Love is Dinner for Two, Part 5

This is the last and final part of a short series of entries using food to document my most significant romantic relationships to date. Start from the beginning here.

Boyfriend 4, Mr. V. Nguyen:

As my food obsession has grown exponentially over the past few years, it is no wonder that my primoridal mating radar finally found me the talented chef and restaurant owner that I deserve. My hope is that this boyfriend will at some point train to become a masseuse. Then all of my romantic dreams will have been fulfilled.

Until then, my primordial mating radar has some evolving to do! Call me naive, but I thought dating a chef meant breakfast in bed (daily!), 3AM distractions from deep slumber due to the sweet aromas of the chocolate souffle he is trying to perfect (weekly), and clandestine trips to the backalleys of chinatown in order to procure illegal fruits and unusual cuts of meats, just to create the Ultimate Anniversary Dish (monthly). Instead, it means that by the time Boyfriend gets home from work, he is tired, hungry, and doesn't feel like creating and cleaning another mess in the kitchen. This is usual.

But that's okay! Mr. Nguyen and I love to cook, we love each other, and cooking for each other is how we show our love! In our relationship, there are no expensive Italian leather shoes or lacy negligees to surprise and delight the other (a situation we need to reexamine...). Rather, it means he cooks when I'm cranky and hungry, and I cook when he'd otherwise stumble to the bodega across the street for a BLT, extra jalapenos (to which I grieve). And although I beat him in terms of frequency, he's usually the one to bust out the labor-intensive, "fancy" meals. This means he defrosts, prepares, stove-cooks and oven-finishes juicy slabs of meat, while I, on the otherhand, throw 3 or 4 CSA veggies into a pot and call it a meal. (Am I the only one in this household who feels obligated to use up the CSA share before we pick up a new one?)

So what is my alimento de Novia #4? MEAT. Because nothing shows lovin like sexy-time grubbin! On meat!



THIS IS sliced rib-eye steak topped with mushroom and jalapeno sauce; roasted potatoes; and perfectly sauteed CSA kale, made by Boyfriend #4 for an anniversary meal.

Love is Dinner for Two, Part 4

This is part 4 of a short series of entries using food to document my most significant romantic relationships to date. Start from the beginning here.

Boyfriend 3, Mister M. Bauer:

2004-2006. Mr. Bauer was always full of good intention. That was what I admired most about him- his sincerity, his honesty, and his patience. For someone so talented, this boy didn't have a drop of ego or pretention. In some ways, you could even say he was a simple man. Sometimes he even referred to himself as "Old Man Bauer." Was it the multiple pairs of velcro shoes? Was it the obsession with second-hand goods? Maybe it was the way everything he owned slowly found its way into the backseat and trunk of his car. Whatever it was, my memories with him are all positive. They are full of cheap, tasty meals, after dinner walks in our Little Ethiopia neighborhood, driving around LA, and bringing an unreasonably bulky, old boombox with us on many a car rides so he could record and interview our conversations.

There are two Mr. Bauer meals that stand out the most to me. This first was this: It was his turn to make dinner for the short-lived but incredibly exciting "Food Cult" dinner parties I started to have, and his theme was off-the-wall. I had made an African-themed meal, Melissa had made French. And what did Mr. Bauer make? A meal of stuffed things. There was a salad of tomato stuffed with chickpeas, onions, peppers, and basil; appetizers of potato stuffed with potato, avocoado, and sour cream, and chinese dumplings stuffed with veggies; an entree of eggplant stuffed with stuffing, and so on... That's a lot of stuff.

The other meal that I thought exemplified Mr. Bauer was his homemade vegetarian meatballs. These meatballs, however, were totally unconventional. Mr. Bauer used every single item in our fridge to construct these growingly massive balls. This included condiments such as dijon mustard and veganaise, to tofu, cottage cheese, and veggies. Yes, cottage cheese! I watched in horror as he made the meatballls, trying with all my might to keep "Kitchen Ellen" under control and exhibit Ellen Ellen, the Ellen that he liked having around and that didn't became a scary witch when it came time to turn on the stove. I had to learn to keep my mouth shut and trust him, as to not inhibit his own creativity. Even though the ride was rough, in the end the meatballs were edible, even tasty, and we can still be friends.

THIS IS egg scramble with collard greens, pine nuts, garlic, and shaved parmesan cheese; homemade whole wheat blueberry, banana, walnut muffin; sliced fuji apple. Breakfast for Mr. Bauer one December morning.

Love is Dinner for Two, Part 3

This is part 3 of a short series of entries using food to document my most significant romantic relationships to date. Start from the beginning here.

Boyfriend 2.5, Mister E. Danielson:

2003. I fell hard for Mr. Danielson. Maybe it was because we were always stoned, but we never had a bad time together. We only dated for a couple of months, but those months were marked by sweetness and pleasure. We drank Jack Daniel's, we scouraged for cheap, vegetarian eats in the greater LA area, he helped me paint my room orange. But let's keep it short, just like my relationship with Mr. Danielson. We ate lots of fake meat together. It tasted good in the beginning, so good you believed it was real and not "fake," and then you learned how dangerous it is to overconsume soy products and how processed Texturized Vegetable and Texurized Soy Protein is and all of a sudden he's "confused" and back together with his ex-girlfriend. To this day I try to be realistic about fake meat, and am careful about my intake of soy.



