Living On a Prayer

"Three tablespoons? How can there only be three tablespoons of flour in this whole recipe?" I demand.

"I dunno. I mean, isn't souffle supposed to be difficult to pull off?" Mr Gastro asks, "Isn't that the whole deal with souffle?"

"Difficult, sure, but nobody told me it would require the use of witchcraft. How is that even possible?"

It's true, the recipe for vanilla souffle in Mastering the Art of French Cooking features shockingly little actual solid matter to hold together all that liquid. Four egg yolks, five whites (beaten until they beg for mercy), butter, milk, vanilla extract, a little sugar, sure...and THREE TABLESPOONS OF FLOUR. I couldn't help but picture each individual speck of flour, magically suspended midair on a fluffy white cloud of egg white and desperate prayer, making no contact whatsoever with his fellow flour molecules. In fact even now, after this little experiment is over, that's still kinda how I think it works.

Anyway, the seemingly impossible nature of this recipe made it that much more necessary for me to try it, so tonight I recruited Mr. Gastro to photograph the proceedings for posterity.

Julia is pretty specific here that you should measure out your ingredients ahead of time. This is one of those things I am not always on top of, but in this instance I am putting my faith in J.C (so to speak)and doing as I am told. And boy am i glad I did. I'm not saying that everything would have fallen apart had I not measured out my vanilla and granulated sugar ahead of time. I'm just saying that throughout the process, I was glad I didn't have to worry about it. It's one of those recipes.

"It's only dessert,"I tell myself as I am whisking egg yolks into the cooked flour and milk bouillie on the stove. "What's the big deal? Follow the recipe, and everything will turn out fine."

Now anyone who has ever made a souffle, eaten a souffle, heard of souffle, or inadvertently blurted out "souffle!"as they sneezed can tell you that the key to a successful souffle is in the egg whites. Fail to beat them within an inch of their lives and that souffle isn't rising, period. Sure, it might get a little puffy, but in order to achieve what Julia Child refers to as "magnificence," they have to be thick, smooth, and hold their peaks. So

my confidence waned a bit as my trusty KitchenAid mixer got to work on the egg whites, but not to worry; within moments my egg whites were transformed from runny, slimy goo into snowy white peaks you could ski down. Oh, and a note for the over-ambitious: Many recipes refer to whipping up the egg whites by hand in order to create this magical effect, but that is because many of these recipes pre-date the ubiquitousness of the at-home stand mixer. You definitely don't need a fancy KitchenAid mixer to get the required consistency; a hand-held mixer will do just fine. But I can't see how any mere mortal could produce these silky stiff egg whites using only a wire whip and some elbow grease. Don't be a hero. Use the mixer.

The egg whites are folded into the bouillie (gently, gently, oh so gently...), and the bouillie into

the porcelain ramekins, and I am once again full of confidence seeing my pretty little ramekins full and ready to go into the oven. "THIS IS GONNA BE GREAT!"I insist, and Mr. Gastro smiles at me indulgently and says "gooooood..." before returning to his book. He is retreating into the pages of his vintage cocktail manual because he knows me, and he knows what is coming next. I put the ramekins into the oven...

And I pray.

I'm not kidding. I am praying over my souffle. Why? Because everything is now out of my hands. What happens in that oven has to do not with me and my efforts, but with chemistry, and I never had much of a grasp of chemistry.

"This isn't going to work," I say, peering into the oven.

"It will be fine," Mr. Gastro says.

"Okay. okay. It will be okay. Hey, I know, if my souffle falls and this is a horrible failure I can title the blog 'Deflated.' That will be cute, right?"

Mr. Gastro just shakes his head.

And then like magic, they start to rise. One minute I am discussing my comedic blogging options in the face of certain catastrophe, and the next I am putting my face as close to the oven door as I dare, whispering "THEY'RE RIIIIIIISING!!!" Everything from here on out happens in a whisper. I am standing two inches away from my oven, whispering like I have a colicky baby in there that I am afraid will wake up and start to scream. I literally tip-toe through my kitchen for the duration of this process. Why? I don't know. I guess i saw it on TV one time. And I am certain that my souffle would not have fallen had I spoken in a normal tone of voice, but I also guarantee that when it is your turn...you will whisper too.

