There is something very sexy about cooking a meal together. These make great date opportunities, but they will need to be well-planned so as not to spend the majority of the time slaving over a stove.

We love to have multi-course dinners at home with wine or cocktail pairings. The most efficient way to do this is to plan the menu ahead of time. For this, we like to browse through cookbooks to find things that we both like (as we have two completely different flavor profile preferences).

Here are some of our favorite cookbooks:

Vedge

Time-saving tips:

• grocery shop online – I like to add groceries to my grocery store shopping cart, so that I can easily swing by and pick them up
• Prep as much as you can the day before. This way, when you get into the kitchen, it’s easy, breezy
• Play Music
• Drink wine or cocktails – this makes the task more fun
• Wash dishes as you go along. If one of you is a stronger cook, the other should keep the kitchen tidy throughout the evening, this way you don’t end up with a pile of dishes at the end of the date