Eat-at-home boy

After an 8am start to a long 12 hour day (6 hours driving) visiting 1 linen company, 2 dress stores, and 2 wedding cake bakeries, my MOH and I were both completely exhausted. But she decided to come in to my fiance's apartment while I showed her pictures of cake toppers and dresses online. My fiance called at 8pm after his equally exhausting 13 hour work shift and asked what we should do about dinner. Feeling slightly distracted and secretive because I was showing MOH THE dress, I hurriedly said "I don't know, just come home first." Knowing me well, fiance smelled something fishy and said "What are you hiding? Awww, you cooked dinner didn't you? You cooked for me!" with this really giddy, hopeful voice, to which I felt bad and got incredibly defensive, scolding him for not realizing that we had an extremely long day and just got home ourselves!

The next day, fiance was working another 13 hour shift. I had a couple wedding appointments, including one in which I bought THE dress! I also visited a couple wedding invitation stores and did some clothes shopping. Feeling pretty tired at 5pm, yet knowing how disappointed my fiance was the previous day, I decided to go shopping for groceries. Around 8pm, the food was almost ready when fiance called and asked what to do about dinner. He suggested going for dumplings to which I said okay. I purposely made myself sound more tired and annoyed than I actually was, and he kept asking why I sounded so tired, and my repeated response was "just come home!" (and leave me alone so I can finish cooking!). When he was close to home, he called me and exclaimed "Come on out!". Panicked, I told him I needed him to come in because I clogged the toilet (his toilet clogs pretty frequently). And when he came in--SURPRISE!

I had prepared marinated cucumber, a spare ribs + special potato + squid balls + fish tofu soup, chicken oil rice, and drunken chicken. It was my first time making my aunt's yummy recipe for drunken chicken and I thought it turned out pretty well. Unfortunately, my fiance hates anything with alcohol in it and didn't enjoy it as much at all. He wanted me to make sober chicken instead of drunken chicken in the future! He was telling me that growing up, he rejected any of his mom's dishes that contained alcohol. We joked about how our future kids would probably also hate this dish, and he broke out in a wicked laugh! Sigh. Here's the dish that I *love* and would like to perfect, but sadly I won't get to cook it too often unless I want to eat it all by myself:

The take home of this story is that my fiance loves to eat home cooked meals. And while I admit I go through lazy phases when I just want to eat out all the time, I did and do get a nice gush of lovey-dovey feelings whenever I see his reaction to my cooking. He loves when I exhibit the more domesticated side of myself. And I like that he likes me to be domestic, because that says a lot about what kind of husband and father he will be in the future too! It's moments like these that I really love my kyzen8.