About halfway through the process I am instructed to remove my souffle and dust it with powdered sugar. "Are they INSANE?" I demand in a croak. I do manage to pull them out, Mr. Gastro behind me to open and close the oven door with smooth, friction free movements. Just then, as if god is reinforcing to me that no, this cannot actually be this easy, I accidentally tap one of the five, just slightly, with my oven mitt, and watch as it slowly, incrementally falls.

"It's okay,"Mr. Gastro whispers, like I'm a small child who just received a baseball to the head, and this is that terrible half second of silence before the wailing begins. I keep it together. We slip the surviving souffles into the oven, along with their sad, flat sister, and we wait. And pray some more. And then...then...

SUCCESS.

Sweet, sweet success. They are oh so pretty, and perch several inches over the tops of their containers. We place our souffles on two little plates decorated with the powdered sugar ghost of a spoon, and dig in. It seems almost a shame to deflate and eat something that you've just spent so much time and effort creating, but then I remind myself that food is for eating, and so I do.

I realize now that this is the first time I have even eaten souffle, let alone made it, and so I am surprised by the lightness in the mouth, the simplicity of the flavor, the slightly crisp crack of sugar on the crust. It's lovely, but then I've never had another souffle, so I don't know if this is the correct brand of lovely.

"Is it okay?" I ask.

"Mm hmm!" Mr. Gastro replies.

"No, I mean, sure, it's okay, but like, is it okay enough that you would want me to make it again?"

"Well lets see," Mr. Gastro says, "If you're not sure it's perfect, you could..." he takes another bite, "always practice some more..." another bite, "or do it with chocolate..." he finishes his souffle. "I mean... I guess I wouldn't mind if you wanted to keep practicing."

Ten Tables

Ten Tables

Valentines Day came late to the Gastro household this year, as it tends to do. When Mr. Gastro and I first started dating we were both working on the same theatrical production, and tech week was the week of Valentines Day, meaning neither one of us was going to be spending much time anywhere but at the theater. This was the story every Valentines Day until we graduated from college, at which point I found myself working in the floral industry for several years--a very romantic place to spend Valentines Day, you might say. And if you believe that, then you have obviously never spent Valentines Day wading in foliage and rose thorns up to mid-calf, running on nothing but pizza, coffee and nicotine and about 3 hours of sleep, listening to strangers scream at you on your busiest day of the year about how their roses are the wrong shade of pink. (Yes, this has actually happened.)

This year it was a simple quirk of Mr. Gastro's work schedule that kept us from celebrating Valentines Day out on the town like two newlyweds ought, and so we had a quiet evening at home with a pair of bone-in pork chops, a peanut butter pie, and a box of chocolate dipped strawberries from Godiva. (Who needs flowers when your hubby brings you chocolate dipped strawberries?) We were determined, however, to have a lovely restaurant dinner to celebrate our first married Valentines Day in style, even if we had to do it a little late, and so tonight Mr. Gastro brought me to Ten Tables in Cambridge.

With a website that boasts of locally sourced ingredients and thoughtfully crafted dishes, I was looking forward to a smart, fresh, New American menu, and I was not disappointed. We left ourselves at the mercy of the kitchen and agreed without hesitating on the four course chef's tasting menu (a complete steal at $42 per person) and were rewarded for the first course with a sweet and mild bacon wrapped pork pâté. The pâté was served alongside a coarse brown mustard, sweet and tangy caramelized onions, and the tiniest, most delicate slices of pickle you've ever seen. The whole was deceptively elegant in spite of all its seemingly humble parts , and combined sweet, tart, and spicy elements to perfection in one amazingly savory starter.

