An (Abbreviated) History of the Anne Samuel – Part Deux

Welcome back to the second installment in “An (Abbreviated) History of the Anne Samuel”, where we will continue to follow my house’s transformation from childhood home into exclusive club and my mom’s journey from home cook to gourmet chef and restaurateur! I feel truly blessed and honored that so many of you took the time to stop by, read my prologue, and share your thoughts. Hopefully you will enjoy this next “bite” of the Anne Samuel’s long and illustrious history just as much. And so, without further ado…

Chapter One – The Anne Samuel is Born

Not only were my mother and I the sort of people who experimented with sourdough and other forms of at-home fermentation strategies during the worldwide pandemic, but, somehow, I also became the sort of person to succumb to the flickering blue-screened allure of an internet romance. 

There are many people in this world who have understandably disparaging feelings regarding the nature of online dating, and I am undoubtedly one of them. However, in the middle of hand sanitizer idolatry, conspiracy theories, and inexplicable toilet paper shortages, reconnecting over imaginary coffees with a man I’d actually met in person a handful of times at church and local youth activities seemed relatively sane—innocuous, even.

Hence why, on a near-sweltering day in August, I found myself once again seated (outdoors, naturally) across from a near-stranger at a pandemic-era restaurant, wearing a plum-colored dress and a three-layer bandage on my knee— the result of too many months spent neglecting the need to shave. 

I hadn’t planned on agreeing to a (second) date with Elias LaLande, even after several months of back-and-forth conversations on social media messaging platforms. But he had asked me out under the queerest (that is to say peculiar) of circumstances. I couldn’t find it in me to turn him down. Even so, it was painfully clear to us both that night—I was already dedicated to my one true love.

“You and food are a thing?” he asked, a grin tiptoeing its way onto his otherwise serious face as I pulled out my phone to photograph a piece of raspberry cheesecake which somehow managed to look simultaneously mouthwatering and mundane. Typical of a restaurant in the bustling metropolis of my hometown—sarcasm implied. “I never would have guessed.”

Of course he would have guessed. For the past six months, my Instagram stories had been an endless parade of one culinary creation after the other. Mom’s and my proudest achievements had included a triple-citrus crêpe cake, meyer lemon chicken piccata, and maple-bacon breakfast biscuits. All of this was in addition, of course, to overloaded charcuterie boards, homemade French toast ice cream, and Greek flatbread feasts. 

And yet, despite the distinct knowledge that he would forever be forced to duke it out with food and the mother who prepared it for me over who took the place of priority in my heart, Elias sent me a dozen pink garden roses the next day to thank me for a “wonderful evening”. A week later, with the sky choked out by the smoke and ashes of one of our state’s worst recorded wildfires, we sat across from one another at a picnic table, indulging in an outdoor feast prepared by my mother.

Elias surveyed the spread skeptically, poking at potato salad (cleverly packaged in a mason jar) and wondering aloud how it stacked up against his grandmother’s. He took a bite and declared it far, far better (though I later learned that he did, in fact, abhor his grandmother’s Miracle Whip-laden spud salad), but it was the chocolate peanut butter cheesecake—also contained within a mason jar—that sent him over the edge. “How did you know?” he asked, scraping every last bit of the homemade goodness from the mason jar, “that all LaLandes are obsessed with peanut butter?”

It was a lucky guess—and, little did I know, he was not only a peanut butter lover but also a sugar-starved individual who had grown up on organic vegetables, substitute sweeteners, and endless preparations of farm-fresh eggs. That taste of cheesecake—that night beneath the smoke-obscured stars—gave Elias one of his first tastes of fine dining, otherwise known as culinary freedom.

Fueled by sugar and apprehensive excitement, we talked until dark. Then, once the evening shadows had fully obscured our faces, Elias admitted his intention to begin a relationship with me. It was an admission that I promptly accepted, then countered with my invitation for him to join me at my house later in the week for a piece of caramel apple pie and a hand or two of cribbage—a game which, next to a full-course dinner, is as close to a rite of passage as my family has ever come.

Suffice to say, he arrived several days later to devour the pie and beat both me and Mom in a game he had never before even played. One of these behaviors proved to endear him to our hearts forever; the other nearly resulted in his immediate and permanent dismissal from our house. Elias’s love of pie worked in his favor, however. From that moment on, he became a regular fixture at our family dinner table for the evening meal. (And the first thing I ever texted to his phone happened to be a photograph of a bowl of cookie dough.)

However, there is a significant difference between family dinners and date nights. We needed both, and it wasn’t long before we exhausted our small town’s selection of palatable restaurant cuisine, leaving us aimlessly attempting to satisfy our culinary cravings another way.

When the state’s governor announced—yet again—that they were forcibly shuttering restaurants statewide due to increasing numbers of Coronavirus case numbers, my mother did what she did best. She stepped in to help.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

In a manner of twenty-four hours, spanning from the eve to the day of Elias’s and my twelve-week dating anniversary (because what else do two young adults have to celebrate during a worldwide pandemic than every week of their dating timeline?) Mom pulled together a feast of what I then believed to be epic proportions but now consider as sweet simplicity.

After Elias and I beseeched her services to plan and prepare an anniversary dinner for two at nearly midnight on the day of the event, Mom leapt into a glorious frenzy of culinary wizardry the likes of which, until that point, I had only observed on competitive cooking shows. She arose in time with the sun, racing to the market, then flying back home to not only prepare a four-course dinner featuring both a savory chévre cheesecake and multi-layer lemon torte but also to transform our family room (once known as the “playroom” when I was a tot) into a wildly exclusive lounge complete with a white-clothed table for two beside the room’s expansive river rock fireplace.

Calling the room (which we decided was an exclusive establishment catering only to the richest and most famous) a breathe-easy, Elias and I thought ourselves wildly, wickedly clever as we sat at the table that night in our tuxedo and evening gown, respectively, and dined like the royalty we half-pretended to be. We were two twenty-somethings—career-oriented and education-driven. But, to us that night, the room was truly our own exclusive club. 

It was one that shunned the convention of the day. Coronavirus mandates, racially-motivated riots, and the blazing irreverence of contemporary pop culture that all echoed at a fever pitch beyond the front door faded to a distant hum beneath a soundtrack of Sinatra, Mancini, and Nat King Cole. The room in which I had once played pirate, pioneer, and princess once again became a time machine into the past.

And yet, this time, it was equally as much the key to a bright and brilliant future.

The End…For Now 😉

Make sure to check back soon for another peek into the early days of what would become The Anne Samuel! Until then…which Covid-era dish looked the most delectable? Let me know in the comments!