I love you ... have a bite

Bright, fresh pico de gallo

There are thousands of ways to say I love you. Flowers. Cards. Box of chocolate. A little kiss under the arbor while the rain is misting. A myriad ways to express tender feelings and deep emotions for those you care most for. Everyone has a love language – more often than not, we have more than one.

One of my most fluent love languages is food.

I love to cook. And I’m going to clarify cook vs. bake here, because I’m decidedly better at one than the other. I can bake up a cake and make a beautiful batch of cupcakes. My brownies are pretty good and my cookies are worth eating. But baking just isn’t as much fun for me because baking involves a lot of measuring, some serious science, and let’s face it: rules.

I’m not always a rules girl, so the exhortations to have exactly one and one half cups of loosely leveled something or another or three cups of something else; just at room temperature – not so much to my liking. In baking, missing one or two ingredients often means a trip to the store or more complex measurements to concoct some sort of substitution.

Deep, flavourful chili - about the only thing I use beer for

But cooking. Ah, the idea that I can wander into an incomplete kitchen and create something on the fly. Or as I am more wont to do: look at a recipe – or three or four – and take my favourite parts and mash them up together into some sort of new deliciousness. I love cooking because of its artful inventiveness and because I never quite know how things are going to come out until the're done.
And the best part – really, the very best part – is the looks of happiness and anticipation on the faces of my family and friends when they begin to smell things percolating on the store, or wander in and see a colourful pile of diced and sliced fruits, vegetables, and other fine things being mise en placed into readiness.

Our favourite stir-fry: lots of chopping, but so worth it!

The smell of onions and garlic in butter will do that to people. As will the deeply variegated layers of spice in my chili. I grew up watching my father as the main cook in our kitchen and the Asian influence of those childhood dinners still lingers in my meals today. There is generally a whiff of shoyu (soy sauce), hoisin or oyster sauce, definitely sesame oil, and yes – ginger – in the dishes I serve up.

Bringing a sense of fullness, completion, and satisfaction to my family makes me happy. Watching them savor each bite – sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly – makes me happier than many things.

Last night, in the warm summer evening, I sat with the doors and windows wide open and easy, mellifluous jazz spilling out of the speakers while I chopped piles of tomatoes, peaches, cilantro, and onions for two dishes: fresh pico de gallo and tomato peach salsa. I blended a scant bit of barbeque sauce with some of my

Spicy, tangy tomato-peach salsa - so good chilled

previously mentioned Asian staples and put some chicken in to marinate for the grill. The scent of fresh corn in their husks lingered around the sink and blended with the mellow perfume of yellow Spanish rice. I gave in to the cats and cracked the back door so they could wander in and out and back in again; taking long moments to roll over and over again on the warm patio in the shadows under the lawn chair. I stirred salt into the tomatoes and let fresh ground pepper fall through my fingers. As I sliced through the lone jalapeno, I could feel the heat and the sting run through my skin and up through my eyes. Even that felt good though, knowing how that heat would ease and balance the sweetness of peach.

Before long, I heard the hard thunk of the garage door opening and my family rolled in smelling of sunshine and chlorine. The loud exclamations of delight over the bowls of snacks and dinner on the way gave way to happy murmurs as they dipped picco de gallo on chips and sniffed the chicken that was ready to go.

I love you. Have a bite.







I'd love to connect with you some more - stop on by the Three Bees Facebook Page or connect with me on Twitter @3BeesBlueBonnet. Let's continue the conversation!