Secretly celebratory bean soup
Tuesday, February 16 was our wedding anniversary. 3 years! It’s wild to think that a relationship involving two people who met on a party bus and built a solid foundation for some time solely on a mutual love of burritos is going so strong but sometimes love isn’t like in the movies, I guess.
Probably unsurprisingly, a lot of my favorite relationship memories revolve around food. As I alluded to, for a while in the beginning, I think the only thing we knew we had in common was that we could eat burritos every time we saw each other and never get tired of them. Evan had a love of queso so strong in those days that it really spoke to his capacity for loyalty & affection.
In the super early days, I remember eating late night pizza with him after a party we’d snuck away from. More specifically, I remember his horror at my ability to consume a full side container of ranch with my pizza (see previous entry re: love of condiments.) In that moment I learned of his dislike for ranch, an early red flag we somehow moved past. Barely.
Our first anniversary is the first time I think I actually cooked for Evan. I made chicken & dumplings and buttermilk cake (a heart shaped one… don’t laugh at me.) This was a pivotal point! Before that, I was afraid to cook for him. Cooking for people is so scary, especially for someone you really like. But thankfully we also cleared this hurdle.
There was also the night when Evan cooked for me. He made me and my roommates his famous chicken & waffle burrito. I remember eating it on the patio behind our house in Royal Oak with my roommates. We were all pleasantly surprised that the blend of cheez-it encrusted chicken, bacon, torn up pieces of pancake, syrup, and Frank’s red hot somehow come together into something surprisingly tasty. Or at least not as bad as originally expected.
Fast forward to this year. On Valentine’s Day, we had to cancel park plans with friends due to bad weather, but since we couldn’t cancel our zipcar, we made the trip to one of our favorite completely vegan restaurants, The Butcher’s Son in Berkeley. We ordered our favorites (mozarella sticks! squash ricotta sandwiches! jalapeno cheese steak hoagies! heart shaped chocolate cookies!) We stopped at a park, found a rock to sit on overlooking a beautiful view , and it was a pretty perfect Valentine’s Day celebration… one might say, the perfect precursor to a memorable wedding anniversary celebration to follow.
Except… just kidding, because we both completely forgot about our wedding anniversary. And on Tuesday, February 16 this year, the only thing I did other than work was make soup.
It was pretty delicious soup. Honestly some of my best work. Rancho Gordo pinto beans cooked in a magical mixture of pureed rehydrated guajillo chiles & heirloom tomato juice & garlic & onions. Sauteed turnip greens & scallions in a mustardy hot sauce. Melt in your mouth roasted kabocha squash. Brown rice. All combined into something extremely satisfying, especially with homemade cornbread.
But still! Soup!
Anyway, the only way to end this I think is just to say: I hope you go forth & make some really good soup this weekend. Unless of course it’s your anniversary, in which case please, please, do not.