Next came Mr. Gastro's personal favorite, a tender white slab of swordfish, topped with a Meyer lemon and Picholine olive salsa that absolutely made the entire dish. The zip of Meyer lemon meets you first head on, and then the olive and complicated bouquet of tarragon, chive and chervil grounds the bright citrus flavor, giving it roots. The fish came on a nutty bed of tender barley, beets and red pepper. The barley and beets were the perfect accompaniment, but I couldn't help but feel like the red pepper faded in comparison to the soprano song of the salsa and the barley's earthy alto, and probably could have been left out altogether.

Tri-tip steak came next, and the gorgeously arranged slices of bright pink meat filled me with hope, but sadly this round was a little off. The steak brought flavor to the table you just couldn't argue with, but Mr. Gastro and I both agreed it was tough. The steak was saved, however, with the brilliant addition of a grape compote that was an absolute inspiration--everyone knows that red wine and red meat are natural partners, so how is it that we never thought of the grapes themselves? I vowed to attempt a reproduction of this brilliant pairing at home, and for the sake of the compote, decided to forgive the steak for being a little chewy. By the time we'd received out Meyer lemon sorbet, I was over it.

Finally for dessert, Mr. Gastro and I parted ways, at least on our plates. Mr. Gastro claims that his Meyer lemon cheesecake with berry compote was the victor of the dessert round, and I must confess it was very good, but I just couldn't get enough of my chocolate terrine with sea salt and Thai basil ice cream. The basil sliced right through the overwhelming richness of the chocolate ("But I LIKE rich chocolate!" argues Mr. Gastro), and the sea salt jumps out from underneath the ice cream for just a split second and dances under your teeth before fading away. The dessert, like almost every other aspect of this meal was smart, complex, creative and unexpected, and Mr. Gastro and i left feeling very much in the Valentines Day spirit, even if we were, once again, a little late.

Hand-Me-Downs

My Mom has a habit of sending me books. Novels, biographies, memoirs. We are both passionate bibliophiles, so whenever she finds that her book collection has begun to encroach on her living space (about every six months by my calculations), she will pack many of them up, most of the time in several huge boxes, and ship them off to Boston, where I spend the next several months devouring them indiscriminately. Mr. Gastro gives me this weary, slightly amused look every time we get one of these shipments. Where exactly do I think I am going to put all of these books? Somehow I always seem to find room, but I suspect Mr. G. thinks I am becoming a bit of a hoarder.

This past shipment was over 100 pounds, and came in three boxes that were literally buckling under the strain by the time they made it to my doorstep. There were several dozen novels, but most of the books in this shipment were cookbooks, and as soon as I saw them, I began tearing through the box, stacking willy-nilly in teetering piles until I found what I was looking for at the very bottom of the very last box I opened. Volumes 1 & 2 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child.

I could have bought my own copy a dozen times over during the time that I have been waiting for this one book. But I didn't want a new copy. I wanted my mom's copy. Yesterday I decided to devote my entire day to cooking, and found that the recipe I was looking for, Boeuf Bourguignon, had already been dog-eared by my mother. Flip to the next down-turned corner and you'll find the recipe for brown braised onions that are to be strewn over the stewed beef before serving, and after that the butter sauteed mushrooms. It's like I have an invisible helper in the kitchen, guiding my fingers just a little more deftly to the next step. Each page is smeared and stained with olive oil, butter, and any number of other traces of meals gone by. It's like a spell book that's held on to the candle wax drippings and incense ash of the previous user, and therefore some of the magic as well.

I could go on and on about my morning spent serenely hand-drying and browning beef, just a few pieces at a time, or my afternoon rolling tiny onions in a pan of hot butter, and sitting back while they simmered in beef stock. I could wax nostalgic line after line about the nutty aroma that filled my kitchen while I diligently shook my skillet full of beautiful little brown mushrooms, or about the wonderful time Mr. Gastro and I had with food buddy John, drinking wine and cocktails and devouring plates of fall-apart-when-you-look-at-it beef. Instead I will control myself, and simply say that yesterday I spent the entire day cooking with my mom, and I had a wonderful time.

