Winter Joy Retreat-Day 2: Food and Love

I'm participating in an online writer's retreat, thanks to Nina Badzin's blog. The topic is "Edible Memories," so all the posts will be about food. I will try to post every day to keep up, but there are some I might come back to later, depending on my schedule and when inspiration strikes.

Today's topic:
Tell us about the food of love.
(Or your love of food, as the case may be.)

Warning: This is probably going to be a brain dump for me. :)

My relationship with my husband has been food-focused ever since we were dating. He had taught himself how to cook when he was single and would make delicious stir-fry dishes (sautes, as he called them) with chicken and fresh vegetables. The first time I cooked for him, I went with some basic stuff that I know I wouldn't mess up. Chicken baked in a sweet-and-sour sauce, rice, and this delicious napa cabbage salad. Of course, the meal wasn't without incident, as I managed to drop and break the bowl that the salad was in. Thankfully, this was after we ate the salad! He thought nothing of it and helped me clean up the glass so I wouldn't cut myself.

We've always enjoyed dining out together. I was thrilled that he liked my favorite Chinese restaurant (the one I worked at and mentioned on Day 1) and we'd always share the chicken garlic lo mein. I remember when we were first dating and he took me out for crepes before we saw this horrible musical (that we still laugh about). He's since learned how to make his own crepes, which are just as delicious. I started enjoying Mexican food because of him (even though I only ate fajitas) and we'd even sometimes get Indian food together. Thai food is definitely a favorite of ours, as well. Of course, we would go out for ice cream a lot. When we went to St. Joseph, Michigan, during the first summer we were together, we got Kilwin's ice cream (still a favorite) and took our cones with us to the beach to watch the sun set.

Kilwin's in St. Joseph

We started going to monthly Shabbat dinners together in the city and then decided to try a Shabbat dinner program in the suburbs. We'd fit as many people as possible in my condo and have a meal together while also discussing the weekly parsha (section of the Torah) in a way that was relevant to modern times. The program was short-lived, due to funding, but we still would have smaller Shabbat meals for just our friends from time to time. Most Friday nights, it was just the two of us sitting at the Shabbat table, enjoying a bottle of Joy Vin or Bartenura Moscato (at the time, it was called Moscato D'Asti and we still call it "Asti" nowadays) and a fresh loaf of challah that came from his bread machine. (It was a while before I started taking over the challah making process.) Shabbat meals have been a weekly ritual for us before we were even married. We first eased our way into doing them every week, but then realized how big a part of our lives these meals were.

We both take part in putting together Shabbat dinner. He cooks the meat and vegetable dishes. I usually handle the baked items, such as kugels and desserts. I also make the matzo balls for his soup broth. (Although I've passed along that task to my older son recently.) Sometimes it's just us and our kids around the table. Other times we host between one and three other families. Then we bring out all the special meals that we know how to make...homemade challah, brisket, cholent, deli roll, noodle kugel, pareve (non-dairy) cookies and cream ice cream pie, blueberry cake, etc. We've gone from working side by side in tiny apartment kitchens to having enough space to spread out in the kitchen we had remodeled. Sometimes he'll make dishes that I normally make and vice versa. I help him out whenever he needs me to (like the time he was stuck on the train and he sent me instructions for making a carrot dish or when he had to run to the store a third time and I got the potatoes ready for mashing while he was out).

From Thanksgiving, but this is the kind of spread we have for big Shabbat meals

Aside from this, when I first thought of food and love, I thought of my husband's birthday the year we were married. We had inside jokes about Saved by the Bell, so I decided to write "Happy Wrong Number By The Sea" on his birthday cake, since that is what was written on Zack's birthday cake when they were working at the resort. It was just a simple cake from a mix, but I might have made the frosting. I can't remember. In any case, it made him laugh, which is so vital to our relationship. Our friends didn't know what was so funny about the cake, but we did and that was what mattered.

This is not the cake I made (as it was from the show) but this gives you an idea.