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During my senior year of college I began dating a dapper young man with kind eyes who wore fedoras like someone from the 1920s. He had a calm, confident air about him. After only a few months, I could imagine spending the rest of my life with him — though of course, I didn’t say that.
We came from different backgrounds, and nowhere was this more apparent than in the foods we loved. For me, the perfect breakfast was and still is huevos rancheros, while for him, it’s a tall stack of golden pancakes with maple syrup. I loved to cook, but quickly realized that I didn’t know how to make most of the dishes he cherished.
That was a problem. Because I wanted this man to fall in love with me.
Facebook hadn’t been invented yet and the internet was in its infancy. So when he told me he loved apple cobbler, my only recourse was the public library. My Mexican grandmother sure didn’t know how to make cobbler. Nor did my mother. No one in my family made “gringo” food.
I was going to have to figure this out solo. So, I got to work.
The women in my dorm thought I’d lost it. A stack of cookbooks soon teetered in one corner of our communal kitchen as I bent over a notebook and recorded the results of my culinary experiments. I made so many cobblers that the hallway was constantly filled with the aroma of apple slices bubbling in their juices. I was like the woman who created the first Persian Love Cake, trying to find the ideal balance of textures and flavors.
Finally, I found it.
“This cobbler is amazing Christina, stop stalling! Just make it for him already,” my roommate cajoled one evening, licking her spoon.
She wasn’t wrong. I was dilly-dallying. But I wanted to get it right. This was his favorite dessert, and I’d convinced myself that if I made it just so he’d somehow realize I was “the one.”
My opportunity arrived soon enough. My boyfriend invited me over to study and since he lived on the first floor of a house, that meant he had a full-sized kitchen. It promised to be a chilly autumn evening too — the ideal weather for a cozy cobbler.
It was showtime.