The Foul Weather Blogger

Dear fellow Gastro Junkies,

Last week I made a beautiful aioli from scratch the old fashioned way with a mortar and pestle. On Monday you would have found me slaving over a pot of beef stew, well past the hour of the night when normal people would have turned in their aprons for the evening. Last night I fixed up a stir fry with noodles that I had made from scratch and cut by hand. (Mr. gastro came home from work to discover me covered in flour, shoo-ing the cat away from the table where my beloved lo-mein were drying.) And tonight I am making Julia Child's Beuf Bourguignon with Pommes Dauphinoise. Later this week I have plans to tackle Ratatouille.

And this seriously isn't even the half of it. Pork chops with rosemary and mustard, my dad's linguini with clams, pan seared salmon steaks, peanut butter pie on Valentines day...I could go on. I sincerely wish, Oh Gastro-readers, that I could say I am able to tackle all these involved multi-course meals in my free time around work, but I would be a liar. Confession time. I was laid off from my job last Monday, the job that I only just recently landed at the dream company where I was happy, entertained, and financially stable for a whole month and a half before being downsized. (I was certainly not the only one. 35 of my new friends went along with me, many with years and years put into this company. My heart goes out to each and every one of them.) But here's the thing folks. This is not my first time being laid off. This isn't even the first time in the past 365 days. The first time I was laid off was last April, when my team was cut from the Theater we had been fundraising for. Which also happened to be right before I began this blog.

Oh yeah. I probably could have mentioned back in April time that all this free time I had to blog and cook was really due to my lack of employment, and looking back, I do make a handful of references to my job search, or vague, unnamed financial troubles. Still. I never really came right out and said, "I am doing this thing because I have to, because if I don't do something I am going to slip into a deep depression and die from a fatal overdose of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese." But now I'm back, in nearly the exact same position I was in back in April, so I'm saying it now. I need to cook, and I need to write, because I need to do something.

Does this make me a foul weather blogger? Certainly. I was definitely absent enough when I was planning my wedding, working for a video game company, enjoying my newlywed status. Fair. I can own that. But does it mean that I don't love cooking, or writing, or writing about cooking? Of course not. It's just that now I don't just love it--I need it too.

A little reprieve from my being a total bummer: I'm having a blast. There is a very real part of me that couldn't be happier than when I am dancing around my kitchen, listening to Nina Simone records and rolling out dough, browning beef, whipping cream. I'm in absolute heaven. The feminist side of my brain will sometimes look at me in this state, and sneer, "You look like you wish you had been born in the forties so you could be a housewife and do this all the time!" And when faced with this commentary I can only respond, "Maybe I do."

So I am at times a crap feminist. Guilty. And I also understand that I cannot be without a job, not do I really want to be. I want to find success and satisfaction in my career. But the fact of the matter is that right now, I just don't have a career. Not yet. So I seek success in the kitchen instead. Because it's fun, and I could use a little fun right now, and some comfort, and some activity.

So I hope all of you loyal Gastro-readers will forgive my on again, off again blogging, and perhaps even give me a pass now that I've given you the real scoop on the genesis of the Gastro-Junkie--this thing is all about passion, yes, but it is also about therapy--a fact I guess I forgot to mention before. You will almost certainly be seeing a lot more of me over the coming weeks, a fact that has its up side and its down, but please believe, dear readers, that having the space and the time to be a full time cook and writer, at least for a little while, is a big, huge silver lining. Much love,

Morgan

The Wedding of Mr. & Mrs. Gastro part 1

So maybe I needed the space of a couple months in order to properly write about my food-a-licious wedding day with Mr. Gastro. I'd really like to excuse my lack of writing with some line about needing time to process the beautiful event, and get settled into my new married life....and if you are inclined to use those lines to give me a pass for not writing for several months, knock yourselves out. I promise to make an effort to write more consistently of my food adventures to come. And to make it up to all of my very patient fellow gastro nerds, here is my completely epic, multi-entry, New-England-tastic play by play of all things food and romance from the Cape Cod wedding of Mr. & Mrs. Gastro.

