A year ago: a food diary

It's been a year since I went on a limb and asked a good-looking, funny guy out in a haiku. And although I know he's hoping I'm going to do a big, mushy "Oh snufflewufflekins, how I love you so" post (despite his insistence that he would never want it), I just can't seem to put to words how great it is. I've finally found that one that, no matter how bad the day is going, I find myself smiling like an idiot when I see his name come up on my caller ID.

Therefore, I'm going to let the meal from that evening speak for me...

Our sparkling

Fried green tomatoes

Pork belly ravioli

Diver's scallops

Cod with a little lobster

Plantain gnocci with black beans

Strawberry shortcake with rubarb

Meyer lemon beignets with tequila ice-cream

Baby it's cold outside

It's usually around this time that I start to bring out my autumn recipes. The sweet smell of rotting leaves, the bite in the air, the mounds of apples in every market and grocery store...I start bringing out the stuffed apples, the gingerbread, and anything with cinnamon in it. But one of my heartier meals that I do quite often is chili (see what I did there?).

Mom really would only do chili every once and a while. I'd have it in college, but no one really likes their cafeteria. It wasn't until I started living with Lou that I began to really appreciate it. She never worked Mondays, so it was usually on those days that I would come home from work, exhausted and not wanting to cook, and find the house smelling sharp and red. Lou's chili was always simple and easy to replicate...beef (or turkey), red kidney beans, black beans, garbanzo beans, tomato soup, chili powder.

When Lou moved back to the West coast, I took up her recipe. I added my own touches...cumin, red pepper flakes, garlic, diced onion, cilantro, crushed tomatoes. Eventually, I cut down the bean count from three to two after Virginia at work saw my chili lunch and her only response was "Wow, that's a lot of beans..." instead of the usual "Ooh, that looks good."

Recently, I had dinner with Karen and Michael with Kelly making his chili. The wine was served, of course, and then Kelly went to work. As I chatted with Karen about going back after maternity leave, I watched him add the usual fare with tomato paste, cheese rinds, pork stock, chicken stock, beef stock, sausage, the baby...but it was Michael's addition that caught my attention. After cleaning them, he chops up a few large potatoes and roasts them in the oven. Once they had a cracked, crisp skin, Kelly makes a bed of potatoes in each of the bowls. It is one of the best batches I have ever eaten. I wonder why I haven't thought of doing this a long, long time ago.

"Untitled #10" or "Mildstone"...

"Oh c'mon!" Kelly says as we walk to the Central T stop. "It's great...get it, 'cause it's not really a milestone." "I don't know, hon'," I say, trying to think of a better title. I always hate titling my blogs because they sort of need to be intuitive for me. I was the same way when I was doing my poetry thesis in college...changing the titles as often as I changed my hair (hot pink to shaved to afro to red to shaved again...). We catch the 82 bus and then take the T to Park for dinner.

The restaurant has a retro vibe and antique tchochkes piled in the corners. As soon as we get down the stairs to the actual dining room, Kelly spots two or three people he knows. BFG, who I met at a Gin Event, gets us cocktails as we wait for our table. "Happy anniversary," I say and we clink glasses.

I still cannot believe that we have been together for six months. It seems like only a week or so ago that he was introducing me as "Matt" to impress me with his connections and spilling full glasses of water square into my lap. I can still see his face as he moved with those practiced steps earned in the industry to pat my crotch dry and then freeze with his hands only inches away. "I'm gonna let you do that," he said and hovered by his chair, too embarrassed to sit back down and more shades of red than what is found in the produce aisle.

Kelly orders a rose for the table, goes through the motions, and looks down at his menu already too aware of what he was getting. On our second date, I was told it would months before we could come here because he wanted to make sure I was the one before he "made sweet, sweet mouth-love to a platter of buffalo wings." I agreed whole-heartily because, really, you can't come back from that after watching the person you [insert sex act here] with suck the tender bits off of a drumstick, their face and fingers Oompa Loompa orange with sauce, if you're not committed.

We order a couple of platters of comfort food (one being the mythical wings, which are worth all the hype) and I enjoy the low-light and the choreography of dining with Kelly. Among the talking, pausing to eat when the other person takes up the conversation, I let him take both his water glass and mine ("Yours is nicer 'cause it still has ice," he says and moves my glass closer to him.) and watch as we move from wine stem to water glass to a double wine stem straight to water glass. The conversation dwindles a little and Kelly checks the movie times on his phone. Having done the uber-comfortable couch marathons for the past few dates, it's nice to do something special for our anniversary...even if it's as heteronormative as dinner and a movie.

Kelly pays understanding that I would grab candy and the movie tickets. I wet-nap my hands and the corners of my mouth as he begins the teasing over what I will inevitably grab from the nearby CVS. "You going to get your Werther's Originals?" Kelly asks behind my water glass. "They're bull's-eyes," I defend. "Afraid they'll break your dentures?" "Oh no, I made sure to use my Poli-grip for tonight." Kelly laughs and signs the restaurant copy. Taking my hand, we walk back up the stairs and into the balmy night.