Struggling to stay close with your long-distance significant other? Try spicing things up by asking your far-flung flame to do some synchronized cooking.

Reddit user melodyamypond inspired the Food community by sharing how she keeps things fresh with her beau, user eztofollow. She lives in Gainesville, Fla. He lives 1,000 miles away, in Chicago, Ill.

Melodyamypond posted pictures documenting one of their virtual dinner dates—writing, “Once a week we cook a new meal together from across the country. Tonight’s delicious experiment is stuffed spinach and ricotta shells.”

She explains the long-distance logistics in the captions.

First, she and her boyfriend go grocery shopping “together,” purchasing the same set of ingredients:

Then they get cooking, laptops perched on the kitchen counter:

Then it’s bon appétit for these sweethearts! Here’s melodyamypond’s view:

And here’s her boyfriend’s view:

Even though the couple inspired thousands of redditors with their photos, they weren’t the only ones to use synchronized Skype activities to maintain a long-distance relationship.

In fact, one user overcame a much larger time difference to join their paramour in the kitchen:

While these couples’ tech-savvy dating tricks might seem distinctly 21st-century, user Jack_Beauregard—amateur historian of TV commercials for pasta products—informed melodyamypond that “[her] story is basically a Barilla commercial which aired in Italy years ago”:

(In fairness, it seems much more enjoyable to share a video-chat than a text-based email exchange.)

After hundreds of commenters shared their “aww”-filled appreciation for the couple’s resourcefulness, one mature redditor pointed out a novel silver lining to long-distance dinner dates:

Apparently, that’s not always the case.

“You still get scared that she might hear you,” melodyamypond’s boyfriend confesses in a comment, “and she has.”

Farts aside, if you find yourself without a dinner date tonight, don’t worry. You don’t have to set up an elaborate video-chat to enjoy yourself: