How this stay-at-home dad found salvation in the kitchen

As a home chef, I think I hit bottom with the plywood pork chops.

I can’t even claim they resembled cardboard; I wish I’d stopped frying when they were as tender and tasty as that. My wife just laughed as she knocked the inedible slab against her plate. “You’re not allowed to cook pork anymore.”

If only I had been paroled from cooking anything ever again. I wasn’t enjoying it, I wasn’t any good at it, and I definitely wasn’t doing my family any favors.

And yet, as a stay-at-home dad, I’m the one responsible for about 10 meals a day – breakfast and lunch for me and our two kids, and dinner for all of us. My wife loves cooking, and has a natural feel for it – throwing together dishes on the fly that I couldn’t ever execute, much less conceive. But sadly, her work hours mean I’m the one manning the stove.

I’ve heard people say that cooking is how they show their families love. For me it’s just a way to wreck a clean kitchen.

Then a friend turned me on to subscription meal services, taking pity on me and my family with free trials for Blue Apron, Hello Fresh and Plated. Each comes with recipes and all the individually packaged ingredients needed for a week’s trio of meals – a vial of red-wine vinegar, a single egg, a few sprigs of fresh thyme.

The meals each run about $10 per person – more than a grocery trip, but less than dinner out. I gladly pay the premium, calling it my “creativity tax.”

My kitchen handicaps are imagination and timing. I’d remember to preheat the oven for Tater Tots just when the burgers were done grilling. Many nights 6:30 rolled around, and I still didn’t know what was for dinner. It’s called denial. At the grocery, my mind a blank, I’d hit the meat department’s clearance section – not so much for economy, but to spur me into picking what to serve that night. The bargain bin is where the doomed pork chops originated.

Many meals were variations on a plain chicken breast and a few lettuce leaves. And by “variation” I mean a sprinkle of trail mix to dress up the “salad.”

But I found out I could build a meal from a kit. Given a box with exact amounts of ingredients, specific instructions and times, even I could pull off peppercorn steak, chicken paillard, and salmon with broccolini. The welcome crates that arrived every week freed me from having to dream up dinners. I’ve ended up favoring Hello Fresh, just because their instructions and prep work seem easiest to me. Early on, with another company, I was honestly baffled at how to get the garlic clove out of the full bulb.

Along the way, a few good tools have also helped – a nonstick ceramic frying pan (easy cleanup), a pair of comfortable santoku knives for slicing and chopping, and my wife’s microplane grater, which I use almost every day for garlic, ginger or citrus zest.

But it was the repetition that trained me, and saved me. Three meals a week, every week. Like any lesson, the more I diced and roasted and “sauteed until fragrant,” the more skilled and more comfortable I got.

Sesame salmon with brown rice and asparagus.

(Megan Garvey / Los Angeles Times )

Pretty soon my wife was asking for repeats of favorite dishes, and even Instagramming the more photogenic ones to incredulous friends. She looks forward to coming home for dinner, while I’m not resentful at my family needing to eat, nor embarrassed at what I’m serving.

One night I was slicing my rested beef against the grain, laying it aside the beans and butternut squash, giving a quick stir to my sauce reducing in the pan and finishing up the chopped-parsley garnish, circling the kitchen in a well-timed tarantella. A warmth rose up inside me, a zen moment, a fleeting sense of enjoyment in the act, and in how very far I’d come. I mentioned it to my wife, as I served.

“Wow, so you really like cooking now?”

I sat down to eat, spent from the stress of spending 90 minutes on what should have been a 30-minute meal, and cursing the dirty cookware and cutting boards that would need attention later.

“Whoa – let’s not get crazy.”

Carney is married to Times deputy managing editor Megan Garvey.

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