Let me count the ways...

It is usually this way many a morning. I wake up with my alarm pulling at my ears, punching me in the face with each shrill beep and squeak. I pull myself from the comforting arms of the bed (and often Kelly) to stare my reflection down in the mirror and dare him to say something. My hair is a mess, smooshed down along some strange plane that I can't pretend is a chosen style. My entire face hurts from the pressure building behind it and being forced to squint in the angry sunlight. I remain in my inhuman state until my third cup of coffee, where I start to return to the self I abandoned the night before.

On the mornings after that Kelly gets up with me, he is chipper from the get-go. Shiny and excited in the poisonous way that only morning people can be, he chatters at me, goading me to answer something more than "ugh," "meh," or "I will kill you" in a bleary, raspy monotone. Unlike most of humanity (leading me to believe my boyfriend is a gay robot), Kelly doesn't suffer from hangovers.

Before dating him, I didn't really drink that much. In college, yes...but only on weekends and the stray Thursday that I didn't have a meeting at one of the magazines I interned at or with my thesis advisor. I also am a fairly small man, or as Samantha likes to say, "You're too damn skinny." My mother also gets giggly from just smelling wine, so the fates are against me for having any sort of tolerance. Where most would be happy to have such a "cheap date," Kelly is slightly embarrassed and surprised the times that I manage to keep up.

One morning at brunch, he watches me sit silently, sip my third or fourth cup of life, and scrape at the remains of my pancakes, before saying "You know, you should write about the downsides of dating me." I arch an eyebrow. "You always brag about the free food, drinks, and going to these great parties and things, but you never tell them about the other stuff."

And he's right. Therefore, let me include my list of top three things that I do not enjoy about dating a foodie...

1. "Why hello Mr. Scale..."
Since I have started dating Kelly, I have gained a lot of weight. When we first met, my doctor was concerned that I was a little too thin and wanted me to try and go from 140lbs to at least 160lbs. At this time, my pants were too large and I had to start wearing a 30-inch waist. Now, eight months later, I am heavier than I have ever been. With all the rich foods, alcohol, and constant eating out, I have shot past my doctor's desired weight by 10lbs. My old pants that were too big are a pinch too tight in the waist and I have already begun trying to remember my old work-out schedule.

2. "Stupid, vile Daystar"
As mentioned above, Kelly has an iron liver that refuses to let him be punished. I, on the other hand, can't have more than a glass of wine before I have to start chugging water to combat the effects. I also have a caffeine addiction, which means that I am not safe for human consumption in the mornings until I have emptied a coffee mug. Kelly doesn't share my habits and likes to test how far he can go each morning by putting his hands in the lion's den and grabbing the tail.

3. "Could you sign it 'to Sherry, love Kelly'?"
It doesn't really matter where we go out, it is inevitable that I will be subjected to another foodie who must talk about X while Kelly and I are waiting for our entrees. Boston is a small city and the industry is even smaller. Burger joints, bagel shops, even a hole-in-the-wall donut shop in Allston all had someone in them that recognized Kelly and wanted to talk about this person's list at such a place. At first it wasn't an issue, and I actually thought it was cute to watch him geek out with another wine buyer or chef. Now, I just want to eat my bagel in peace and not have to worry about contributing to a conversation that was only half in English. "Beaujo-who? No, never heard of him...pass the cream cheese?"

Gobble gobble

I'm physically and emotionally exhausted. Work has been running me ragged even more so than usual. I walk around the office wearing what Virginia so eloquently refers to as "badger face" and chew out someone for throwing in the history of document outsourcing into their analysis for the sole purpose of padding their piece. The stress only adds to my frustration and makes it very difficult to function. I have no drive to blog, my attempt for NaNoWriMo is nowhere near the word count I should have (I might be able to get 25,000 of my 50,000 words written this year), and I couldn't want to do really anything beyond escape into someone else's life [read as books and TV].

"You have Thanksgiving plans?" Kelly asks as he tries to massage the cold steel knots out of my back. His thumbs dig one out of my left side and I have to turn my head to keep from speaking into the pillow. "We're not really a big Thanksgiving family," I tell him.

For as long as I can remember, Thanksgiving has always been a sort of meh holiday for me. It's the one holiday that my family doesn't really go all out for. We do the turkey, stuffing, and the rest of the expected menu, but beyond a special grace and a jigsaw puzzle the day could be any other out of the month. My mother's side, which dominates most of the East Coast, keeps to itself and we all do our own things. I may see my grandparents, but they usually have other plans. All in all, the day is observed by my father watching the Game while Mom, D, Ej, and I look for edges and curse the artist who decided that a reflection was needed for the puzzle to really shine.

