can tell I have rubbed off on in one regard. We have a multi-level spice rack that runs half of one wall. I watched her grab one jar, sprinkle a little, grab another, do the same, and so on. She use to make fun of me for this. We decided the marinara wasn’t enough, so we added a jar of homegrown tomatoes as well as some past. Just right.

Look for more food porn going forward. I love cooking, whether it be a new experiment or an old favorite. And now I have a partner winging it through life along with me, lending her special touches along the way.