Cook a romantic dinner for two.

“I thought I’d be smooth and cook a “romantic dinner” for the person I’d just started seeing. Nothing too crazy, just pasta, garlic bread, and maybe a fancy dessert to look impressive. Easy, right? Wrong. Apparently, if you put garlic bread in the oven, then get distracted trying to make pasta sauce “from scratch” (aka Googling recipes in panic), you will forget about the bread. Until it starts smoking. Within minutes, the smoke alarm in my apartment is blaring. Fine, embarrassing enough. But then the building-wide alarm goes off. Suddenly, my entire complex is evacuating while I’m standing in the hallway holding a tray of charred bread like a guilty cartoon character. My date? Laughing so hard she’s crying.”

“I remember the first time I made dinner for my partner in our cramped studio apartment—pan-seared salmon that I slightly overcooked, green beans that were too garlicky, and a chocolate mousse that never quite set. None of it was perfect, but twenty years later, we still talk about that meal more than any fancy restaurant reservation.”