The Happy-Every-After Story of Diner Girl and Gourmet Guy

“What are you thinking about?” I asked my husband recently as we walked our dogs.

“Asparagus soup,” Dan said.

Even now, almost 30 years later, I still can’t believe I married this guy.

Growing up, my mom cooked out of boxes and cans. A family staple was cream of mushroom soup dumped over hamburgers. Taco kits were the go-to meal of choice on weekends, and breakfast cereals were sugary and plentiful. If my dad cooked, it was tuna casserole with (wait for it) potato chips crumbled on top.

Is it any wonder that I grew up to be a diner girl, a lover of tuna melts and tomato soup, with occasional carrot sticks to add color? For dessert, I’d treat myself to raw, store-bought chocolate chip cookie dough. I still experience visceral pleasure pangs when I remember peeling the wrapper off that cookie dough log like a banana.

Dan taught himself to cook by age 12, not because he needed to, but because he was fascinated by the science of it. He made his way through Julia Child’s recipes by high school graduation.

The first time I cooked for Dan, I went all out and made him a lasagna slathered in sauce from a jar. He ate it without complaint, which goes to show that true love does conquer all.

The first time Dan cooked for me was when we returned to his place after a movie, and he asked if I wanted a snack.

“Sure. What do you have?”

He shrugged. “I can make whatever you want.”

I had no idea that he meant this literally. “Surprise me,” I said.

So he did, pulling out frozen pork and scallion cubes (scored for easy breakage, because he’s an engineer) and refrigerated dumpling wrappers, and whipping up pot stickers and a handmade sauce so delicious that I drank it out of the little bowl when the pot stickers were gone.

Through our decades together, Dan and I have raised five children and cooked countless meals. I managed to throw together weekday meals like spaghetti or stir-fried rice, but Dan was at the helm of every special holiday feast or dinner for friends. The downside of this is that Dan has a chef’s temperament. God help you if you use the wrong cheese knife, throw out a tiny container of some unidentifiable leftover that he was saving to incorporate into another meal, or happen to cook your eggs at the wrong temperature when he’s looking.

“What kind of idiot…” is his standard kitchen refrain, and we have joked (sort of) about putting up yellow police tape to keep children and guests out of the kitchen when Dan’s working his magic.

Recently, when Dan spent a stint working in California, the first question out of everyone’s mouths to me was, “Oh, no! What are you going to eat?”

I indeed panicked a little, but it wasn’t long before I reverted to my evil ways. Sometimes, there’s no better dinner than scrambled eggs. I also discovered HelloFresh, with its handy little colorful cards fit for preschoolers, which gave me the illusion that I was cooking and ensured I’d eat vegetables. Even now, with Dan working at home again, if I go away on a writing retreat, my grocery bags are likely to be full of things like canned tuna and hummus, bags of M&Ms and apples for crunch.

My idea of torture is Dan’s fantasy, which was realized a few years ago when a friend treated us to a Michelin-star restaurant with a 22-course tasting menu. You can take the girl out of the diner, but she’ll go back there any chance she gets. Food, for me, is still mostly fuel so I can get other stuff done; I’m happiest when there are leftovers to throw in the microwave, and incredibly lucky that Dan loves picking out his ingredients at the grocery store, sparing me from that recurring hell.

That asparagus soup Dan was thinking about? It turned out to be just one course in an eight-course meal he prepared for a couple of friends. Happily, there were leftovers

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