I understood that preparing food for a loved one was a sincere expression of feeling that adults would often use to comfort others and to fortify their relationships. Unfortunately, in my young adult life, I had cooked only a handful of legitimate meals for anyone other than myself. Having been too lazy, cheap, and calorie-conscious for most of college to cook meat for myself, my entree comfort-zone was considerably uncomfortable and consisted mainly of chicken--sad, sorry, simple boneless chicken breasts that I would ultimately hack to pieces in my efforts to determine their "done-ness" with nervous knife slits. My early attempts at chicken dishes were infrequent and usually incorporated some form of clusterfuck--like an accidental dredging in powdered sugar mistaken for flour that rendered an entire batch of chicken parmesan inedible.
I made a lot of vegetables--often cheap and grotesque combinations, like frozen lima beans mixed with ketchup, but I knew better than to present such an abomination to another human being. When I was feeling fancy, I'd been known to saute a pan of fresh zucchini and tomato with various seasonings (usually limited to garlic salt), but again, I knew the average person would feel a bit slighted at what most other diners would consider a garnish or, at best, a side. So imagine the relief when this new man in my life professed to love vegetables--and the crushing despair that followed when he divulged what his absolute favorite was...
"Collards."
WTF. I'd lived in the south most of my life but could not have distinguished collard greens from Astro-turf at that point. You could have fed me a pile of steamed marijuana leaves and comfortably convinced me they were collards until the craving for Funions set in. My mom was an accomplished cook with a broad repertoire of succulent offerings--but she grew up in New York City, where collards were on neither the menu nor the radar at the time. So I asked one of my older, more southern colleagues how to make collards--but when she began with "get yourself some pigs feet or a turkey neck...", I decided that authentic preparation of collards wasn't going to be my most valuable selling point in securing this new relationship.
If the way to one's heart is truly through the stomach, my only other option at the time was baking. While I couldn't cook a square meal to save my life, my roommates were already familiar with my propensity for "thank you" baking--of rewarding kindness with baked goods, specifically cakes of grandiose proportions. Cakes were of the utmost importance in my family--especially on my mom's side. Holidays were often marked with up to 3 different cakes per meal, the memory of which was documented by copious photographs--not of the people who made them or ate them--but of the cakes. Like they were welcoming their desserts as new family members that would later be cannibalized by the rest of the group.
I'd started baking during the latter part of elementary school and had thus gotten most of my requisite baking SNAFUs out of the way--like forgetting the flour in chocolate chip cookies, which produces a salty kind of cookie brittle that smells like cookies, but tastes like burnt pretzels. Yes, yes. I could make him a CAKE! Well within my wheelhouse and sure to please--because who doesn't like cake?
Ironically, the answer to that question was..."Ray". Not that he finds cake disgusting--it's just not his favorite. He prefers things like shortbread and pie and desserts with visible chunks of real fruit in them like blueberry muffins or black cherry ice cream--things that my sisters and I collectively categorized under "GROSS" until young adulthood (and possibly beyond). While I enjoyed cakes speckled with chocolate chips and covered in 6 solid inches of buttercream frosting--Ray was more tempted by a pint (or more) of berries. As far as I was concerned, he ate dessert like a 70-year-old woman--which, little did I know, made sense. He'd grown up across town from one grandma, who made pie every Sunday, and had shared a backyard with the other grandma, whose heirloom grapevines had fueled the sweet scuppernong and muscadine memories of his childhood summers. But on his 25th birthday--the first of many birthdays I would spend with him--I didn't know any of that. And he didn't tell me. He just ate my spinach lasagna (that he'd probably gag on today) and my tower of chocolate cake bathed in white buttercream with a generous shield of chocolate ganache. And he drank the red wine I served him until he was drunk enough to like it. Because he recognized my gesture and was hopeful about the direction our future might be leading. As it turns out, we knew the same love language--just different dialects, with a variable vocabulary that did not yet overlap.
Fifteen years later, I'm preparing dessert for Ray's 40th birthday--blueberry pie with a lemon shortbread crust. Like all my first attempts at recipes, I'm experiencing my share of clusterfucks along the way--realizing that a "lightly floured surface" for rolling out dough only applies to bakers who haven't over-mixed their pastry to the consistency of pancake batter; for everyone else, that surface will need to look like something you can drive a snowmobile through. There's a good chance the popcorn kernels I'm substituting for "pie weights" might burst into puffy white fire hazards during the crust-baking process (despite many cooking message boards to the contrary) and I maybe, just maybe, forgot a tablespoon of confectioners sugar somewhere along the way...but at least on paper, I can now confidently say, this is something Ray should and would like if properly prepared. Not just to please me, but because it pleases him.
I most likely won't get it right the first time, or even the second, but I'm confident my persistence in barking up the right tree will one day result in a dessert that he genuinely and whole-heartedly likes. It's the challenge and privilege of marrying someone--to know them better and better every year and to be known yourself against the backgrounds of soaring success and epic failure. To love and be loved. For who you both were, who you are, and who you are going to be.
Happy birthday, love!
And because no post in Ray's honor would be complete without links to songs I wouldn't know without him...all the links in today's piece lead to songs by who else but The Love Language.
Ironically, the answer to that question was..."Ray". Not that he finds cake disgusting--it's just not his favorite. He prefers things like shortbread and pie and desserts with visible chunks of real fruit in them like blueberry muffins or black cherry ice cream--things that my sisters and I collectively categorized under "GROSS" until young adulthood (and possibly beyond). While I enjoyed cakes speckled with chocolate chips and covered in 6 solid inches of buttercream frosting--Ray was more tempted by a pint (or more) of berries. As far as I was concerned, he ate dessert like a 70-year-old woman--which, little did I know, made sense. He'd grown up across town from one grandma, who made pie every Sunday, and had shared a backyard with the other grandma, whose heirloom grapevines had fueled the sweet scuppernong and muscadine memories of his childhood summers. But on his 25th birthday--the first of many birthdays I would spend with him--I didn't know any of that. And he didn't tell me. He just ate my spinach lasagna (that he'd probably gag on today) and my tower of chocolate cake bathed in white buttercream with a generous shield of chocolate ganache. And he drank the red wine I served him until he was drunk enough to like it. Because he recognized my gesture and was hopeful about the direction our future might be leading. As it turns out, we knew the same love language--just different dialects, with a variable vocabulary that did not yet overlap.
Fifteen years later, I'm preparing dessert for Ray's 40th birthday--blueberry pie with a lemon shortbread crust. Like all my first attempts at recipes, I'm experiencing my share of clusterfucks along the way--realizing that a "lightly floured surface" for rolling out dough only applies to bakers who haven't over-mixed their pastry to the consistency of pancake batter; for everyone else, that surface will need to look like something you can drive a snowmobile through. There's a good chance the popcorn kernels I'm substituting for "pie weights" might burst into puffy white fire hazards during the crust-baking process (despite many cooking message boards to the contrary) and I maybe, just maybe, forgot a tablespoon of confectioners sugar somewhere along the way...but at least on paper, I can now confidently say, this is something Ray should and would like if properly prepared. Not just to please me, but because it pleases him.
I most likely won't get it right the first time, or even the second, but I'm confident my persistence in barking up the right tree will one day result in a dessert that he genuinely and whole-heartedly likes. It's the challenge and privilege of marrying someone--to know them better and better every year and to be known yourself against the backgrounds of soaring success and epic failure. To love and be loved. For who you both were, who you are, and who you are going to be.
Happy birthday, love!
And because no post in Ray's honor would be complete without links to songs I wouldn't know without him...all the links in today's piece lead to songs by who else but The Love Language.
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