I’ve come a long way from that girl in my kitchen, shaking my head at requests for knives and corkscrews and salt. My kitchen expanded to include wonderfully sharp chef’s knives, a multitude of cutting boards, spices of all kinds, and a plethora of rolling pins.  I cooked for friends and family, growling when people dared enter my cooking space, trying exotic new recipes and proclaiming my food the most delicious around.  I become The One Who Cooks.  This shift in status became especially vivid when I cooked for BJ, her eyes wide as watched me produce food. “How do you do that?” she asked.

Now, I’m back with J-ko, the first to point out my shocking deficiencies.  He’s aware, of course, that I’ve changed.  We’ve had long discussions of the foods I’ve cooked and the food we wanted to cook once we were reunited.  I told him the horror stories of other people’s kitchens, kitchens far worse than mine had been.

And yet, here in his unfamiliar kitchen, when he’s decided on a dish and collected the ingredients, grabbing utensils from cabinets I’ve yet to explore, using oddly shaped knives and healthy substitute ingredients I’ve never heard of, I find that I’m suddenly an amateur.  While J-ko whizzes around his kitchen preparing things, I stand awkwardly to the side awaiting instructions.  I chop and dice and measure ingredients and wash dishes during lulls. From Queen of the Kitchen, I’ve been demoted to sous-chef.

But with hand tossed pizzas and homemade curry and giants slabs of ribs and creamy pasta with arugula and  ham being made daily, there’s hardly room for complaint.  Chop, measure, pour, slice, wash — and then there’s food in my mouth.

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