First, I've got to set the scene: From the beginning, Mr. Gastro and I have said that what we really wanted for our wedding weekend was a gigantic farm house on Cape Cod. Something with enough bedrooms to house both sides of our now enormous family for several days, a kitchen that could stand up to the efforts of the famous Kitchen Sluts, and a yard where matt's Mom and Step-father could host a 30 person Lobster bake rehearsal dinner--oh, and you know, someplace for the ceremony and the reception. All within our fairly humble wedding budget.

We came to terms pretty early on with the fact that this house we had envisioned might in fact not exist, and so imagine our glee when not a month after getting engaged, we were shown around every inch of the Overbrook house on Bay End Farm in Bourne Massachusetts by a super chill organic farmer named Kofi. This was in January, so the house was closed and the farm covered in a blanket of snow, but we knew almost instantly that we had found our place. The house was a rustic 1920s gem, with eight bedrooms, a giant living area, a sun room, a little library, one sunny and super-functional farmhouse kitchen, and a dining table that seats twenty. As in people. Outside, a pretty little path lit with fairy lights cuts through the woods behind the house, runs over the bubbling brook, and leads to the dance hall nestled between the trees where we could set up a tent and tables and host our reception.

Now imagine this magical house on a mild, suede gray September afternoon, trees just starting to turn gold, and your new in laws setting up pots of seaweed and coolers full of crustaceans on the back lawn. My Long Island family had taken over the lodge next door to the house, my Mom and aunts were getting settled in the kitchen, Matt's adorable niece Dagny was boldly meeting what must have seemed to her to be about a hundred thousand new grown ups, and my Dad was gleefully running up to me with that Elvin smile he sometimes gets and exclaiming about how the house is "So cool! Completely awesome! I mean this is so cool!" I made a note to myself that if I happened to lose track of Dad at any point during the weekend, I would most likely find him happily tripping along one of the many footpaths that rambled around the property, exclaiming to himself about how awesome and cool everything is.

So this was the beautiful backdrop against which Mr. Gastro's and my culinary worlds collided for the first time. Now, my family is from New York, meaning that we have all at some point probably eaten a lobster. Most likely in a restaurant, or perhaps in stew form, but we've eaten them. Sometimes. Matt's family, on the other hand, is from Maine. When they eat Lobster, it's pronounced Lobstah, and it involves dropping the little buggers into a pot in your own backyard, covering them with seaweed, leaving them until they are red and dead and then slathering them with butter on a paper plate, alongside potato salad and corn on the cob. (Three guesses which preparation I prefer, and the first two guesses don't count.) The first time Matt ever took me to a cookout in Maine, I went in expecting hot dogs and hamburgers. When I was presented with my very own LOBSTER on a plate, I looked at Matt in wonder, and he coolly replied, "What? I told you we were going to a cookout in Maine." Right. Now imagine that New Yorker reaction multiplied about twenty times, and that is the sense of wonder and gratitude that was pouring forth from my family to Matt's for our very first meal together. It was our first night in the house, (or rather, in the back yard) and the gray afternoon had descended into a jet black Cape Cod evening, and a beachy, barely-there mist that wasn't ever quite rain served to soften everybody's edges and remind us with every whiff that we weren't exactly in Kansas anymore. Linda and Bill had worked non-stop since they had gotten to the house to present these two families with THIRTY FIVE LOBSTERS, along with chowder, salads, and blueberry cake, and the result was spectacular. To my New York family, my real live in laws from Maine preparing a lobster bake on Cape Cod was a regional novelty akin to if I had chosen to marry a man from New Orleans and asked his family to prepare gumbo. We were all simultaneously giddy, humbled, honored, and oh yeah...starving!

There have been fancier rehearsal dinners in the long history of such events. I'm sure there have even been glitzy rehearsal dinners in upscale restaurants with crisp white linens, where every guest gets their own lobster, and a waiter to crack it for them too. But I would make a strong argument that for uniting two families into one big one, few rehearsal dinners can touch ours. Paper plates, plastic forks and knives, jeans and flip flops, and every guest saturated up to the elbows with butter and lobster juice, pouring out praise onto your brand spankin' new relatives for the quality that we all seemed to rank among the highest valued in our own families--the ability to use food as a social adhesive, gluing together our ever expanding mix and match cast of characters with family recipes, regional specialties, and histories shared over home cooked meals.

