My friend has a new baby, whom I just met last week. He is bright eyed and beautiful and incredibly – astronomically – tall. His dad, said friend, is 6’7”, his mom is 6’, so it makes sense that at 6 weeks the kid is bursting out of 6 month old clothing. I’m a single girl in her 30s, and they’re not the kind of couple to throw a bris or a baptism, so the only way to actually meet the big boy was to insert myself into their domestic routine: I brought food.

It’s the middle of December, I brewed up a pot of bigos, a stew unheard of in these parts, but a warming winter staple in the Midwestern environs from which I hail. It was such a pleasure to feed a new mom and a beaming dad: pouring a hearty meal, lovingly prepared in my own kitchen, into the pots and dishes of my dear friend’s home.

None of my girlfriends would accept a meat meal from my kitchen, most won’t let me bring parve food to serve on their dishes. Neither will The Boy. And I really want to feed him.

I don’t cook for him at my place because he’s a Boy and needs meat. And I don’t cook for him at his place because it’s a minefield. Last weekend’s body count: one fork. One milchig fork met the garbage can because I’m a dumbass.

The tally this weekend could be grim – it’s New Years, I’ll be drunk. Will I screw up a fleishig plate too? An entire dinner service? The wine glass washing rules are especially hard. (Please don’t ask, I can’t make sense of it sober.)

I could kasher my kitchen and bring food to him. But it would never be kosher enough to graduate from the paper plates. So. Romantic. And then my non-Jewish friends couldn’t bring food to me.

We’re simple people in the heartland, food is how we talk about love.