Cooking for other people is both a trial and a joy to me - I LOVE seeing other people enjoy my food, and give me compliments on it. But I get really stressed out that it won't be good enough, or fancy enough, or that my taste will align imperfectly with theirs.

My solution has been to cook a lot and experiment with Katherine (who will eat what I cook even if it's not stellar) and to develop stand-bys that are delicious and impressive for company. The downside to that approach is that it requires a lot of cooking and trial and error, which is annoying if you don't enjoy the process much to begin with.