Apron Anxiety (16 page)

We have a very specific eating routine once he finally lands at home every night. “Positions!” one of us declares. Then he gets on the couch, prepares whatever show takes precedence on our DVR queue, and freezes it at the exact start of the program. Meanwhile, I plate dinner in the kitchen. Next, we usually share one big plate, or one large bowl, with a can of Coke for him and a glass of sparkling water for me, and eat all cuddled-up and blissed-out in front of the tube. We
live
for our favorite shows, analyzing the cast like they’re real characters and plotlines in our lives. In a way, they are the only people we have to share.

During commercials, we talk about the meal and how I could advance it for the next time, like continuously basting my roast chicken or letting the meat “rest.” I remember all his advice, word for word. No matter how tired he is, he’s never too tired to thank me for cooking. After we make tea and finish our shows, we fall asleep tightly in each other’s arms, in the same glorious position every single night, the dirty dishes waiting for me in the morning.

“I met the coolest mother and daughter ever today,” he says, half asleep, me wrapped around him from behind, the right side of my face on his warm back like it is every night.

“Yeah? Who?”

“This super-groovy art collector woman named Mera and her daughter, Jennifer Rubell; they want me to promote parties at one of their hotels, the Capitol Skyline,” he says, pausing for my reaction.

“Name sounds familiar, go on.…” I say, rolling my tired eyes.
Just what I need—more female fans. Rich and artsy ones, no less
.

“Babe, you’d totally love Jennifer; she’s beautiful, and she’s a famous food artist or something. She reminds me of you, except she’s got this, like, rock-star style and went to Harvard.”

“Awesome,” I groan, grabbing the covers and going to sleep.

I am able to begrudge Jennifer for one full day. And then I meet her. She has only a few more nights in Washington, so Chef insists she and I hang out. The mother of all friend dates, she makes us a reservation at José Andrés’s Minibar, a pricey, six-seat, laboratory-like haunt, where they serve things like foie-gras cotton candy and chicken skin served with a scalpel. The restaurant is a gastronome’s wet dream and a nonfoodie’s worst nightmare.

Experiencing two dozen courses of
crazy
can throw anyone out of their element, but sharing watermelon air and nitrous guns with Jennifer, the “it” girl of foodies, could have been outright
traumatizing
. Luckily, she’s incredible. Sure, she has impeccable taste in all things art, fashion, and food, but forget that; she’s warm. A few years older than I am, she also has that been-there-done-that mentality that makes her wise. I thank her for being so nice to me, explaining that the people I meet through Chef usually don’t
get
me like she does. “No one in the food scene likes me,” I confess, thinking of all the events where I still feel discarded. But she doesn’t cut me any slack. “Oh, Alyssa, who gives a shit?”
I love her
.

“You were wrong,” I say to Chef, late night on the couch, smitten
with Jennifer after our heart-to-heart and dragon-breathing popcorn kernels. “She’s not like me at all. She’s on another stratosphere of awesome.”

Now, every time I take my monthly New York trips, I make sure to attend one of Jennifer’s famous dinner parties. Her style is so casual, yet so chic, that I watch her every move and then duck into the bathroom to frantically jot down notes. She invites fifteen to twenty people to her place—a mix of mercurial artists, reclusive writers, sexy stylists, and random wanderers—like it’s absolutely nothing. She hits the Union Square farmers’ market in Manhattan a few hours before dinnertime, conceptualizing understated meals like leg of lamb and London broil.

Over a hunk of Gouda cheese and Turkish pistachios, Jennifer welcomes everyone to her home, with her sharp black eyeliner and razor-straight bangs. While bringing together friends of friends and making sure everyone’s glass is refilled with some enchanted cocktail of elderflower or açai, she asks everyone to be seated, spooning out meals of magenta carrots and midnight blue asparagus, and proteins swimming in secretly exquisite sauces. Without a flicker of fuss, we all feast on amazing food and unforgettable conversation until suddenly I’m sucking down stewed peaches and getting seduced. And so I invite myself over as often as she’ll allow.

