The Beginning

Hello! We are Jeff and Aly and we are teaching ourselves to cook! Well, at least that's the plan...

We've been together for several years, but between living with our parents, then living in college dorms, then having conflicting work schedules, we've not had a lot of need or even opportunities to learn how to cook decent meals. However, due to a recent (and long awaited, and much celebrated) change to Jeff's work schedule, we are now both home at dinner time six out of seven nights a week!
Almost immediately with the change in schedule we agreed that we wanted to cook our own meals as often as possible; to make this less daunting, we created a Dinner Menu that assigned a different kind of dish to each night of the week. It is:

Monday: Pasta night
Tuesday: Date night
Wednesday: Breakfast night
Thursday: Crockpot/Casserole night
Friday: Mexican night
Saturday: Leftovers day
Sunday: Jeff works, Aly is on her own (usually more leftovers)

This is just a jumping-off point and if we want to try a recipe that doesn't necessarily suit any of these nights, we simply swap it out. Also, as you probably guessed, Date night is the night each week that we go out to eat; it started when we only shared one weeknight and we decided to carry it over to our new weekly routine.

Just to clarify, we're not completely incompetent in the kitchen. Here's a little breakdown of our experiences and tastes:

Jeff
Specialty: Stovetop (with a concentration in skillets). While earning his Eagle Scout he learned to cook meals on a frying pan over a campfire, and he still turns to this method regularly, only with a burner.
Tastes: Willing to try most things at least once (so long as it "looks like it's supposed to be food." I asked for clarification once and the example he gave was "I'd eat guinea pig. You know, if it looked like the people who made it were eating it for real").
Dislikes: Yellow Mustard, "Green Melon" (honeydew), Uni (sea urchin), Cranberries, Green Olives. Not a lot, which is nice.
Favorite foods: Crab, Mushrooms, Fish, Beef, Lima Beans, Pears

Aly
Specialty: Baking. I've always enjoyed making desserts and goodies and decided about 5 years ago to start really experimenting and getting better at it, which is still a work in progress.
Tastes: I regularly tell people that I have the palate of a 4-year-old. I don't like frilly things, and I find a lot of food to be too buried in "fancy" stuff that the rest of the population seemingly likes.
Dislikes: Onions and Tomatoes are the worst offenders. They are in everything and everyone is annoyed when I pick them out and leave them in a pile on the side of my plate. Also dislike most crunchy vegetables, but have recently become able to eat and enjoy salads.
Favorite foods:  Tacos, Chicken, Pineapple, Muffins, and yes, Chocolate

With our combined experience and strength of will, we decided that we are capable of learning how to cook, and now we simply have to start practicing!

-Aly