Our Culinary Stories

Shauna Niequist's book, Bread and Wine moved me. It moved me because she has some of the same struggles with her food relationship that I have. She loves people the same way I {hope I} love people. And to combine the love for food and the love for people...is her passion. And it makes me passionate.

I realized that so much about my relationship with Ryan has food in it somewhere. From our first date's picnic in a park and big ole burger at Round Robin to our nightly coffee dates to our occasional breakfasts out to celebrate special occasions.

And I realized that I want a chronicle of our culinary journey. Something that tells the story of our adventures eating out. Not adventures like spilling a glass of iced tea..but adventures like the heart of what happened during a meal to make it memorable.

And I want a chronicle of what we loved to make during this first year of marriage. What meals did we go to time and time again? What did we change up to make it ours? What sort of culinary dance did we create as we worked together in a tiny kitchen, creating memories along with food?

So I am making a scrapbook.

A book that chronicles our culinary stories from the first year of marriage. Is it okay if I share with you a peek into our book?

I thought I'd share the text I wrote for our first ever meal together as a married couple. {I'm including the pictures I included on the scrapbook page.}

And it all began with breakfast. We awakened December 3, 2012 full of joy and wonder from our wedding the day before, and our love-butterflies had been replaced by hungry rumbles, Ahead of us lay a day of honeymoon memory-making, yet more than that...a lifetime of memory-making...that began with a meal. We drove to The Broken Egg, a local restaurant in the Village of Siesta Key. A restaurant whose claim to fame is that basketball hall-of-famer and ESPN announcer Dick Vitale eats there every time he's in town. He even has his own table. We began day one of marriage by finding OUR own table, on the patio, overlooking a cloudless blue sky, and ordering our first breakfast together as husband and wife. We ordered breakfast quesadillas and ate while catching sideways glances at one another, scarcely able to believe that we were indeed married. And so it began. The love of eating outside...the love of breakfast. The love of discovering new places together and sitting back to just enjoy this wondrous thing we call love.