Two Plates of Eggs

Among our group of friends in college, Stacey and I were always the ones who could cook. To be fair, we had many, many friends who liked to cook, and just as many who laid claim (to anyone who would listen) to the best chocolate chip cookies, or the best lasagna. But I don't think it's giving us too much credit to say that Stacey and I were widely considered to be two of the best cooks in our group of friends, the two who could throw together the best dinner parties on the shortest notice. The ones who would tell you which bottle of wine to buy in a pinch, if you didn't know a Cabernet from a Chianti.

Stacey has since moved to Chicago, where she went to pastry school and did the impossible--she improved upon what we all assumed was perfection. So when Stacey promised me brunch upon my very early morning arrival in Chicago for my bachelorette party weekend, I was excited. I was even more excited when I saw the photographs she posted online a few days before of the challah bread she had baked from scratch in preparation for the French toast she was planning on making. I mean, seriously, who does that? And when I showed up at her apartment on a Sunday morning on four hours of sleep and found myself in possession of a very large mason jar full of very spicy bloody mary, including, I'm not kidding, and entire pickle she had pickled herself... Well. Excited isn't even the word.

There were many hysterical, silly, happy, food fueled moments that weekend, but that brunch takes all. My sister and my cousin showed up, and Stacey showed us all what she had been learning in school. The french toast was buttery, the bacon crisp. There was even a concord grape sorbet which blew. My. Mind. But the winner hands down was the caprese egg dish that Stacey made. I couldn't help but think of the caprese salads we had made nearly every weekend the first Summer we lived together in Boston and the farmer's market was our second home, magically transformed into breakfast. Stacey used sun dried tomatoes, some fresh mozzarella balls allowed to melt just slightly in the pan of cooking eggs, and topped it all with gorgeous, fresh green basil. It was like we'd died and gone to heaven. The eggs were perfectly cooked, not runny or dry, and that happy hour spent over breakfast fueled us through the rest of our girly, fun filled weekend.

Now please understand how vivid the memory of that meal was not two weeks later when I received two travel weary bridesmaids after midnight two days before my wedding. Stacey was absent, flying in the next morning with boyfriend Elliot to meet us on the Cape, but sister Leigh and cousin Rebecca-two thirds of the magical bridesmaid trifecta of power-were dragging their suitcases out of a cab in front of my building in the wee hours of the morning, and looking...a little wilted.

When I asked the girls if they needed anything they put on their best brave bridesmaid smiles and lied, and told me, "Nope, water would be great!" But I wasn't fooled. "Are you sure?" I asked. "My kitchen's not exactly stocked right now, but if you two are hungry, I think I could whip up some eggs." The wide eyed looks on their faces told me everything I needed to know.

I wasn't kidding when I said there wasn't a lot going on in my refrigerator. Preparing for my long weekend on the Cape, I had somewhat neglected my larder, so a fancy re-creation of Stacey's triumphant dish was out of the question. Instead, I opted to go in a different direction, offering the girls a classic three egg omelet with no frills, just egg and butter. It was a deceptively simple kitchen basic I had been working on perfecting, and as the girls looked on I explained about the benefits of butter not only as a cooking fat, but as a flavoring agent. We talked about the importance of letting the pan heat up thoroughly, just the way Stacey had two weeks before, when she showed us everything a plate of eggs could be. I talked about how tricky the simple omelet can be, and all the ways it can go wrong, becoming dense or dry or gummy, or bland.

The kitchen gods were truly with me that night as I turned out two simple but altogether perfect half moon shaped omelets, my best two to date, and watched as two of my favorite girls sat at my kitchen table in the middle of the night and ate them. Mr. Gastro had gone to bed early to nurse an ill timed cold, and so it was just us girls, working ourselves up into a silly, pre-nuptial frenzy as we talked until two am about new names, new family members, and the mania the next two days were bound to hold. These girls were going to do me a lot of favors in the next couple of days. At the time I wished I could have prepared them a feast, but in retrospect it seemed pretty perfect under the florescent lights of my kitchen, at 12:30 in the morning, to be eating three egg omelets and talking about shoes until we finally forced ourselves to go to bed so we could wake up the next day, do some last minute packing, and make our way to Cape Cod for a wedding.

