Tom and I love to watch cooking shows. Master Chef, Beat Bobby Flay and Guy’s Grocery Games are a few we watch regularly. But two have really been the top of our viewing favorites lately: Next Level Chef and Andrew Zimmer’s Family Dinner.

Next Level Chef is Gordon Ramsey’s latest cooking show, and it’s really good. We look forward each week to see what the next challenge will be. This week it was Happy Hour and each chef had to prepare an appetizer, pairing it with a cocktail. It’s always fun to see what they think of under pressure. Some prove their creative genius, others get so ruffled they forget to include their cocktail for the judges. I think the reason we like these shows is the simplicity of it all. Cook well and move forward. Make a mistake and you may be eliminated. Kind of like an Olympics in the Culinary World.

Andrew Zimmer’s Family Dinner hits us on a completely different level. He meets with a different family in America and visits them for their weekly family gathering. It’s diverse and so is the food prepared. Some are quite simple, others are intricate and involved. What they all have in common is a story of family and how food has connected them through generations.

We love our family and we all enjoy cooking together. Even though weekly family dinners are impossible given that we live in different states, we still love to share what we’re cooking. We have a text thread that keeps us up-to-date on all things, including “What’s for Dinner?”

Our family provides lots of cooking challenges with Gluten Free requirements, dairy restrictions and food sensitivities including soy and pork. It’s like a cooking show gathering of our own; asking “How can we make the foods we love eliminating the ingredients we can’t eat?” I must say we’ve gotten quite good at improvising.

Every family has a story that starts in the kitchen. If Andrew Zimmer were to come to our house we would share recipes from Italy and the South. Tom’s Mom cooked traditional Italian which we referred to last week. My family is from Oklahoma and the South. All which influences my love for anything smothered and fried. Together this tells the story of us.

Do you and your spouse enjoy watching TV shows? Have you ever considered this is part of what makes you unique? This alone tells a story of ways you connect together around common interests.

Photo from Magnolia.com