I learned how to cook with my ex-boyfriend. It took me a while to get back in the kitchen after our breakup.

• Before I met my ex-boyfriend, I didn't really know how to cook.
• As our relationship developed, we often cooked and discussed food together.

It was a Sunday morning, and I was making an apple galette from scratch. I had never made homemade crust before, and I was nervous. Following a YouTube tutorial, I drizzled ice water on the dough until my sand transformed into a shiny ball. My little dough baby, I thought. He had a smile.

After the dough chilled in the fridge for two hours, I used my drugstore-wine bottle to roll it out on a floured counter. I peeled and cut Honeycrisp apples until my hands were sticky and threw the slices into a large mixing bowl. Lemon zest, juice, cinnamon, brown sugar, and ginger followed, giving the apple slices beautiful brown freckles. I carefully laid my slices in single-file lines, making sure each had a place on the dough.

My ex-boyfriend was the one who taught me how to really cook. Before I met him, I was patting myself on the back for having finally mastered scrambled eggs.

Our first dates revolved around food

We started dating during that phase of the pandemic when people passed the time by feeding their sourdough starter. I'd heard he was "an excellent chef" — rare for a college student. On our first date, a socially distanced walk, I learned he spent his free time cooking venison and making batches of lavender wine.

I was fresh off a sordid attempt at lasagna when we fermented kimchi on our second date. We talked and walked through the long cabbage soak, and hours later the kimchi was finished. For our third date it was decided we'd make kimchi beef hash.

Our relationship became more serious, and so did our cooking. We made blondies, caramelized-shallot pasta, homemade Xi'an biang biang noodles, scallion pancakes, and lamb curry. He brought me to his favorite cheese shop on his quest to try all the sandwiches on the menu. I learned that anchovies go in Caesar-salad dressing and that bacon grease can replace butter in the pan, and I pretended not to notice all the times he re-minced my garlic. Every morning he'd make crepes or breakfast tacos, and at dinner he'd explain how to talk about the notes and flavor profiles of wine. Food was his love language, and it was becoming mine.

We came from different worlds

My mom kept telling me I was in a Hallmark movie.

In true made-for-TV-romance fashion, he was wealthy and I was not. When I met his friends, they served us scallop risotto and jokingly referred to their group as "the finer-things club." His roster of meals was expensive and took hours to prepare.

When I finally visited his home, our different outlooks on food and access were confirmed, and I began to internalize our financial differences. His family's kitchen had every ingredient under the sun, and they made daily trips to the grocery store. There was pavlova and lobster bisque in the fridge and a fancy espresso machine running each morning. It was clear how much of a role wealth and entitlement played in his "chef" identity.

Eventually our relationship soured. His command of the kitchen expanded outward, and, despite my love for him, I felt smothered.

For a while I didn't want to cook

After we broke up, I was devastated. The Hallmark movie had turned into a psychological thriller overnight. I didn't want to cook at all.

I moved back to campus to be a resident advisor. My main food source became my school's dining hall. Kitchenless, I leaned into the pasta bar and took meals on Meatless Mondays to go.

I still watched cooking videos under the covers and occasionally treated myself to a cheese-shop sandwich for old times' sake. My desire to cook was still there, but any knife reminded me of the one I'd bought my ex for his collection.

Then my friends and I decided we'd throw a Friendsgiving. Determined to make my Aunt Dara's Thanksgiving stuffing recipe, I used a friend's kitchen to make two delicious batches. The recipe required onions, celery, apples, carrots, thyme, maple breakfast sausage, loaves of sourdough bread, pecans, and garlic. This time I'd be the only one doing the mincing.

The dish took me nearly eight hours to make as I juggled an on-call "RA duty" shift, a set of unfamiliar tools, and intrusive memories. I was a hot mess. Finally, around 2 a.m., I pulled a picture-perfect tray of stuffing from the oven. Based on our texts, my aunt seemed very proud.

The next day, as my friends silently devoured the chicken-stock-soaked stuffing, confidence returned to my heart. The stuffing was a comforting reminder that I was still capable of cooking and sharing meals on my own. My dad always said silence was the sound of good food. The only voice I heard that night was the one in my head, telling me to keep cooking.

Cooking is my love language

A year and some healing later, I have a kitchen again in my off-campus house, where I try out new recipes whenever I have time.

Between school and my part-time job, I don't have hours during the week to wait for dough to chill and unchill. I can't afford to shop at high-end grocery stores or have the finest ingredients at my disposal, but I've still been able to make delicious food. Food doesn't have to be pretentious to be good.

And though the scope of my cooking has changed, food has remained my love language, even as the people I love have changed too. Now I share my dishes with my eight roommates, sending texts in our group chat to come to the kitchen as soon as I turn off the stove. I've forged new connections with my friends and family who've been chefs all along.

Read more Valentine's Day stories here.