The Time J Tried Cooking Dinner

Before J and I started dating he had this adorable idea of cooking a meal his mom would make when he was back home in Texas. I love being in the kitchen so I was actually really looking forward to this particular evening.

We went to the grocery store together and got some mini cucumbers, garlic, scallions, flank steak, and and a few other items. We chatted through the store about our favorite meals our parents made growing up, you know just the typical "getting to know you" things.

When we got back to the kitchen, he suggested that I cut these cucumbers while he pulled up the recipe. I was a little confused, but I figured we were making a salad so I just cut them like salad cucumbers.

A little while goes by, the cucumbers are chopped and I'm dicing garlic and he turns to me and says, "Go ahead and cook that meat." Not knowing what we're cooking and with that generic direction, I asked how he wanted it cooked.

"I don't know, just cook it."

"Okay, but how do you want it cooked? Like seasonings on it? Do you want it just cooked in the oven or in a pan? Should I cut it up or cook it like this?"

"I don't know, just cook it! That's how my mom does it, she just cooks it."

We went back and forth for a good five minutes, competing on who could shout louder. Finally I just threw the unseasoned flank steak in the oven and "cooked it".

Let's rewind a little bit. Justin is half Korean but grew up in Texas. At this point, I knew his roots were Asian, but as his Korean vocabulary is limited to the word “hello,” (dear God, is it Korean? Lol) I assumed this meal we were about to make was a dish from Texas.... but that's where I was wrong.

We were cooking a Koren dish of cucumber kimchi, steak and rice.... only I had never in my life eaten this meal so I had no clue how to make it.... and neither did J.

The food was bland and gross and I honestly don't know how we made it out of the fiasco still being friends. Somehow we did, and still laugh at how horribly that evening turned out.

When everything was over Justin told me about the Oliver Family Cookbook. His words were, "One day, we'll get the Oliver Family Cookbook and we can have all the recipes to my favorite meals so we don't have to guess."

When we got engaged I brought up that we wanted an Oliver Family Cookbook, and was devastated to hear they were all gone! Thankfully, MawMaw Oliver pulled through and found one for us.

It's one of my favorite cookbooks. Not just because there's recipes that have been passed down for generations, but because there are SO many recipes to everything you could think about needing a recipe for.

The recipes were collected around 20 years ago, before they started putting pictures of the recipes in cookbooks. So, on this blog, every recipe that I try out of the Oliver Family Cookbook, I'll document with pictures. Hopefully, within the next 20 years, we'll make a new one! ;)