Sunday Dinner

I hate Sundays. I hate the way that the work week tends to loom over the day, as if to say that even if it’s 70 degrees and sunny, it feels somewhat breezier and cool because I have to be back in the office first thing in the morning. I know it is a bit crazy; and I know I need to grow up and get over it, but for some reason, Sundays just depress me. It’s due in part to the fact that I usually put off a significant portion of my “to-do” list until Sunday evening, at which point all I want to do is watch bad television. Instead, I find myself bitterly washing dishes, folding laundry, paying bills, or filing my tax returns far too late into the evening hours.

There is one saving grace of Sunday evenings, however. There is one thing that helps me relax and enjoy those waning hours before bed time, and that is cooking Sunday dinner.

It’s a habit I developed in my first year of graduate school. At that point, I would cook a large meal on Sunday so that I could eat leftovers all week long. Spaghetti, Linguine and clam sauce, chicken casserole, tuna-noodle casserole, tacos. The recipes were pretty basic at that point, but the concept remained the same—spend an hour in the kitchen on Sunday and avoid cooking the rest of the week. Perfect.

My efforts became far more sophisticated when HusbandTuesday (HT) and I first moved in together. In part because I was trying to show him that I really was wife material, and in part because I was excited to no longer have to do mental math in downsizing recipes. Cooking for two is just so much more rewarding. My efforts also began in large part in an effort to absolve myself of the guilt I feel for feeding us frozen pasta, frozen stir-fry, frozen pizza, refrigerated pasta, or take-out throughout the week. Sunday is the one day of the week in which I can actually take more than 15-20 minutes to prepare a meal. It’s the one day in which I can wake up, decide—hey, I want to make chicken chili—and have the time to find the recipe, go buy ingredients, and still have plenty of time to relax before dinner time.

Although I do have to be honest—my cooking is still a work in progress. Unlike G’mony, I didn’t really grow up with any cooking aspirations. My attempts are usually pretty successful, but my repertoire remains somewhat narrow. My mom imparted the basics, and, as HT likes to say, all you need to do is be able to read the recipe. Check. But I’m starting out with baby steps, for certain. I’ve got baking and broiling fish down, and I can replicate my mother’s spaghetti sauce with a 10-15 percent margin of error. I make a mean hollandaise sauce for Eggs-Benedict, and I’ve finally stopped overcooking the asparagus. Lucky for me, HT doesn’t laugh when I buy black bean soup instead of black beans, but put it in the chili anyways; he’s willing to eat baked ziti for a week when I overestimate quantities for dinner parties and end up with an entire extra pan; and he’s as equally happy with chicken in white wine sauce as he is with marinated salmon steaks and twice-baked potatoes. No matter what the entrée, he’s always willing to open the wine, turn off the TV, and sit down and chat as long as we’d like. And even more importantly, he’s always willing to do the dishes.

Now if only I could find a recipe for an extra weekend day . . .