Sometimes Love Looks Like Four Pans of Pasta Salad

A 40th birthday, forgotten ingredients, a Cotija cheese hunt, the wrong measuring cup, a crème brûlée torch, and a reminder that resilience can look a lot like staying open to whatever comes next.

I was supposed to bring a bagged salad.

I feel like that needs to be established from the beginning, because somewhere between agreeing to bring something to my brother-in-law’s 40th birthday and standing in my kitchen surrounded by four enormous aluminum pans of Mexican street corn pasta salad, I had clearly gotten very far away from the original assignment.

Bagged salad was simple.

Buy the bag.

Open the bag.

Put it in something presentable.

Show up.

Then my friend Darth Nouka Kelly called me.

She recently had a baby and is breastfeeding, and somehow, in the middle of everything she has going on, she made enough of a case about my little bagged-salad contribution that I started to feel bad.

Sort of.

Let’s not exaggerate.

But enough to make me reconsider.

And once I reconsidered, I started thinking about my husband.

This was his brother’s 40th birthday.

His brother matters to him.

And sometimes loving your spouse means deciding that something matters to you because it matters to the person you love.

So I decided I could do a little better than bagged salad.

That’s how Mexican street corn pasta salad entered the picture.

I had absolutely no idea what I had just signed myself up for.

First of All, There Were Supposed to Be 75 People

I need to clear this up because I did not wake up one morning and decide that feeding 75 people sounded recreational.

When I was planning the food, 75 people were confirmed for the party.

So I planned for 75.

By the actual day of the party, the number was closer to 50.

Which meant I made too much food.

And honestly?

I was completely fine with that.

For a big family celebration, I’d rather have too much than spend the evening watching the serving spoon and calculating whether everybody is entitled to six rotini and three kernels of corn.

There was plenty.

People could eat.

People could get seconds.

Somebody could take some home.

No problem.

Getting those four pans finished, however, was an entirely different story.

The Pasta Was the First Negotiation

We originally calculated enough pasta for this giant 75-person operation, so I bought a mixture of 12-ounce and 16-ounce boxes of rotini.

Then I started boiling pasta.

And boiling pasta.

And boiling more pasta.

Eventually, I had cooked five boxes.

There were two unopened boxes remaining.

I looked at them.

They looked at me.

And I decided:

That’s all they’re getting.

I was tired.

I already had four aluminum pans full of pasta.

Nobody was going hungry.

Those remaining two boxes could stay exactly where they were.

And considering the final attendance dropped to around 50 people anyway, apparently the universe agreed with me.

That’s the first thing this whole experience reminded me about resilience.

Sometimes resilience means pushing through.

Sometimes resilience means recognizing:

I’ve done enough.

Those aren’t always the same thing.

Then I Forgot the Corn

There was one fairly important ingredient in my Mexican street corn pasta salad.

The corn.

Which I forgot to buy.

I thought I had some in the house.

Technically, I did.

One can.

One lonely can of whole-kernel corn staring at four catering pans of rotini like it was prepared to perform a miracle.

Absolutely not.

At that point, I was tired.

I could have gotten frustrated.

I could have gone back out.

Instead, I decided:

Tomorrow’s problem.

I finished what I was doing, refrigerated the pasta and dealt with the corn the next day.

Sometimes resilience isn’t dramatic.

Sometimes resilience is putting something in the refrigerator and going to bed.

And Of Course They Didn’t Have Fire-Roasted Corn

The next day, I needed fire-roasted corn.

The store had none.

Of course.

What they did have was frozen super-sweet corn.

Fine.

Super-sweet corn it is.

Except I still wanted those little charred pieces that make street corn taste like street corn.

Then I remembered something.

I own a crème brûlée torch.

Now, I’m not sure what that torch imagined its purpose in this household would be when I bought it, but on this particular Saturday, it received a reassignment.

I cooked the corn in batches.

I seasoned it with Tajín, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder and black pepper.

Then I spread it into a metal pan, pulled out my torch and started going to work.

And I loved every second of it.

Little charred pieces started appearing.

The corn blistered.

It smelled good.

And suddenly my regular frozen super-sweet corn had exactly the personality I wanted.

Problem solved.

And also?

Now I want to torch everything.

Not irresponsibly.

But vegetables?

Peppers?

Fruit?

More corn?

Absolutely.

Something always inspires me.

Give me one new technique, one new ingredient or one new idea and suddenly I’m wondering what else I can do with it.

That’s just how my brain works.

Then Came the Great Cotija Search

I needed Cotija cheese.

Food Lion didn’t have it.

I stood there looking through all the regular cheeses thinking maybe I had somehow missed it.

No.

So I went to Safeway.

Sold out.

Now I was invested.

I went to Giant because Giant usually has a pretty good selection.

Finally, I found Cotija.

One bag.

