Young Love (#95)

September 30 – October 3, 1969

Nate and I were spending lots of time together, grateful that we weren’t separated by hundreds of miles as we had been. I was doing my best to become a domestic goddess, especially in the kitchen, though without much success. Having had virtually no cooking experience in my growing-up years, I didn’t have much to build on. Mom didn’t use us in her kitchen (except to stir the Jello), probably because she was always moving too fast to take time to teach.

So, as I was shopping for ingredients to make our first meal in the Champaign apartment, I played it safe, looking only for foods that had printed instructions. When I checked out, I had purchased hot dogs, Kraft macaroni, and frozen peas.

Back at the apartment, I first squared off with the peas, immediately befuddled at how I should open the box. Finally I sawed the end off with a serrated knife. But I was so unschooled that when the directions said to use a sauce pan, I didn’t know what that meant.

But I had only two pan-choices – small and large – so I chose the small one. The instructions said to put ¼ cup of water into the pan along with the peas, and then bring them to a boil. On and on my prep work went until finally I presented the colorful results on a plate to my patient fiancé.

He gobbled it all down, voicing his appreciation between bites. Factoring into my success was that Nate had just come from many years of college dining hall food… not very tasty back then. Almost anything would have been good enough.

I knew I had much to learn, but Nate was endlessly patient and never once criticized my efforts. It wasn’t until later that I realized his mother was a gourmet cook and had always served her family high-class fare.

Thankfully my Aunt Joyce had given me the big Better Homes Cookbook as an engagement gift, and it turned out to be exactly what I needed. It told me how to “broil” something, defined a “moderate oven,” and said that one medium onion chopped would end up as ½ cup.

Over time, this handy cook book taught me how to cut up a pineapple and stuff a turkey. It described the differences in 17 cheeses and gave the uses for scores of seasonings. It included menu suggestions and listed tips for entertaining. It even taught me how to arrange table centerpieces and fold napkins into fancy shapes.

There wasn’t any cooking subject my book didn’t address, and little by little Nate’s dinner plate became more interesting. Not that I didn’t often fail, but if I burned something, he ate it and said, “Mmmm. Good!” If the potatoes weren’t completely cooked, he crunched them down. And always, without exception, he thanked me “for the delicious meal.”

Without me realizing it, he was following through on the written promise he’d made — many letters ago – to love me in a “1-Corinthians-13 way.”