Everyone, it seemed, told me that a weekly date night was the key to a happy, long-term marriage. “It’s time you set apart for you and your spouse to just connect,” “Romance! Romance! Romance!” and “You have to prioritise your relationship” were the mantras drilled into my brain.
Husband and I had grand plans of date night-ing after we got married. He would plan one week, and I the next. It would be filled with romance, special memories and fun.
You can probably guess where this is going. Our first date nights were disasters. So disaster-like that we decided not to have date nights anymore. In hindsight it makes sense. We spent every evening except for one and every weekend together; date-nighting was too much pressure and not needed for that season of our life. We were around each other all the time, and we were living out what it meant to be married instead of working toward it.
Now that we’ve been married for almost 11 months, one thing I learned is that some of the best traditions evolve and happen naturally. They don’t need to be forced, and they work not because everyone is doing it, but because it works for us. Our Friday evenings have been some of our most memorable lately, so I started cooking a more-special-than-normal meal for it. Something that would taste good, look beautiful but not necessarily take too much time.
This week’s recipe was a hit. Taken, as always, from my favourite source – Taste. I do not know what I would do without that website. For how tasty it was and how great it looked, it really was too easy a recipe, and it had minimum preparation time and very little fiddling around during the cooking phase.
- Chicken Roasted with Red Wine and Grapes I followed the recipe almost exactly, adding a few more bay leaves and more balsamic vinegar. There were only green grapes at the grocery store, and it was no problem to use the green ones, but I imagine that red grapes would be a better complement to the red wine. Cook the chicken for the exact amount of time the recipe recommends as it stays moist that way.