For four enormous pans.

So there I was standing in front of the Latin American cheeses trying to determine what else could help me.

Queso fresco.

Queso seco.

Queso duro.

Cheese for beans.

Various cheeses whose names I was absolutely butchering.

Eventually, I figured it out.

I could use queso seco inside the dressing to give me that salty, crumbly cheese flavor throughout the pasta salad.

Then I could save my precious Cotija for the top, where everybody could actually see and taste it.

Problem solved.

Again.

Then I Realized There Wasn’t Enough Corn

Our first calculation was about a bag and a half of corn per pan.

So I cooked it.

Seasoned it.

Torched it.

Added it to the pasta.

Then I looked at the pan.

No.

Absolutely not.

This is Mexican street corn pasta salad.

I should be able to see some damn corn.

I don’t want to go digging through twelve rotini looking for a kernel.

So I changed the recipe.

Two full 12-ounce bags of corn per pan.

There we go.

Now there was corn everywhere.

Every scoop had pasta and corn together.

That’s what I wanted.

Sometimes you follow the recipe.

Sometimes you look at what is actually sitting in front of you and say:

That ain’t enough corn.

Both are valid culinary techniques.

Then I Tried to Fix a Sauce That Wasn’t Broken

This was probably my favorite mishap.

The sauce itself was simple:

Mayonnaise.

Sour cream.

Lime juice.

Tajín.

Paprika.

Garlic powder.

Onion powder.

Black pepper.

Queso seco.

Everything went into my Beast blender.

I made the first pan and immediately started questioning the sauce.

Maybe it was too thick.

Maybe it needed water.

Maybe it needed more lime.

Maybe we needed to change something.

Something wasn’t right.

Except there was nothing wrong with the sauce.

I was the problem.

Somewhere during this entire operation, I had been using my ⅓-cup measuring cup while trying to approximate ¼ cup.

Then I found my actual ¼-cup measuring cup.

I made the sauce according to the original measurements.

Perfect.

Made the next pan.

Perfect.

Made another.

Perfect.

So one pan has its own personality.

The other three came out exactly how I wanted them.

Texture.

Creaminess.

Flavor.

Everything.

The sauce never needed fixing.

I needed the correct measuring cup.

There’s probably a lesson in there about not immediately assuming the entire system needs to change before checking whether you’re the variable that’s off.

I don’t particularly appreciate receiving life lessons from mayonnaise, but here we are.

Then I Found My Finishing Touch

Once everything was mixed together, I tasted it.

It was good.

But I wanted a little more brightness.

So I gave each pan about three good squeezes of lime juice and three pinches of flaky sea salt.

There it was.

That little bit of acid and salt woke everything up.

Then I finished the tops with Cotija.

Tajín.

Cilantro.

Green onions.

And finally, after multiple grocery stores, forgotten ingredients, substitutions, measurements, corn adjustments and one very enthusiastic encounter with a culinary torch…

I stepped back.

These pans were beautiful.

More importantly, they tasted exactly how I wanted them to taste.

You Can’t See Everything That Went Wrong in the Finished Product

That might be my favorite part of this entire experience.

When you look at the finished pasta salad, you can’t see everything that went wrong getting there.

You don’t see that I forgot the corn.

You don’t see that the store didn’t have fire-roasted corn.

You don’t see Food Lion.

Or Safeway.

Or the single bag of Cotija.

You don’t see the crème brûlée torch getting drafted into street-corn service.

You don’t see the first corn ratio being wrong.

You don’t see me using the wrong measuring cup.

You don’t see those two boxes of pasta I simply refused to cook because I had reached my limit.

You see the finished product.

And we do that with people all the time.

We see someone’s finished thing.

The marriage.

The career.

The family.

The house.

The degree.

The meal.

The celebration.

We don’t necessarily see all the little moments behind it when something went wrong and they had to decide:

Okay. What now?

I think I used to think resilience was mostly about surviving the big things.

You get knocked down.

You get back up.

You survive something terrible.

You keep moving.

And yes, that’s resilience.

But I’m starting to think resilience lives in smaller places too.

I forgot it. I’ll get it tomorrow.

They don’t have what I need. What can I substitute?

That didn’t work. Try something else.

That’s not enough. Add more.

I’m tired. What I’ve already done is enough.

And occasionally:

Before I change the whole damn recipe, let me find the correct measuring cup.

Maybe This Was Really About Love

Somewhere between my original bagged-salad plan and these four ridiculous pans of pasta salad, I realized something else.

This wasn’t really about whether homemade pasta salad was somehow more virtuous than bagged salad.

It isn’t.

This was about how I wanted to show up.

This was my husband’s brother’s 40th birthday.

And I love my husband.

I think I’m learning more about the difference between simply loving somebody and practicing love toward them.

Love can be romantic.

It can be affection.

