Chili weekend

I made chili tonight. Turkey chili. It’s good stuff – or will be after it steeps overnight – and it’s totally healthful. Four kinds of beans, chunked meat from a roasted turkey, green and red peppers, onion, carrot, some hot pepper, black pepper, a touch of garlic, some oregano and various secret ingredients.  And by secret ingredients, I mean of course the stuff that Mary will add while I’m not looking.

This is not to say Mary sneaks her additions into the pot. We just cook collaboratively. We’re going to be doing a lot more of that in the near future as we work on making some changes in direction. Yes, we’re on a health kick, what of it?

We went to the market earlier this evening and purchased the food we’ll eat this week. It’s been a long, long time since we did the grocery shopping together. It was a nice evening out. I recall when we were first married, we’d go to Von’s in Fresno and spend an hour shopping, running a mental tab as we went since we weren’t rolling in money in those days. Not that we are now but that’s a whole ‘nother blog.

We really enjoyed being together, making these itty bitty decisions as we made our way up and down the aisles. It was … well, nice.

We’ll have chili tomorrow night and again Tuesday (it gets better over time, trust me), tilapia Monday, pork Wednesday, and so on. And of course, veggies, salad, healthful snacks and so forth. We’ll be working together on our meal planning and prep and cooking. And it’s been awhile since we’ve done that, as well.

Over the years of raising a family, we’d perhaps become a little too good at delegating tasks to ourselves and each other and it seems, doing very little actually together. And now that it’s just us in the house and we’re able to be a bit more selfish in our day-to-day choices, we’re drawing closer together. We put the Christmas decorations away together. We talked together about how the girls are doing at school. We ate dinner together.

It’s ironic that in building a family and dividing up chores to make things manageable, how much of our life we spent apart. There were probably many weeks during which our primary time together awake was when we both happened to volunteer for the same event for the girls’ schools or choir or…

I’ve been asked many times in the last four months whether Mary and I are sad with the girls out of the house. The blunt truth is, not a bit. That’s not to say I don’t miss the girls. I’m constantly wondering how they’re doing or thinking about how one or the other of them would react to this or that. I need them at odd moments and they’re just not here.

On the other hand, they’re each embarked on building their own lives and I’m a thrilled observer. And meanwhile, I have my wife back. We’re working on reclaiming the house as our own and planning hikes and yes, shopping together.

And tonight, I made chili that won’t be done until Mary seasons it to taste.

Life is good.