A Puréed Kind of Love.

Life was food crazy for the Yacoub baby shower: baby shower boot camp began on Thursday night. On Friday night, we pulled on some thigh-high hooker boots and really went to camp. Mr. Husband helped me cook until 1:00 am by making cupcakes and being a super sous chef. I got up at 7:30 and went back to the kitchen. Life begins in the kitchen for a party. Mr. Husband was in the trenches with me. We were side-by-side and experimenting with food. Does it get any kinkier? Not in our house. We were totally nine-and-a-half weeks without the sexiness and definitely without the creepy control issues. Mr. Husband never morphed into Mickey Rourke and I never got dumb. Fortunate. Still foodies. Not creepy.

Aprons and greased pans were our game. We began boot camp with an essentials trip to Whole Foods where everything under the sun can be found. Amazing—we never had to panic. Whole Foods held us in her pricey little hands and massaged our wallets as we strolled through the store finding food item after food item that was exactly what we needed. We pillaged the vegetable section. We bought a butternut squash and discovered a strange green mango. We bought ginger and red chilis. We hunted for Greek Yogurt. We stopped and took a break in the wine section. In the end, we were so impressed with our array of vegetables and fruit that we gazed upon them as if the arrangement was art.

As I chopped and cut and blended and puréed, Mr. Husband made blue cake cupcakes. It’s a boy, so it all had better be blue. Mr. Husband had never baked cake before. We’ve baked cake together—lots of cake. We’re a cake-loving-drooling-eat-it-until-you-die family, but on Friday night, Mr. Husband was on his very own. He learned that you cannot always trust the box: you must feel the cake. Be the cake! He was the cake and learned how to stick a toothpick in the cake to test the cake. He is the cake! I was so busy forcing together new foods that I’d never worked with before—I cut up my very first mango. Yes, we sang the juicy mango song with newly made up words as I cried a little and we christened the mango we named “Steve.”

Steve the Mango became part of the master plan: lots of stuff to put on pita chips. I made five different dippable foods: avocado-mango salsa, cucumber-yogurt sauce, cannellini spicy bean dip, hummus with veggies, and zucchini caper dip. There was supposed to be a butternut squash dip, but she didn’t make the cut. She’s going to require more time. I think I’ll make her for leetle brother Chris’s birthday next weekend. She is a complicated vegetable and she requires much more devotion. She’ll be in a cute little dish soon. All in all, it turned out wonderfully. My favorite presentation was my New Wave appetizer tray filled with the dippables. Dip away!

I puréed just about everything for the dips,
using so many new kitchen products that we received for our wedding. I am thankful every day that we were given so many nice things to start our life together. And it pays off every time we get into the kitchen together and get to bring a party to life.

I got up at 7:30 the next morning while Mr. Husband continued to support me from the bedroom in his snugness and his snoring. I iced the cupcakes in blue with blue and more blue. We prepared final dishes and packed the car. Mr. Husband opened up a box of innovation on the many food items, lining boxes with plastic wrap and calling himself the Dexter of food-packing. Such an incredibly helpful man. How did I ever get so lucky? I couldn’t have done it without him. He is the only one I want standing beside me over a hot stove while we make it all happen with aprons, and measuring cups, and lots of food processing. Bring me my knife! Hand me my spoon! We blend together perfectly as a team in the kitchen and as a team for life.