This year, however, it was something that I was truly thankful for...an honest to God holiday. A day where I don't have to argue with imbeciles, decipher broken English, or explain for the umpteenth time that no, punctuation is not optional or subjective to your style of writing. I drive from Kelly's apartment to my own and begin whipping up my expected sides. This year, Mom had mostly everything under control...and by that I mean she remembered last minute and decided to go ultra-simple. Green bean casserole and her grandmother's potatoes were made the night before. The rolls were bought from the grocery store's bakery. The turkey was already thawing in the fridge. All she needed was a little help.

I originally planned to do a pumpkin pie (I bought an apple pie for my siblings, who don't care for the pumpkin version) and two sides, but in the end was told by mom to just do the sides as Grandma was swinging by on the way to some other function and was bringing a pumpkin pie of her own. To keep with mom's theme of simple sides, I stole two recipes to work with. Kelly's roasted brussell sprouts with bacon took minutes, but I ended up getting distracted by multitasking and burned one side of the bacon. Stella (of Bravetart fame) provided me with her savory apple tart, and I used it to make her tart's hillbilly, bastard cousin. Where she uses fresh, home-made dough, the perfect produce, and the right amount of cheese, I did everything I could to cut corners. Pre-made chilled pie dough? Check. Left over onion from the previous week's chili and stir fry recipies? Check. McIntosh apples that I settled on after I couldn't find golden delicious or galas? Check. Check. Check. The only fresh thing that resembles something close to her recipe is the block of Gruyere that I shave and melt in small blobs of delicious salt along the top.

I get everything assembled and cooked in an hour. I shower as the tart cools and prepare everything for the traffic-choked car ride to my parents' place. Although we don't really celebrate, the day is already providing me with more relaxation than I've had in weeks. I slowly creep along 93 with everyone else in the state, but I find the Smiths on the radio. I sing along and realize as I pass the exit for the Ponkapoag Trail/Houghton's Pond that the apple pie is still in my fridge. "And if a double-decker bus crashes into us/ to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die," Morrisey sings and I join back up with the next verse. I refuse to get upset further, not when the day will be spent doing nothing and I won't feel guilty about it. The pleasure, the privilege is mine.

It's like making toast, apparently...

"Oh, I just threw it together." It's a phrase that I use with sketches, casseroles, baked goods, and (in the most recent case) Halloween costumes for work. With Kelly and his friends, it's for things that take me hours to make.

"Oh, I just threw it together," Kelly said the night he first cooked for me. This was in regards to risotto with spring vegetables and sausage. A meal that I would have to SLAVE over. It was perfect in that the grains were tender, the vegetables still retaining some crunch, and a wonderful sauce that accented the spice of the sausage. "[Blank], please," Samantha said the next day during our usual get-togethers to rehash the evening in HD detail. "You do not just throw that [blank] together."

But Kel isn't the only offender. "Oh, I just threw it together," Kelly's friend Tawny said as she welcomed us into the apartment she shared with their friend Mara. Her "it" ended up being cod hushpuppies, lobster tails in clarified butter, avocado salad, and some sort of bruschetta/pizza-esque item. I have never made lobster anything...let alone in clarified butter (which itself takes me a good 10 minutes to make sure that I don't burn it). And, of course, everything tasted as if it came out of the sea dressed in parsley with lemon juice dabbed behind the valves.

The funniest thing about all of this is that Kelly doesn't understand how ridiculous it sounds when he tries to defend it. "It's just a standard dish," he said when he defended his supposedly easy risotto. "I make it all the time." And I make forgeries of Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon" during commercial breaks. It really all comes down to the fact that I'm not an industry person, which he seems to forget except for instances where he "just threw it together." But it works other ways, too. I was apparently the lucky charm for charades, having won every round. I can wrap gifts and embellish them with ease so that Martha might see me as a threat to her sharp cornered empire. And like every other intelligent person I have ever met that is numbers orientated, Kelly can't spell with confidence. Confidence. C-o-n-f-i-d-e-n-c-e. And I didn't even need it used in a sentence.

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.

A cooking crossover

I watch the butter melt into gold, three thin strips of the remaining bars bobbing in the saucepan. I'm careful to keep the temperature low per Stella's instructions. As an actual foodie, I have some comfort that, out of the two of us, someone knows what she's doing.

As the proprietor of the fun BraveTart (http://bravetart.com/), she runs her own blog as an actual chef...with a pro photographer friend who does the food shots. She's also a good friend of Kelly's. Hoping to make sure the recipes that she includes for each blog post are easy to use, Stella (via Kelly) asked if I would be interested in trying some out to help her troubleshoot the instructions.