Introducing...Mrs. Gastro

So first of all, a great big apology for being so absent for the last month and a half or so. For anyone not in the know, I was a little preoccupied GETTING MARRIED!!! :) And therefore was too distracted with napkin colors, playlists, seating arrangements and travel itineraries for very much writing, let alone cooking.

And trust me, I have many an exciting gastro-journey to report surrounding the big day itself. I mean, sure, there was the food at the reception, which was good (at least I remember the one or two bites I was able to get down before I was whisked onto the dance floor being nice enough). But around that same general time there were lobster rolls, midnight omelettes, cape cod clam bakes, cheese and champagne al fresco, not to mention bachelorette brunches, bagels and lox with family, and one EPIC SIZED dining table. And I will relate each and every one of these adventures. Later.

But tonight, for my first blog as a married lady, I thought I would relate the particulars of a rather unremarkable meal I cooked a couple weeks back. I know. Boring. But bear with me. Because what makes this particular meal special is the fact that it was exactly how I would have liked to have been cooking throughout the escalating hysteria that is planning a wedding, had my life been anywhere near normal. But nothing had been normal. I'm pretty sure this was the first time I had gone into my kitchen in weeks. I think if you ask most newly married women how much time they had for the simple things like cooking meals during the weeks leading up to their wedding, the vast majority of them would laugh in your face and reach for the nearest takeout menu. Seriously. Things at Chez Gastro had been...a little hectic.

Lucky for me (and Mr. Gastro...and our tummies) one of the first gifts we received when the onslaught of wedding loot began about a month prior to the big day was a gift card to our local surf-hut themed food-o-rama. And this was an excellent gift. It was like someone gave us permission to cook again, just like that. It was like an invitation to get back to normal, if only for a day. So on the first cool crisp day of the season, I got a hankering for some old fashioned comfort food and picked up a couple of lovely french cut pork chops, some apples, and a bottle of wine and went to town. I locked myself in the kitchen and whipped up a marinade with dijon mustard, fresh rosemary, shallots, and a little bit of honey, and let the pork chops hang out in there while I fixed the salad. The beauty of this particular pork chop recipe was that with a little bit of olive oil and a drop or two of balsamic, a tablespoon of leftover marinade made a dandy salad dressing.

I had been thinking about the traditional combo of pork chops and applesauce, and decided to give it a bit of an update. A couple of sliced apples in a pan of hot butter, cinnamon, red wine and a dash of salt and sugar until they were just slightly soft turned out to be a great grown up twist on the old standard. I dropped the apples in a pretty little ramekin, propped the pork chops on a bed of baby arugula with blue cheese and walnuts, placed the whole shebang on our spiffy new china and had...::GASP:: a real meal with my fiancé.

I cannot stress enough what an average night this was. We ate dinner in front of the TV, racing each other to the correct responses on Jeopardy. We ate in our pajamas. But sometimes a meal can come together like magic, where everything is cooked to perfection, and the flavors are the exact right thing for that moment in time. When the kitchen gods are smiling on you. This was one of those nights. We needed that meal. Hanging out on the couch, alternating sweet spicy apples, funky blue cheese, and tangy tender pork chops, just to keep our tongues on high alert--it felt like we had earned that meal, with all of the previous month's planning and stressing, and micro-managing. With all of the pizza. We had earned it. With my feet in his lap and a big glass of red wine in his hand, Mr Gastro let out a big sigh, sank just a little deeper into the couch, and said, "This is perfect baby. This is wonderful."

So I promise, promise, promise, that in the next week or two I will share all of my food related wedding stories, in multiple installments if I have to. But for the time being, please content yourselves with this first meal, and a taste of what I can only hope will be the general flavor of our marriage from here on out. Something undoubtedly laid back, but crafted with a lot of care.