Our next post, a reader-enhanced Valentine’s Day edition, will feature tales of food and love. It is an easy comparison, both can be about hunger and desire. While eating is analogous to love, especially in the early days of attraction, over the long haul, a long-term romance might be more akin to the act of cooking: it takes time to learn the ingredients, you have to surrender to the rhythms of the kitchen rather then force your will on it and then there are days when you do everything the way you have always done it and the results are all wrong.
The long haul isn’t about one spectacular meal, relationships are about the meals, plural that you share together. A FOS –Friend of Saucyman – tells her story about about a family favorite. Not of exotic or experimental cooking but more of what it means to enjoy the best of someone you love...
After fourteen years together, eleven of them married, our courtship days are past. We are beyond wooing and well into staying. We have prepared and served each other thousands of meals, for every possible occasion and under every imaginable circumstance. My man cooks. His signature dish is ribs, T’s ribs. Forget the erotic and aphrodisiac. Ribs are not the food not of romance, but of endurance.
It’s not just that they are legendary among family, friends and neighbors. It isn’t the years of practice and experimentation that went into mastering his technique and fine tuning his recipe. It’s that when T makes ribs, he is guaranteed to be absolutely his best self - his purest self. There is nothing more endearing or intimate than watching someone you love engrossed in total concentration at a task they are good at and enjoy.
The announcement “I think I’ll make ribs this weekend” usually occurs over a holiday when there is some found time. A man of little leisure, the quality of his attention is pure. His mood is good and no outside stress or pressure can intrude on this reverie. From rub to sauce to smoke to plate, his ritual is methodical and reverent -charging the household atmosphere with aroma, purpose and the promise of contentment. Rib day is a magical time of marital harmony and familial peace.
Much has been made about men cooking meat over fire. To this beholder, the masculine posture of grilling is a beautiful balance of action in repose. I imagine that if Michalangeo lived today, his David would be holding tongs in one hand and a meat thermometer in the other.
If “the package is as good as the present”, I savor the preparation as much as the meal itself. That is saying something, because T’s BBQ is damn good and has ruined me for all others.
Saucyman returns on Friday with tales of food and love.
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