After visiting her blog and returning to my own dog-and-pony show, I decided that the Port Brownies would be something close to my speed (I am a baker in my own right...ish). I run to the grocery and sigh at the darkened signs of the two liquor stores I pass along the way. Damn dry states shutting down alcohol sales on Sundays... I get the rest of the ingredients that I don't already own and resign myself to substituting coffee for the Port (a legal substitution in Stella's eyes). I hate to admit it, but I'm a little nervous.

I've been baking for decades now. I would cook with my mother and eventually became the go-to guy for desserts. Tiramisu, cakes, brownies, cookies (a specialty of mine, if I can brag a little) all became standard on my weekends. I eventually graduated in High School to side dishes on Thanksgiving and the odd dinner when Mom couldn't step out of her office. In college, I did everything but the Turkey at Thanksgiving and several desserts for the holidays. "You should really sell these," my cousin Andy said one Christmas as he swallowed another one of my Mexican Wedding Cakes.

But Stella's recipes are well beyond me. "12 ounces butter, clarified" Stella tells me after her charming introduction. Well [expletive deleted]... I see that all the "normal" ingredients in the usual list have been replaced by their scientific cousins. For every teaspoon, there is an ounce of this or that. I wipe the dew from my forehead, grateful that I don't have to weigh my eggs. I take a deep breath and read through the entire list again. In one moment, I turn from Julia Child into Betty Crocker. I search the Internet and stumble into "Convertme.com" and cross my fingers. I copy the conversions into cups and tablespoons, scribbling everything down and praying that everything comes out right. A full cup of cocoa powder seems like a lot (esp. since there already is 12oz of unsweetened chocolate already in the recipe), but there are six eggs so I make a small prayer and follow my new E-Z Bake Oven instructions.

The brownie batter becomes fudgy and thick, an oily slick of brown that tastes delicious as I lick a few stray blobs off of my knuckles. I smear a streak along my jaw and spill flour onto the counter top. I regress back to being six and making chocolate chip cookies under Mom's ever-vigilant attention. I manage to get the batter out of the mixer and into the prepared pan. I follow Stella's tip to line it with tinfoil for easy clean-up, but panic and smear a little grease along the exposed sides to keep them from sticking. I stick it into the pre-heated oven, letting go and letting God.

I wipe down the counter tops and wash my hands for the fiftieth time. Checking the brownies in the oven, they look like every other batch that I have ever made. I laugh at myself and look at the clock on the microwave. Kelly will be getting out of work soon and heading over here. A willing test subject.

Meal of champions

Note: The lack of posting has been due to a move into a new apartment. I just got the Internet back a mere few hours ago.

Kelly and I hover at the bar. He sips at a bloody mary (something he was craving), but I shake off any offers for a drink myself. We're on a mission. I am so hungry, I can find kinship with the Donner Party. The two healthy looking girls tucked in the corner look like they would make amazing sausage.

"Mark? Party of Two?" the hostess calls and I give the sausage girls one last look before I follow her and Kelly to our table. We've been up for hours, but haven't gotten anything to eat until just now. The waitress comes, a cheery girl I recognize from our many trips here, and we order without looking at the menu. There was never an option to what we would be getting. For the past few months, every Sunday brunch we went, Kelly and I ordered a drink (cocktail for him, sweet life-blood of the gods [read coffee] for me), pancakes, and a side of bacon. "You know, I think breakfast may be our thing," Kelly says as I stare the waitress down until she flips my mug over and fills it. I doctor it with the smooth movements of an addict and take the first sip to regaining the humanity I lost overnight. "Most couples do dinner, but we seem to do breakfast and brunch the most."

I try to justify it, but my brain isn't quite working yet. Breakfast has never really been a major meal for me. Growing up, it was pop-tarts or toast before the bus (Mom letting my siblings and I sleep-in as long as possible). In college, it was coffee, a cigarette, and maybe a bowl of soggy cereal. I quit smoking my junior year and increased my caffeine intake (against doctor's orders), to the point that breakfast was several cups of coffee before my latest temp job. The fact that it's "the meal" I have with my boyfriend is surreal (think less melty-clock Dali and more nude with a backbrace, nails driven into the flesh, and a rotting stone column where the spine should be Khalo).

Our order arrives as the folk band starts up another song. Kelly and I do the small talk thing for a moment, but the conversation fades into the clink of forks and knives on plates, ice sloshing in glasses, and my spoon stirring more cream into my coffee.

(The art references are "La Persistencia de la Memoria/the Persistence of Memory" by Salvidor Dali and "La Columna Rota/The Broken Column" by Frida Khalo.)

"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.