It can be words.

It can be sex.

It can be forgiveness.

It can be listening.

And sometimes loving your spouse means putting effort into something because it matters to them.

That’s what this became for me.

I didn’t do anything halfway.

Once I decided I was making something, I wanted it to be good.

This was also the first time I had really made something like this for everybody.

So if I was going to do it, I was going to do it.

Apparently that meant multiple grocery stores and open flame.

So be it.

And the funny thing is, once I stopped thinking of it as something I had to do and started treating it as something I was creating?

I enjoyed the entire process.

Even the mishaps.

Especially that torch.

Then I Went to the Party—and I Had a Really Good Time

After all that, I cleaned the kitchen enough to make it respectable, changed clothes and got myself together.

Blue sundress.

Orange-brown sandals.

Carhartt fanny pack.

New blonde hair.

I had ironed the dress because it was just a smidge shorter than I wanted it to be, and unironed, bending all the way over could potentially reveal information nobody at this man’s 40th birthday had requested.

So we ironed.

And remembered that women wearing short dresses know how to squat instead of bending at the waist.

Another problem solved.

Then I loaded up the food and went.

And I genuinely enjoyed myself.

People ate.

People laughed.

People talked.

The food was shared.

The pasta salad was enjoyed.

And the night gave me more than I expected from it.

Eve’s Sister Got on the Grill

Later, my brother-in-law’s girlfriend Eve’s sister came through and got on the grill.

And she made some good carne asada.

I’m sorry to my brother-in-law, but she grilled that steak better than he did.

He likes his steak so well-done that sometimes it feels like you can shake the table trying to cut it.

That carne asada?

Tender.

Flavorful.

Good.

And she shared it with us.

That seems like a small thing, but I noticed it because the entire evening started feeling like that.

People sharing.

Food.

Conversation.

Stories.

Experience.

Little pieces of themselves.

Somehow All These Talkative People Ended Up Discussing Communication

I also had a really good conversation with one of Eve’s friends and her husband.

She’s a Gemini.

Her husband is an Aquarius, like mine.

And somehow we ended up talking about communication.

Which is hilarious because apparently none of us has a problem talking.

We can TALK.

But talking and communicating are not necessarily the same thing.

And that’s what made the conversation interesting.

They were working on communication within their marriage too.

They weren’t presenting themselves as people who had figured everything out.

They had simply moved through some things that we were still navigating, while still having their own work to do.

And they shared what they’d learned.

That meant something to me.

Because they didn’t have to.

They could have kept the conversation superficial.

They could have protected their own vulnerabilities.

They could have given us some generic marriage is hard comment and moved on.

Instead, they essentially said:

We’ve been around this part of the road. Here’s something we’ve learned.

That’s an act of love to me.

Not romantic love.

Not family obligation.

Just human love.

The kind that makes somebody recognize another person trying to figure something out and think:

Maybe something I’ve learned could help you.

Who does that except a good person?

And I Remembered Something About My Husband

I also got to watch my husband interact with everybody.

And sometimes I forget how personable this man can be.

Honestly, I think sometimes he forgets.

There’s an awesomeness in him that already exists.

He doesn’t need to manufacture it.

He needs to acknowledge it.

When he’s comfortable and lets himself be himself, he can talk, joke, engage and work a room.

People enjoy him.

I watched it happening.

And I thought:

There you are.

Because I know that guy.

Now, I can work a room.

Let’s establish that.

But my husband?

He can almost work one as well as I can.

Almost.

I’m not surrendering the crown that easily.

But watching him reminded me that sometimes loving somebody also means remembering to notice what’s already wonderful about them.

Not only what needs work.

Not only where communication could improve.

Not only the frustrating parts of sharing a life with another human being.

The good stuff too.

The parts that made you like this person in the first place.

The parts other people can see when you’re sometimes too close to remember to look.

Maybe Resilience Isn’t Only About Surviving

By the end of the night, I realized the pasta salad and the party were teaching me essentially the same thing.

Stay open.

When the plan changes, stay open.

When something doesn’t work, stay open.

When somebody offers you something, stay open.

When a conversation unexpectedly becomes meaningful, stay open.

When your spouse shows you a part of himself you’ve forgotten to appreciate, stay open enough to notice it.

Maybe resilience isn’t just the ability to survive difficult things.

Maybe part of resilience is remaining available to be inspired after them.

Not becoming so rigid from disappointment that nothing new can get in.

Not deciding ahead of time what an experience is going to be.

Not carrying every previous feeling into every new room and asking the new room to answer for it.

Sometimes you just walk into the room and see what’s there.

I’m glad I walked into this one.

Something Always Inspires Me

That’s probably one of the most familiar things I rediscovered about myself through all of this.

Something always inspires me.

One experience becomes another idea.

One ingredient becomes another recipe.

