1.
I cooked a meal from a Linas matkasse meal kit today. Oven roasted cauliflower with a lentil salad and a yoghurt and goat’s cheese sauce.
Adrian is often a bit sceptical about “Lina food” in advance. (Maybe Ingrid is as well, but at least she doesn’t keep saying so every time.) Afterwards he gives his verdict: thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs sideways or something in between. Sometimes he is pleasantly surprised. One Lina recipe is now among his absolute favourite dishes. (Pasta with green peas and goat’s cheese.)
Today, Adrian rated the cauliflower a 7 out of 10 and the lentils a 4. Ingrid had the exact opposite opinion: a 4 for the cauliflower and a 7 for the lentils. (Eric and I meanwhile thought both parts were a bit dull and the whole thing below average.) And I guess someone at Lina’s must have thought that this was really good. It’s interesting to see how much our preferences differ.
2.
I cook almost all our meals, but Eric does the Sunday dinners while I am at swim school with Adrian. It struck me this Sunday that his meals somehow don’t taste as much to me as the meals I cook myself. Not because they don’t have flavour. It’s more like the signals don’t reach my brain as strongly or as fast as the signals from my own cooking.
My only guess is that it’s because I spend less time thinking about the meal. When I cook, then I think about what I will cook, then think about it while I’m cooking. I also taste it and smell it for a good while. By the time I sit down to eat, my brain is already prepared and anticipates what’s to come. Whereas when Eric cooks, and especially if I’m not even in the house, the meal can be over before my brain has even properly processed it.
