Tell Us About…How You Show Love

In honor of Valentine’s Day, our bloggers group chose this topic. It only took me a few seconds to think how it applies to me: if I love you, I COOK for you!

I grew up in the kitchen of a skilled and ambitious cook. My mother, from the hills of Appalachia, found herself a young lawyer’s wife in “old money” Lexington, Kentucky, and taught herself French cooking by working her way through the Escoffier cookbook. Her chocolate pastry cake, cream puffs filled with vanilla custard, boeuf bourgignon, zabaglione and homemade caramels were the stuff of legend. We ate “raw” spinach salads (grown in her salad garden), which was UNHEARD OF, in the 70’s. So I had big shoes to fill…

The very best thing I know how to make is this Cook’s Illustrated Chicken Stew. It takes 2 different chicken parts, involves BACON, and takes ALL AFTERNOON. When my husband’s German cousins came to visit a couple of years ago, I made a big pot of this to welcome them, and it was a big hit. I only make it a couple of times a year as it’s so labor-intensive.

Ingredients:

You’ll also know you are loved if we make fresh pasta. And yes, you’re going to help. I lived in Italy for 6 months in the mid-90’s, and learned to make pasta from an Italian chef who’d grown up in Australia, and gave cooking lessons on Sunday afternoons in his restaurant. I bought a pasta roller before leaving Italy, a design which is basically unchanged since 1906 because it works so darned well – and gives you an arm workout! This is another thing I only do about once a year, but then I always ask myself why I don’t do it more often – it is so incredibly good, and totally worth the effort.

I’ve always found an apology accompanied by someone’s favorite food is much more likely to be accepted. Several years ago, I got tired of the low-hanging branches of a tree at my sister’s house whapping my car when I drove up her driveway. I asked my husband to cut off the offending branches, which he did beautifully. Unfortunately, my sister was FURIOUS! (She has very definate boundaries, does that woman). I knew drastic action was called for, and an afternoon in the kitchen. Her greatest weakness is dark chocolate, so I made this chocolate tart (another Cook’s Illustrates recipe. I no longer subscribe, but it is the best single source of recipes and cooking technique I know of – I used it a LOT when I taught culinary arts).

This year my husband and I will be continuing a Valentine’s Day tradition we started during COVID. We’ll cook filet mignon and lobster tail, set a beautiful table with our best china (my parents’ wedding china, which does NOT go in the dishwasher), get dressed up and drink champagne by candlelight. My husband will be DJ, curating a playlist of our favorite songs, and we’ll dance in front of the fire. It will cost a fraction of what going out would cost, and we’ll enjoy it much more. AND, we’ll do the dishes in the morning!

However you show love, I hope you have people that you love who love you in return. Never pass up an opportunity to tell people what they mean to you – you never know when it will be your last.

Let me know in the comments if you cook to show love, what your specialties are, and if you make this chicken recipe! In the meantime, see what my fellow bloggers had to say on the subject: