There are weeks when Mike is less than enthusiastic about my mostly-vegetarian meal plans. We compromise with "Mike Dinners": he prepares one of his favorite meat dishes (i.e. tator tot hotdish, which I disliked even when I did eat meat on a more regular basis) and I make something for myself. You would think that I would go all out and cook some sort of vegetarian masterpiece incorporating Mike's least favorite ingredients. In reality, I usually do something incredibly lazy and somewhat pathetic, like making jasmine rice topped merely with soy sauce or microwaving some oatmeal.
But today, I decided to try harder. Mike planned a dinner of chicken with mustard and dill sauce; I settled on a meal of fried eggs, sauted mushrooms, and kale chips. This is far more ambitious than the rice or oatmeal options, in that I had to use the stove and the oven.
Unorthodox as my eggs/mushrooms/kale combination may be as a traditional dinner, I was in heaven. Fried eggs over hard are my hands-down favorite egg preparation method, but I hardly ever make them (probably because I am not an eggs for breakfast kind of person, and Mike frowns on breakfast for dinner). The opportunity to devour an entire package of mushrooms all by myself gives me the kind of glee that others get from a bag of potato chips or a pint of Ben and Jerry's. Kale chips appeal to both my love of salty snack foods and my effort to eat lots of vegetables, and since Mike hates them, they were a perfect way to round out my Stacy Dinner.
Mike Dinner/Stacy Dinner: the mealtime compromise that holds our marriage together.