THIS IS me about to eat the House "Chicken" at Happy Family Vegetarian Restaurant in Monterey Park, CA. Sometimes fake meat is too good to resist.

Love is Dinner for Two, Part 2

This is part 2 of a short series of entries using food to document my most significant romantic relationships to date. Start from the beginning here.

Boyfriend 2, Mister S. Tam:
2001-2002. My first "real" boyfriend. The first boyfriend I daydreamed about marrying and growing old with.

Mr. Tam was a huge geek. He was a science geek, a music geek, and a roller hockey geek. A talented geek at that, he had the kind of personality to get really really into something. I guess when you pursue a PhD, that kind of quality is necessary. My friends still describe him as the boyfriend that was "so in love" with me. This was all very heavy for a 20 year-old like myself. It's not that I didn't reciprocate his feelings, or feel flattered by his sweet attention, I mean I did move to Berkeley to be with him, but that was the year I became vegetarian and was intent on keeping things light and open. I might have even used that exact word, "open," to describe where I wanted our relationship to head. I was taking Cal's infamous Female Sexuality class at the time and all of a sudden feeling very suffocated by this heterosexual, monogamous relationship. Did I mention I was only 20 years old? He argued against it, considered it, resisted it, and finally, for his own good, we both rejected it. No open relationship for us. But before all of this happened, he made me two dishes I will always remember: Linguini Clam Pasta made from canned clams, bell peppers, garlic, basil, and tomatoes, and a 2000 calorie cheesecake his father used to make, a recipe that calls for something like four boxes of Philadelphia cream cheese. My mom and I froze the majority of the cheesecake, which would probably still be sitting in our freezer had we not moved houses in 2003.

So nothing between Mr. Tam and I could ever be light, open, or forever, and therefore I entered my last term at UCLA as a single serving.

(to be continued)

THIS IS broccoli stem salad in sesame oil and soy sauce dressing with quinoa and black sesame seeds, pan-fried cajun-spiced mahi mahi fish and roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes. From February, a perfect lunch for one.

Love is Dinner for Two, Part 1

This is part 1 of a short series of entries using food to document my most significant romantic relationships to date.

My friend Zoe just lent me Rob Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape. I started reading it at JFK airport yesterday morning en route to LA, a week stay before my big trip to Taiwan. I read a short 30 pages before I opted to listen to a podcast of This American Life. It was just too Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, and what I was really in the mood for was US Weekly's What was Britney Thinking?! What I did get though was that this Rob Sheffield man, who is apparently very famous, is a music geek. And I love geeks. Geeks are cool as long as there is an adjective to qualify the word "geek." And what makes a geek a geek? Compulsion. Expertise. Passion. An obession that forces one to only be able to think and interact through the lens of that obsession.

So Music geek? Cool. Basketball geek? Sexy. Computer geek? Wealthy. And of course there's my favorite, The Food Geek. Whether you obsess over regional Italian olive oils or have never actually cooked anything yourself but are exchanging death threats on Eater.com to HungreeMan38, who repeatedly gives negative reviews because of "bad serivce" (This is New York people! You aren't dining at Commander's Palace in New Orleans!), a food geek will forget names, dates, and locations, but always remember the food. So as Rob Sheffield immortalizes his lost, dead wife by revisiting the scores of mixtapes the lovers once exchanged, unable to sever tunes and lyrics with image and memory, I similarly link boyfriends with food, restaurants, and what we ate and cooked.

Boyfriend 1, Mister C. Louie:

I was 17 years old, weeks away from graduating high school. I had never kissed a boy and was a late-bloomer on all accounts. I had recently discovered the art of flirting and was effortlessly perfecting this when Mr. Louie sent his first Instant Message. Hours of IMing came and went, days (in post high school language: months) passed before we finally made plans to interact as real people. No longer would I be just a screenname, and no longer would he try to seduce me through smiley faces and and loud, roaring LOLs.

There are a few things I remember most about Mr. Louie. He was really skinny. This seemed to set the mold for all of my boyfriends thereafter, but he was really skinny, possibly the skinniest of them all. I'm guessing he weighed no more than 10 pounds more than me even though he was 5 inches taller, and I was thin thin thin. He also took diet pills he got at the mall and carried this weird designer purse which he refused to call a purse but looked eerily similar to um, a purse. Mr. Louie wanted to be a model and was always watching what he ate. Even in my high school naivete I excused this dream of his as misled, pathetic even, although who's the one in the Mercedes commercial now? Naturally, this Mary-Kate behavior bothered me; I had always eaten unhibited and unobstructed. So what is my culinary memory of Mister Louie, which is so appropriately symbolic? Microwaved boca burger patties scantily covered in Heinz ketchup.

THIS IS not microwaved boca burgers, but pork chops and homemade tomato sauce over a bed of white rice. Served with afternoon champagne one Winter afternoon by my love, Boyfriend 4.