When the winter of 2010 hits, major blizzard alerts shut down everything in town. Chef closes his restaurants for almost a week. For the first time since we moved in together, already a year and a half ago, we are lovebirds around the clock, wearing matching sweat suits and taking turns making meals. As the snow hits hard, Allison, Laura, Kathe, and their husbands pop upstairs with their kids, whom I nibble on like they’re my own nieces and nephews. Chef is astonished by how tight I’ve become with our neighbors while he’s been off in the weeds.
Unlike anyone who’s visited from New York and even our families, the C Streeters are the only ones who, day after day, truly see how hard our situation is. And they’re rooting for us.

The Boys from the restaurant spend several snowy afternoons at our place, too. Being overworked, undersexed, and thoroughly exhausted New York transplants, they’re ecstatic over the free days off, and all they want is hard-core chill-out time. They’re always serving, but never served, and I’m thrilled to provide them with food, drink, and the foreign concept of not lifting a finger. But this is not as selfless as it sounds. I am well aware that the Boys are apprehensive about me. In the last year, they have seen Chef’s bloodshot eyes, heard our fights, and watched me storm into the restaurant with venom. Though they would never say it, I have no doubt in my mind that the Boys think I’m a bitch, if not a total horror. This blizzard gives me an opportunity to reframe myself.

Between their monstrous appetites and culinary school degrees, my cooking is really put to the test. Before the latest storm lowers, with the streets being cleared just enough to drive, I sail into Whole Foods, where the checkout line has a two-hour wait. Without my usual scribbled grocery lists, I buy whatever looks nice and fresh. The concept of snow days brings me right back to Longmeadow, and I dream about soups my mom would make us, and the salads she’d serve with them, and I hunt and gather for those flavor memories.

Shopping from the gut makes me feel womanly. I also have a craving for the shepherd’s pie we’d have as kids on cold, snowy days, and I collect what I think the recipe might call for. Then I zigzag around the fruits and vegetables, adding bushels of mandarin oranges, purple cauliflower, and Jerusalem artichokes to my cart, all the produce I know are in season because the
New York Times
told me so. I get packets of hot cocoa—high-quality
Ghirardelli,
this time
—and can’t help but laugh. In my puffy ski jacket and pom-pom hat, whizzing through the market, I am truly a home cook.

Back on C Street, where the Boys are boozing and the snow descends, I loosen my shoulders, take a shot of their whisky, and cook up every no-fuss wintry crowd-pleaser I’m capable of: meat lasagna, chicken drumsticks, cauliflower cheese soup, warm rosemary walnut bread, and the memorable shepherd’s pie. Every now and then, I catch Chef watching me from a distance, as I measure flour, add salt to the soup, or taste a sauce. He mouths, “I love you,” and then says to the Boys, “She’s turned into an amazing cook, no?” I blush and check the oven. And then he teases, “But she still holds a spoon like a convict!”

The Boys genuinely appreciate the hard work, inhaling everything I serve them, offering constructive criticism only when I ask. They suggest that my lasagna could use more tomato sauce because the meat will always suck it up; the drumsticks were delicious but needed just a dash of salt and pepper; the shepherd’s pie would have been perfect had I doubled the creamed corn; and the beef stew is solid, but could have been better had I used homemade stock instead of the bouillon cubes. Out of the oven come oatmeal cookies, chocolate cakes, and even some humbling half-burned brownies. We’re all well fed and in blissful hibernation. Chef is the happiest I’ve ever seen him.

As soon as spring comes, Chef and I take a break from our respective culinary duties and go on our now annual vacation to Greece. I’m nothing short of flabbergasted that he’s making the time to get away, and even more taken aback when he vows to leave his BlackBerry in the glove compartment of the blue truck. We’ve been together almost two years, and because of my new basil-leafed lease on life, we are feeling like the stable,
sexy couple we were the last time we landed in this village. It took about six months and sixty recipes, but I’m back to being me.

