It’s hard to tell how to impress girls sometimes, and I find it especially difficult with food.

With food I thought the key was to just spunk a huge wad onto a small plate, however things have changed recently and we are in money saving mode to buy a new house (which we seem to be buying from Ryanair as we are having to pay extra for the plug sockets and light switches, but that is another blog).

So now I need to impress her with inexpensive food. I thought this is as hard as trying to give her the perfect kiss with halitosis. Super noodles are apparently not an option which is a shame because they could sustain me for 6 weeks for the price of a door knob on the living room of our new house.

However I think I may have cracked it. It’s not the size of the boat but the motion in the ocean, or to translate to something even vaguely to do with cooking, it’s not how much to spend on the ingredients but how much fucking around you have to do to make them into a meal.

There is a standard I now measure her pleasure and that is how many instruments I need to use to satisfy her. We are still talking cooking here, stick with me.

I made Moroccan Soup which on the face of it looked like plonking a load of lentils into pan and blasting it. It was an oversight on my part that it was going to take a lot longer than that but this was my amazing discovery.

Started off easy, all it needed were some onion to be chopped (1 – chopping board, 2 – knife, 3 – pan, 4 – wooden spoon). Then I added a can of chopped tomatoes (5 – can opener) and stirred some more.

Then I had to add some spices which meant using the grinder (6 – tsp spoon, 7 – tbls spoon, 8 – spice grinder). The dishwasher was quaking in it’s corner.

Chickpeas were added but of course they needed to be drained (9 – colander) and then some stock needed to be added in an exact amount (10 – measuring jug) and all stirred around.

It got to the stage where the wooden spoon was redundant and a more stirry plastic spoon was required (11 – more stirry spoon) and left to simmer away (12 – lid).

I added a little garlic (13 – garlic smasher) and then the meal really came into it’s own. I had to involve a lemon in two different ways. I had to put in some rind (14 – grater) and then slice it (with the same knife as the onion so I missed a trick there) and squeeze some juice out (15 – lemon juicer) and then leave it to boil again while I got the (16,17 – trays, 18,19 bowls, 20,21 spoons) ready.

But it wasn’t over yet. The pointless shinny jewelery on any meal goes by the name coriander and it requires a new board (22) and a new knife (23) to flay bits off so that the soup looked more green.

I would have got more if I had somehow pan-piped a kumquat or steam-flooped an otter I maybe could have hit 30 but that will have to wait for another day and another occasion.

And that gave me a good score overall. The soup tasted alright too.

I have made a scorecard for how to satisfy a woman which you might find useful. basically use;

0-10 utensils if you really just want to go to sleep tonight ignoring the wife

10-20 if you just want to keep her happy enough to not want to kick you out

20-30 if you perhaps might be planning to spend more time in the pub this week than she would ideally like (this is what I was doing by cooking in the first place)

30-40 if you have recently forgotten an anniversary. Even one of those stupid ones like “two years since we first went camping together”.

40+ I don’t think I have ever reached this territory but I imagine this is where you go if you are about to suggest a threesome.

RunningandStuff