Spaghetti and Meatballs

I am not a chef, I am not a cook. There's a reason I was skinny before I met Mark. I didn't eat a lot. Supper usually consisted of a piece of meat quickly warmed up, along with frozen vegetables microwaved. My cooking philosophy is, if it takes longer for me to cook it than it takes me to eat it, it isn't worth it. Don't get me wrong, I love good food if other people make it. Restaurant food, okay. Dinner at somebody's house, okay and I'll bring a bottle of wine.

Lately Mark has decided that cooking is a family thing and he has been including me in the process of making dinner. The other day I was enlisted as his assistant to prepare a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs. Dinner preparations started at three in the afternoon. First off, the sauce. I had to open cans of tomatoes, fetch the onions, get all the cookware ready, and much more. Mark sat at the table with a cutting board bringing all the ingredients together. While the sauce bubbled on the stove, we now had to make the meatballs. Quite the greasy and sloppy job. I always thought they came from the freezer at the grocery store. Anyway, the meatballs went into the oven and it was time for the spaghetti. I had to put a pot of water on the stove. When that came to a rolling boil, I added the spaghetti. Cook the spaghetti. Drain the spaghetti. Work, work, work. Finally, dinner is served at five thirty in the evening. Five minutes later, I'm full and I'm done.

Two and a half hours of preparing dinner for five minutes of gluttony. Ah, but it's not over. I have to clean up the mess made by all this and wash the dishes. For some reason Mark does not consider this part to be a 'family' thing. So I spend almost an entire hour cleaning the kitchen and washing the dishes. And yes, I have a dishwasher. It's still work. So the total amount of time put into that five minute meal, Three and a half hours. I really do hate cooking.