On our first night of vacation, overlooking the Acropolis, Chef asks me to marry him. He gives me the most magical ruby ring, and I say yes immediately, not because I have complete faith that we can endure the ups and downs of real life, but because I know how deeply I love him. The ring is unbelievably stunning; I’ve never had a piece of jewelry that speaks to my heart so. Because I’ve been engaged before, and Chef’s plate is already full, we agree to keep any festivities casual and low-key, and loosely discuss having a tiny, intimate ceremony sometime within the year. I’d be most content eloping—as would my parents, who think weddings are a ridiculous waste of money and far too conventional for our DNA. (The one time I tried on a bridal gown, back in the Gary days, my rebel mom showed up to the all-white boutique eating a family-size bag of fluorescent orange Cheetos, a food I’d never seen her eat before in my life, and didn’t even know was in her vocabulary. The salesgirl made her stand in a corner while my sister and I cracked up in our corsets.) But the Greeks on Chef’s side would never accept my city hall fantasy, and we say we’ll deal with logistics later. Then we get some souvlaki and sit in the center of town.

The nature of this trip is completely different, not because we’re newly engaged, but because we can experience the heavenly life of cooking together in Europe. This is the ultimate engagement present. While Chef grills octopus, sausages, goat, and whatever else the big, sweaty village butcher proudly hands off to him, I am the devoted sous-chef, sipping ouzo, pocketing techniques, and organizing our prep table. Together, we putter around the kitchen every morning and night, leaving only for a few hours by the sea and a couple trips to olive oileries and
honey beekeepers. On a couple mornings before he wakes, I fail at a few lemon loaves and pound cakes, but that’s likely because the ingredient labels are in Greek, and I’m probably using cups of baking soda instead of sugar. Those get tossed, but nothing can keep me from trying again.

Every day at the beach, while devouring Giulia Melucci’s
I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti
and Gael Greene’s
Insatiable
, I gather more recipes and inspiration. I feverishly wolf down my food memoirs and more, as if authors like Ruth Reichl were Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over a lunch of grilled octopus and Greek salad at Samos Beach, where paradise herself would be jealous, I finally come up with the name for my blog that describes my own messy journey into the kitchen: “Apron Anxiety: My burning desire to cook, without burning down the house.” Chef screams, “Yes, Lys, that’s it!” We toast our Mythos beers, link our sandy toes, and I kiss my ruby ring.

One day, the forecast says it’s going to rain all day and night. I’m happy to hear this because I’ve been wanting to slow-cook my first tomato sauce, the old-school way. The recipe comes from Giulia Melucci. It calls for a couple of eggplants, which we don’t have at home, so I take the truck and drive down the long, narrow, cliff-top road while Chef is still asleep. As soon as I pull out of the driveway, I turn on Bob Marley, the best, and the only CD we haven’t scratched up yet in Greece. After getting a little lost, I find my way to our favorite market, a few towns away. I am wearing a weird outfit, pajama pants and a vintage lace top, and taking nonstop pictures of the excursion on my camera phone. I don’t blend in, and I don’t care.

Back at the villa, Chef has taken position on the couch with some late-morning coffee and apricot jam on toast. The wraparound windows are open, and with the dark skies and pitter-patter of the rain, it’s a gloriously lazy day. I tell him to stay
there all day, and he says, “Perfect.” In the kitchen, I stir with patience, tasting frequently, slow dancing with seasoning, flattering myself over the developing flavors. I glance at Chef every so often watching the BBC or reading his book about saving the whales; his body is quiet, his limbs are long. He calls “Lyssssie” for me to come cuddle, but I just can’t leave the kitchen yet. This level of relaxation, which most couples experience on weekends or days off, is nearly nonexistent for us. Moments like this, with my sweet boy eating olives, catching up on current affairs, and singing my name from his well-slept, sun-kissed frame, seem to come once in a lifetime.

By the time the crescent moon and shooting stars surface, we sit on the porch in our slippers and sweatpants, ready to inhale what will be my first great meal. We lick our plates to the sound of raindrops, hummingbirds, and “Redemption Song.” We name the dish Rainy Day Rigatoni.