While doing dishes after supper recently, Mel asked Chris and me: "What's the first meal you made for each other?"

If Chris and I were playing a newlywed game and the question were posed to him, we'd nail it, as we both remember precisely what he made as his first meal for me. It was an Italian sausage and a savoury pastry, both store bought. I took one look at the plate and asked, "Where are the vegetables?" (How ungrateful I must have sounded.) Without missing a beat, Chris said with enthusiasm: "Oh, they're in the pastry." He still laughs at his attempt at vegetables: tiny bits of broccoli inside a cheesy cream sauce, encased in flaky pastry.

However, if the first-meal question were posed to me, we'd be stumped. I always had food in my apartment. I would cook one or two healthy casseroles on the weekend and eat them throughout the week. When Chris and I were first dating and he would come over after his shift at the Audio Centre, he was always starving. He happily ate whatever I had in the fridge, as it was always homemade. Consequently, neither of us recalls a specific dish that was my first meal for him.

Over the almost 35 years we've been together, Chris and I have both become better cooks. For many years, he did all the cooking in our household. Since my retirement, though, I've had more time to spend in the kitchen. Food has always been important to both of us.