Everything but the Kitchen Sink.

This last football season I found myself screaming at the television as the New England Patriots lost to the Denver Broncos, preventing us from making it to the Super Bowl. If you would’ve told me five years ago that I would be spending my evenings crazing over football games I would’ve thought you were insane. While Shayne and I both have our own hobbies, we have both also grown to like things that we would’ve never tried on our own.

The biggest hobby that I now love is watching sports. I’ve always been a baseball fan, but not of a specific team. I love the sport, and simply enjoyed watching any team play. I was the girl who only watched football during the Super Bowl, and attended the parties for good barbecue wings. Now I would prioritize a Patriots game over just about anything. Although Shayne has opened my eyes to the world of sports, I absolutely do not bandwagon with all of his favorite teams. Shayne is a diehard Ravens fan, and I wouldn’t be caught dead cheering them on. My favorite college football game last season was when Michigan State played Oregon, until we lost (however Oregon did win the year before last). Luckily, we both like the Houston Astros, so later this month you can find us behind left field cheering them on!

Shayne here,

This past February I did something that I never thought I would do; I went to a country concert. I purchased tickets to go see Luke Bryan for Kate for her Christmas gift. I never thought I would enjoy listening to his music, but after the concert he has now become one of my favorites. I now even have numerous country presets on my car radio. Another amazing thing that came about was getting our wonderful fat cat Snowy, something I would’ve never done on my own. Kate convinced me to go to PetSmart and made me go into the cat room to play with the cats. Once I saw this beautiful five month old all white cat, I knew I had to have her. The absolute best new thing that Kate opened my eyes to is Bourbon Street, and most importantly crab rangoon. Bourbon Street is a Chinese place in the mall that now knows us by name and has our orders memorized. Lastly, I am lucky enough to have found such a wonderful girl who enjoys playing Call of Duty as much as I do. On lazy days we can play COD online and slay people, and just relax together.

While Shayne and I find joy in participating in many activities together, cooking is not one of them. Numerous couples enjoy staying in and cooking a nice supper together, but that is one of our biggest fears. Not only do we not enjoy cooking, we don’t have the slightest idea on how to make a balanced, healthy, and tasteful meal. We have recently discussed how this will be a problem after we are married and living together. Delivery pizza and Chinese takeout every night will not only break the bank, but it will also push us a little farther away from catalog beach bodies.

Today while we were out walking the mall we went into one of our favorite game/book stores. There was a big rack with clearance cookbooks and we spent no less than thirty minutes searching through them. We are pretty simple eaters. We aren’t trying to make gourmet meals every night, we are simply trying to survive and ideally avoid morbid obesity. We finally found a cookbook that seemed to apply to our skill level. It’s from Better Homes and Gardens, and is called “5 Ingredient Favorites.” Surely we can handle that!

If you enjoy cooking more than we do, we would really appreciate if you would please comment or email me with some of your favorite and simple recipes! We would love to try them out sometime. If nothing else, don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone every once and a while. You may discover that you love something that you thought you hated. Who knows, maybe Shayne and I will learn to love to cook!