Situation: The spouse wants beef stroganoff for dinner.
Dan’s version: After hearing Sara’s request, he goes to Whole Foods and buys all organic products. His wife is allergic to random things and he wants to make sure she enjoys the meal without irritation. He brings the ingredients home and lovingly slices everything. He makes the sauce from scratch, using fine wine, and lets it marinade for the maximum amount of time in order to bring out all the flavors. Total prep and cooking time, 6 hours.
Sara’s version: After hearing’s Dan’s request, she orders chinese.
Situation: The spouse is in the mood for Italian.
Dan’s version: After hearing Sara’s request, he goes to the store and buys the ingredients to make hand rolled cannelloni. He fills each with a mixture of cheeses and spinach. He prepares a fresh side salad and buttery, hot garlic bread. He adds extra Parmesan to the sauce, because he knows Sara loves Parmesan.
Sara’s version: After hearing’s Dan’s request, she orders pizza.
Situation: The spouse wants a birthday cake.
Dan’s version: Dan gets Sara’s favorite chocolate cake recipe from his mother and lovingly bakes the cake from scratch. He doesn’t like fruit filling in chocolate cake, but knows that she does, so he makes fresh raspberry filling and drizzles it between the cake layers. He serves it warm, dripping with gooey chocolate icing. He uses stuff they have at home, so the cake costs him little more than $10 in total and about two hours of time.
Sara’s version: She finds a cool looking cake online that is three tiers and involves modelling chocolate, spun sugar and multiple cake flavors. She goes to the local baking supply store and spends $25 on cake decorating tools. She then heads to Michaels to buy another $20 worth of cake decorating gadgets. She heads to the grocery store and spends 30 minutes wandering the aisles, trying to find things she’s never heard of such as meringue power and low-fat buttermilk. She gets into an argument with an employee about the fact that corn syrup is with pancake syrup instead of near baking supplies. She calls mom to ask about the difference between light and dark corn syrup. She almost picks a fight with the smug housewife who laughed when she overheard her calling mom to ask about the difference between light and dark corn syrup. She waits in a long line, finally forking over $50 on her cake ingredients. She heads home and is entirely too exhausted from the ordeal to do any actual baking. She’ll do it tomorrow… Total cost: $95 plus gas. Total time: 3 hours plus whatever she spends once she actually bakes the darn thing.
