You mean there should be a reason besides the fact that I thought him strikingly handsome? It’s not enough that his eyes were blue and his hair was black (and now the black is peppered with gray, rendering me a knock-kneed fool)? Masculine sexiness won’t cut it? Really?

Oh, okay. Here’s my list, or rather, an excerpt from the book:

…I know that I’ve married a truly wonderful person…. His fun-loving, spontaneous outlook on life was contagious. Nothing plodding about this guy! Whoo-ee! I saw him as a hard worker, intelligent and informed, honest, respectful, creative, interesting, conscientious, and endowed with good common sense. I very quickly hinged myself to his side.

I’m still hinged, after twelve years, and I plan on remaining right here, stuck fast to his side.

It’s a good place to be.

One of the things I like about being a grown-up is that I can buy chocolate whenever I want. And I can buy however much I want. I can eat it in the morning, right before supper, or at bedtime. I can eat as much as I want. Being a grown-up can be a lot of fun.

The way I’m talking, you might think that I just flew the coop yesterday. Not so. I’ve been married for twelve years (tomorrow), and I have four kids (that’s supposed to imply that I’m a responsible adult, on some level). After college, I lived in Nicaragua for three years, far, far away (I’m not just referring to distance here) from the coop. I’m 32 years old, for crying out loud, but I still get excited over buying chocolate.

This morning I took Sweetsie and The Baby Nickel to Walmart (the rest of the family is in upstate New York) because I needed to get a few important items like red lipstick, birdies for our badminton set (couldn’t find them), and unlined paper. At the end of my list, I wrote “chocolate”.

Therefore, my last stop was the chocolate aisle. While the kids ritched around in their seats (The Baby Nickel on the front seat, strapped in, and Sweetsie perched on a big box of disposable diapers), I pondered the many choices. I had trouble deciding what would be best, so I played it safe and bought a variety. (And this is after I had already been to the baking aisle where I had bought two bars of Baker’s semi-sweet baking chocolate, two bars of Nestle 53% Dark Chocolate, two bars of Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate, and a bag of Kraft Premium Caramel Bits—I had used up all my semi-sweet chocolate bars when I made those Chocolate Chunk Cookies.)

This is what I picked out:

*Reese’s Select Clusters (peanuts, pecans, peanut butter, and caramel in milk chocolate)
*Dove Dark Chocolate pieces, individually wrapped
*Dove Desserts—Tiramisu, Dark Chocolate, individually wrapped
*A bar of Lindt Excellence, Chili, Dark Chocolate
*A bar of Lindt Creation, 70%, Orange

I came home and stashed the bars and bags into my chocolate cupboard, up above the microwave. I already had a variety of baking chocolates (two kinds of chips, several kinds of cocoa, white baking chocolate, unsweetened baking chocolate), so now my cupboard is looking rather full. Even to me.

The good news is that it should take me awhile to work my way through that stash. I don’t gorge on chocolate, especially not the dark kind. One piece here and there is plenty.

After all, I am a responsible adult who knows how to handle her freedom. I mean, her chocolate.

(Gummy bears, however, are a different story…)

Every year the women on my mom’s side of the family get together at my Aunt Dr. Perfection’s house for our annual fall soiree. We descend upon her house, hungry for the fantastic food she fixes, ready to spend the next 24 hours eating, talking, eating, lounging (we rotate between the front porch, the back yard garden, and the sunroom), and eating some more.

Obviously, she’s a good cook. Otherwise we wouldn’t eat so much.

A couple years ago, she served us a cold corn soup. It was spectacular—cold, creamy, lemony—so I copied the recipe down (from one of her cookbooks, possibly a Williams-Sonoma book) and brought it home with me.

This past week my mother sent me a couple boxes of exceptionally sweet and delicious white corn that my father had grown. It was nearly bedtime when the corn arrived at my house (we had met halfway between our houses in one of our send-a-child-to-the-grandparents’ expeditions), so I cooked it up for a bedtime snack, and then cut the rest off the cob and tucked it into the fridge. A couple days later I dug my aunt’s soup recipe out of my recipe box and got to work.

Cold Curried Corn Soup
Adapted from the recipe book that my Aunt Doctor Perfection has sitting on her little wire shelf in her kitchen.

This is a great soup to have on hand during the hot days of August (that actually haven’t been so hot this year). Serve it as a first course to a fancy meal, as a simple lunch, or as a refreshing mid-afternoon snack.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 small potatoes, peeled and coarsely chopped
5-6 cups of fresh corn
2 ½ teaspoons curry powder
5-6 cups chicken stock
juice from one lemon, about 2 tablespoons
salt
white pepper
thin lemon slices
some sour cream, about half a cup
some finely chopped parsley, about 3 tablespoons

In a medium to large soup pot, saute the onion with the olive oil. Add the potatoes and the corn and saute for another couple minutes. Add the curry powder and cook for yet another minute. Add the chicken stock and the lemon juice and simmer for twenty minutes, or until the potatoes are quite tender.

In small batches and using great caution (I gave myself a talking to about being careful and still I spritzed corny soup all over the kitchen counter), puree the soup in a blender. Pour the pureed soup through a sieve to remove the fiber stuff—you’re going for a creamy soup here. This part takes a little bit of time because it seems like the soup will never go through. Just be patient and stir the soup while it’s sitting in the sieve, pressing on the sides and jouncing it up and down a little. You should have about a cup of goop left in the sieve when you’re all done—feed that part to the chickens. Season the pureed, sieved, creamy soup with salt and white pepper, pour it into a jar (I had a little over two quarts of soup), and put it in the refrigerator to chill.

To serve, garnish with the sour cream, chopped parsley, and the lemon slice. Mmm, perfect.