Baked Penne and my husband’s smiling face

Even though Chris is managing a super-stressful project at work, and often has hours more work to do on his computer when he gets home (which is an hour or more commute depending on traffic), he takes care of me and the kids without any sort of complaint. He often stops on the way home for dinner stuff, helps Nathan with homework, gives Kaitlyn a bath and gets her in bed, and did I mention the laundry?  Chris designated himself the Chief laundry-doer, and at least twice a week, stays up late after everyone else is in bed to fold baskets of laundry. He sorts it all out by family member and leaves it in neat piles for me to put away in the morning. I might be the stay at home Mom, but it’s really him who keeps things running smoothly around here.

Which is why it makes me so happy when something I do puts a smile on his face.  The other night for dinner, I made the Baked Penne recipe from The Stocked Kitchen, a cookbook/cooking system I picked up at the Home & Housewares Show in Chicago.  The recipe is very similar to what my Mom called goulash – ground beef cooked with onions, garlic and diced tomatoes (this recipe uses fresh basil as well), mixed with cooked penne (my Mom used macaroni). Then, it gets topped with a whole lot of mozzarella cheese and baked in the oven until it’s ooey gooey (yes, that’s an official cooking term!)

It smelled so good that while he was helping me pour the meat/pasta mixture into a baking dish, Chris grabbed a small bowl and scooped some in, then sprinkled some shredded mozzarella on it and popped it in the microwave to melt.  This is what the bowl he microwaved looked like:

And this was the look on his face while he was eating:

For all the times he has a scowl on his face when he comes home from work, for all evenings when the exhaustion of working nonstop on this project is clearly showing on his face when he sits down at the dinner table, all the times he tells me he hasn’t had time to eat lunch at work for DAYS – this made me feel like I was helping.  It felt good to put a meal in front of him that he really liked and that made him smile.

I love you, sweetie.

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