One conversation becomes something I want to write about.

One new technique becomes five other things I want to try.

One crème brûlée torch becomes:

Okay…what ELSE can I set on fire?

Responsibly.

Obviously.

I enjoyed making this pasta salad.

Not just having made it.

Making it.

Figuring it out.

Adjusting.

Tasting.

Solving little problems.

Watching regular frozen corn become charred corn.

Watching a pile of ingredients become four beautiful pans of food that people actually enjoyed.

Creating things does something for me.

And apparently this pasta salad woke that part of me up again.

So now I want to make more things.

Try more things.

Torch more things.

Write more things.

Because that’s how inspiration works for me.

It rarely knocks politely and announces what it’s here to become.

It usually starts with:

Hmm. I wonder if I could…

And then we’re off.

Sometimes Love Looks Like Four Pans of Pasta Salad

I started the day thinking I was doing something loving for my husband.

And I was.

But then the evening started giving some of that love back.

I showed up with food.

Someone else shared her carne asada with me.

I showed up wanting to support my husband.

I got an opportunity to watch my husband shine.

We showed up as a married couple still learning how to communicate better.

Another married couple—still learning themselves—shared something they’d already discovered along the way.

I showed up thinking I was bringing something to a party.

I came home with conversations, inspiration and a reminder about who my husband is.

And who I am.

That’s a pretty good return on a bagged salad I never bought.

Maybe that’s the lesson I’m keeping.

Love moves.

You put some into the world and sometimes, unexpectedly, you find yourself standing somewhere receiving it too.

Not because anybody owes you.

Not because relationships are transactional.

Just because you stayed open enough to participate.

Sometimes love looks like four pans of pasta salad.

Sometimes resilience looks like making substitutions until the damn recipe works.

Sometimes community looks like somebody handing you carne asada.

Sometimes marriage advice comes from people who are still learning right alongside you.

Sometimes loving your spouse means remembering to look at them and think:

There you are. I still see you.

And sometimes growth is simply staying open enough to let a good night be a good night.

I’m getting better at that.

Now I just need to figure out what else I can do with this torch.

Mexican Street Corn Pasta Salad: The Recipe That Survived Me

This is the version I would actually make again. Not necessarily every measurement we originally planned, but the version that emerged once I actually cooked, tasted and adjusted everything.

This made four large foil catering pans. I originally prepared the food when approximately 75 guests were confirmed; the final attendance was closer to 50, so we had plenty.

Pasta

• 3 (12-ounce) boxes rotini

• 2 (16-ounce) boxes rotini

• Flaky sea salt for the cooking water

That’s 68 ounces, or 4¼ pounds, of dry pasta.

Cook the pasta in generously salted water until just al dente. Drain thoroughly, cool and divide evenly among four large foil pans.

Charred Street Corn

For each pan:

• 2 (12-ounce) bags frozen super-sweet corn

• Approximately 2 tablespoons butter or oil

For the bulk corn seasoning:

• 1 tablespoon paprika

• 1 tablespoon Tajín

• 2 teaspoons garlic powder

• 2 teaspoons onion powder

• 1 teaspoon black pepper

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Cook the frozen corn over medium-high heat until the excess moisture has evaporated and the kernels begin sizzling and browning.

Season generously with the corn seasoning.

For additional char, transfer the cooked corn to a heat-safe metal pan and carefully use a culinary torch to blister and darken scattered kernels.

Allow the corn to cool before adding it to the pasta.

And yes, regular frozen super-sweet corn works.

The torch will handle the rest.

Creamy Street Corn Dressing — Make One Batch Per Pan

For each pan, blend:

• ¾ cup mayonnaise

• ¾ cup sour cream

• 3 tablespoons bottled lime juice

• 1½ teaspoons Tajín

• 1 teaspoon paprika

• 1 teaspoon garlic powder

• 1 teaspoon onion powder

• ¼ teaspoon black pepper

• ½ cup Queso Seco Molido

Blend until completely smooth.

Do not add water.

The sauce is not too thick.

Find your correct measuring cup and trust the sauce.

Assemble Each Pan

To each pan of cooled pasta, add:

• 24 ounces cooked and charred corn

• 1 full batch creamy dressing

• ¼ cup chopped cilantro

• ¼ cup thinly sliced green onions

Fold everything together until the pasta and corn are generously coated.

Then add my final adjustment:

• 3 generous squeezes bottled lime juice

• 3 pinches flaky sea salt

Fold again and taste.

The finished pasta should be creamy, bright, tangy, cheesy, slightly smoky and loaded with corn.

Finish the Top

Generously top each pan with:

• Cotija cheese

• Tajín

• Fresh cilantro

• Sliced green onions

Refrigerate until serving.

And if your first pan looks a little different because you were using the wrong measuring cup?

Leave her alone.

She’s been through enough.