Keep It Simple: If you’re not a whiz in the kitchen, now is not a time to pretend that you are. The best way to succeed at impressing your lady friend is to keep it simple. Look for recipes with no more than eight ingredients, and be sure that they’re ingredients you can find in your local supermarket.

Plan Ahead: Don’t plan the menu, go food shopping, and try to cook all in one day. You’ll get overwhelmed. Instead, take it easy and plan ahead. Give yourself a day or so to think about what you want to cook. A day before the meal, buy your groceries so that they’re fresh and so that you’re sure everything you need is in stock. This way, the only thing you’re doing on the big night is cooking.

Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help: If you’re really intimidated by the kitchen but are committed to cooking a meal, ask a cooking-savvy friend to help you out. With a wingman at your side while you’re food shopping and cooking, you’ll be much more at ease. Just be sure to send your friend home before your girl arrives.

Don’t Be Fancy: If it’s the early stages of the relationship, you probably don’t know her food tastes all too well. So don’t go wasting your money on fancy ingredients because she may not even like them. Simple, basic ingredients are the safest bet at this point. The menu below is both cost effective and simply elegant.

Recipe Ideas: So now that you’re in the right frame of mind, you’re probably wondering “what should I cook to impress a girl?”… I’ve helped out a bit and designed a sure-fire dinner menu that’s easy and tasty:

Good Luck!

Laura Troyani heads up Marketing and Business Development for Plummelo. Not content with just being another behind-the-scenes pencil pusher, Laura decided to give blogging a shot and writes practical, everyday tips for the home cook (or aspiring home cook). Laura’s favorite foods are ice cream, olive oil, ice cream, parmesan cheese, ice cream, and occasionally ice cream.

And, I’d imagine, to the food-passionate circles of which I dream of being part, such a declaration would be akin to telling, say, a whale activist that I like everything about saving whales except for having to actually cut those storied nets and save them.

I read food magazines and chef memoirs. I study recipes. I watch as much cooking as my basic cable package allows. I bore (and quite possibly drive away) those around me with talk of meals way before and way after the fact.

And see? You’re probably already thinking, “Wow. How unique of you.”

Yes, in the eyes of the walk-the-walk cooking world, I’m just another non-low-brow American with an appetite.

But, to be honest, I just don’t have any major desire to really start cooking. Or at least not quite yet. Because it doesn’t make sense for my life quite yet. Cooking for myself in an apartment that boasts not even the tiniest splash of countertop; purchasing ingredients with a bank account that’s overdrawn bi-weekly; preparing said ingredients to almost surely come out inedible—it all strikes me as a bit masochistic, if anything. Practice makes perfect, yes, but practicing is expensive. And demands a countertop.

Is this wrong though? Does a love for all things food have to be yoked with the actual act of cooking in order to be legitimate? In terms of my aforementioned social aspirations, I think it does. Without having experienced the process of bringing meals to life, I fear that my passion comes off as unsubstantiated. I can spend my days sitting in my counterless apartment-for-one romanticizing the world of food, but until I’ve experienced its less romantic aspects (save for weight gain), can it really be called love?

Well, it certainly is love, but perhaps to please the masses and silence my insecurities, I should just make something. I am 25 years old, after all. And if anything, it’d be interesting to see what my obsession is capable of bringing to life.

Step one: a salad! How about Cilantro Lime Crab Salad? But with plain Greek yogurt in place of the mayonnaise. A salad is something I can keep in the fridge. And one which I don’t feel guilty about picking at compulsively. Lean proteins. Vegetables. Happy fats.

Wish me luck…