Dan bought me a knife with my initials on it.

Which probably doesn’t sound particularly romantic.

It was.

For a long time, I didn’t really cook.

And then I met Dan.

Dan is definitely the head chef in our house. I’m more of the sous chef. He handles most of the heavy lifting. I do more of the baking. And somewhere along the way, Sunday sauce became completely mine.

Our styles are also… a little different.

Dan likes to plate everything and make sure it looks pretty.

I like to eat.

😂

But when he gave me that knife, with my initials on it, it opened the door and felt like there was a place for me in the kitchen.

Or maybe I was finding my way back to a place that had always felt like home.

Where everyone ended up

Growing up, everything centered around the kitchen.

When I picture it now, I see Mom and Grandma Rose working while I sit at the table nearby. Watching and listening. Talking and catching up. Eventually, I started helping.

My mom never officially sat me down and taught me how to cook. I think I learned mostly by being there.

We baked together, and at some point chocolate chip cookies became my thing.

But when I think about food from my childhood, I don’t immediately think about individual recipes.

I think about people.

I think about Thanksgiving and Passover and the big family meals that came with the holidays. I think about my mom in the kitchen preparing food while everything happened around her.

I actually have a picture of her standing at the stove during one of the Jewish holidays, right in the middle of preparing whatever meal was coming next. There are pots on the stove and things covering the counters.

She’s just in the middle of it.

Looking at that picture now, I realize that’s exactly how I remember her.

And our kitchen wasn’t only full on holidays.

My friends were always at our house. My brothers’ friends were always at our house. People ate our food. They stayed for dinner. There always seemed to be someone around.

The kitchen wasn’t simply where meals were made.

Life happened there.

The kitchen I thought I’d have

I always assumed that when I grew up and had a family of my own, my kitchen would look a lot like that one.

My house would be the house.

Kids would be coming and going. Friends would be eating our food and staying for dinner. There would always be room for one more.

My version of that hasn’t looked exactly the way I imagined it would.

But somehow, the kitchen still became the place where everyone ends up.

We hosted family gatherings because our house was often the practical place to do it. Somewhere along the way, though, it stopped being something we did simply because it made sense.

I realized I loved it.

And that part of me never went away.

If anything, I think I love entertaining even more now.

I love the planning and the cooking. I love figuring out what we’re going to serve. I love the music and the drinks and the inevitable last-minute thing that still isn’t done when everyone arrives.

Mostly, I love having people in our home.

Kitchen Time

When I started Kitchen Time with Wendi in 2025, I thought I was writing a blog about the kitchen.

Recipes. Food. Things I was making.

And, sure, some of it was.

But looking back now, I think I had the right place.

I just hadn’t quite figured out the story yet.

Because it was never really about what was cooking.

It was about what was happening while it cooked.

Today, the island sits right in the center of our kitchen, and that’s exactly where everyone ends up.

People sit around it talking and snacking while we’re cooking. Someone has a drink. Someone is laughing. Someone is telling a story.

Sometimes there are tears, the happy ones and, sometimes, the sad kind.

Because that’s life, too.

Sometimes the kitchen feels so full of people that we couldn’t possibly squeeze one more person around that island.

I love those nights.

But I love the quiet ones just as much.

Just Dan and me. Music playing. Both of us doing our thing in the kitchen. Maybe he’s making his chicken cutlets. Maybe I’m making my Sunday sauce. Maybe we’re dehydrating tomatoes and garlic because tomatoes were BOGO and apparently that’s a perfectly reasonable way for us to spend a weekend now.

He’ll make sure whatever we’ve cooked looks beautiful on the plate.

I’ll wait patiently and set the table so we can eat.

It was never about the food

The funny thing is, I don’t stand at the stove making Sunday sauce consciously thinking, This is just like Mom and Grandma Rose.

It isn’t really about recreating what they cooked.

I think I’ve been trying to recreate how their kitchen felt.

Warm.

Full.

A place where people stayed.

A place where there was always something to eat and someone to talk to.

A place where life happened.

For a long time, I had a very specific picture in my head of what my own version of that would look like.

Life had some different ideas.

But then there are nights when I stop for a second and look around our kitchen.

The island is full.

People are sitting around it eating things before dinner is ready. There are drinks and conversations happening everywhere. Someone is laughing. Maybe someone is crying. Someone is telling a story over someone else’s story.

Dan is probably making something look pretty.

I’m probably asking when we can eat.

It’s loud.

It’s warm.

It’s a little overfilled.

And life is happening right there in the middle of it.

It doesn’t look exactly like the kitchen I imagined I’d have when I grew up.

But it feels like it.

And every once in a while, I get to stop long enough to realize:

Oh. There it is.

Maybe Kitchen Time with Wendi had it right all along.

I just thought I was writing about the food.

Turns out, I was writing about everything happening around it. ❤️