The Newlywed Kitchen

Back in 2006, Henry was a new member on eGullet.org, an international food board where avid home cooks, bakers, restaurant professionals, and diners convened to review their favorite restaurants, discuss various cooking techniques, and ask for cooking advice. At the time, Henry was chosen to blog about his city, Seattle, for one week. Each day, Henry posted a breathtaking photographic journal that included tasting menus at his favorite restaurants, an array of photos from famed Pike Place Market, and a casual Sopranos-themed potluck with his friends. Thousands of us tuned in that week to watch this young man’s enthusiastic take on the Seattle food scene, and I was one in the happy chorus of fans.

Near the end of his weeklong blogging stint, I mentioned that I was hoping to try a couple of the Seattle restaurants he had profiled (in particular, one that served gorgeous little desserts). I was already planning on flying out of Seattle to have dinner at The French Laundry with some friends. (That visit to French Laundry—one of the best, and priciest, restaurants in the country—was an experience I had saved up for for many years, as I was a poor college student at the time.) Reservations are notoriously difficult to come by, and Henry politely emailed to see if he could tag along. As luck would have it, we did have an extra seat at the table. I met Henry the following week, and he took me on a whirlwind eating tour in Seattle that spanned five restaurants over the course of one day, ending in a private dessert-tasting menu at what would soon become our special restaurant.

Before he drove me home to Vancouver, BC, Henry gave me a box of desserts he had asked his pastry chef friend to make—the very desserts he photographed for his blog. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach—well, I guess you could say the same is true for me. I was smitten, both by Henry’s thoughtfulness and by his love for good food.

In the year and a half before we got engaged at that same special restaurant Henry took me to on our first date, we celebrated many of our milestones at the stove. For our first Thanksgiving, we hosted a potluck, challenged one another to a prepared turkey competition, and had our forty friends choose a winner. We’ve made burgers for a roof-top Fourth of July to feed a hundred; we’ve made special candlelit meals at home just for the two of us. On the night Henry asked me to be his wife, the first serious discussion we had (after a bit of tipsy celebrating) was about what we should serve at the wedding. For our honeymoon, we decided to go on a whirlwind eating tour of Chicago, and we proceeded to eat at fourteen restaurants in three days. For our first Christmas as a married couple in our “new” (rundown, fixer-upper) home, we roasted little Cornish game hens, opened a good bottle of wine, and held hands at a makeshift table while sitting on folding chairs. Whatever the circumstance, we have always enjoyed cooking together and feeding one another. Dinnertime is a sacred time for us—a time to feed our bellies as well as our souls.