On Sundays, Andre cooks. He’s been doing this for a couple of years now – planning a menu for the week, shopping on Saturday, cooking for most (or all) of Sunday morning. While he makes a few things designed to appeal to the kids – like a delicious mac’n’cheese – I am truly the lucky recipient of most of his bounty: blueberry scones, carrot-pomegranate-pistachio salad, baked squash with toasted almonds, eggplant parm, Navajo stew, all sorts of soups, and a recently perfected Caesar salad dressing that is just the right amount of tangy and creamy.

After he’s chopped and toasted and stirred and baked, he turns to his final act: dough. He often makes a loaf of bread for the week, then enlists the kids to help make some sort of bread for their lunches – for a while they made cheese buns; lately it’s been bagels – and he almost always makes us pizza dough for Sunday dinner.

Today, he wanted to make the pizza dough early, but he worried that if he left it too long, it might over-proof. So while I went for my morning walk, he was online looking for ideas to keep the dough just right. When I got back from my walk, the dough was rising in a container on the back porch – apparently the outdoor temperature was just what he was looking for.

After that, we spent the afternoon as we often do: catching up on work, tidying, planning. At some point I went into the kitchen for some water, looked out the back door and saw this:

Cheeky thing. This food is NOT for you!

(Fear not, the dough itself was covered with saran wrap & then I covered the whole thing with a large metal bowl that stymied the squirrels – no pizza dough was sacrificed to the squirrels. Now, as I write, the pizza is cooking and the salad is ready.)

I thank Andre often, of course, but it’s not really enough – how could it be? He spends hours every week doing this activity that is largely designed to take care of us, his family. I don’t intend to share his creations with the wildlife.

PS: Tomorrow is his birthday and he says it’s not really a big one for him so he wants to keep things low-key – so I’m writing today to keep things the way he likes them. But in case you’re wondering, he’s pretty amazing.