Here's what's cookin'.

Meal planning, shopping and preparation stress me out.

It's not the high-anxiety kind, like making-a-presentation-to-a-room-full-of-grumpy-VPs stress or the oh-crap-I'm-late-for-an-important-appointment-and-stuck-in-traffic stress. Rather, it's this sort of low-frequency, nagging kind of stress that just never seems to go away.

The family's gotta eat and I've gotta feed them. It's as simple as that.

I try to be organized and I try to be realistic, but inevitably I come home from a long day at work and don't look forward to spending the next 3 hours+ in the kitchen, cooking and then cleaning up.

But, more often than not, I do it. I manage to make home-cooked meals -- complete with a protein, starch and veggie -- on a regular basis. And, more often than not, I'm stuck in the kitchen until well past 7, cleaning up and thinking about all the laundry and other housework that still needs to get done.

If coming up with manageable, semi-interesting menus wasn't enough, there's also the whole cost-containment aspect. I try to be economical. I choose recipes that don't cost an arm and a leg per serving and I shop at our local Aldi, a store that often gets a bad rap, but that saves me a bundle on our weekly grocery bill.

I'm not dumb. I know what to do: I always go with meals in mind and a complete list in hand. I buy versatile ingredients, those that can be used in more than one dish. Plus, I try to buy only what we really need -- not impulse purchases that'll die slow painful deaths, expiring in the back of my pantry.

But from time to time, and most often on weekends, I throw in the towel. I've put in my time during the work week.

I'm done. Finished. Ka-put.

So when everyone looks to me Saturday night and asks, what's for dinner? -- especially when I need to sit down and plan meals for the week ahead, my response is: "We're eating out."

The whole thing is exhausting.

So surely you can understand why I got a little defensive when Mark asked me why our family food costs are so high and did I think we could, say, cut them in half?

He asked me this in a perfectly non-threatening way, but, weary from the day-in-day-out challenge of feeding our family, I took it as a you're-spending-WAY-too-much-on-groceries accusation.

I'm not proud of how I reacted.

My first instinct was to tell him to go f--- himself. (I did not.) My second instinct was better, but not by much. I barely managed to hold back pregnancy-induced, hormonally charged tears and confessed to feeling overwhelmed by bearing the brunt of this major household chore solely on my shoulders. I told him how I work really hard to feed all of us, but doing so is thankless, exhausting and expensive.

And so I asked if he would he be willing to share the load a little.

I was hoping for him to volunteer to pick up one meal a week, tops, but what I didn't expect was Mark's offer to plan and prepare meals for an entire week.

He proposed we alternate meal planning responsibilities week by week. He rationalized that the arrangement would help him improve his own cooking skills and repertoire (which he genuinely wants), to understand where our food budget was going and, as a bonus, it would ease my workload.

I eagerly accepted his offer.

So, we're nearing the end of Chef Mark's first week.

He planned seven day's worth of meals, shopped for groceries and has made something every night. His meals are tasty and, despite a few setbacks, like realizing he'd forgotten key ingredients, has gained confidence by going off-recipe and improvising to still-delicious results.

While Mark never made me feel my meal-prep efforts were unappreciated, I think he has a new appreciation for how challenging it can be -- especially after putting in a full day at work. But it remains to be seen if he's been able to cut our grocery bill in half.

I'll admit that having some free time to do other household chores and, in one case, take a nap after work, thrills me to no end. But I don't want to simply shift the stress of dinner prep from one of us to the other. I'm happy that he's understanding that it's not a simple (or cheap) chore, but I don't delight in seeing him get frustrated. That's not what this should be about. That's not good for our marriage.

I'm not sure if this week-on, week-off thing will continue or not, but for now, I'm happy to approach meal prep more equitably. I'm happy to even things out a little.

And I'm certain I'll learn a few things along the way. I'll expand my own mental recipe index, pick up a few cooking tips and use my off-weeks to better manage other household chores -- the ones that often get neglected.

And if I can get a nap or two in there somehow...it's even better.