The Man Behind The Woman: A She-Cake from my He-Cake

This really should be my father's day post to my husband, but I couldn't wait. My friend Holly sent me this photo of Eric, holding up the cake he made me for the She-Smoke book launch. A picture says a thousand words, but there is so much you may not know about my shy and often silent man (unless it's about politics or religion). This picture is so him. Big on flavor, light on words. And layers. He knows I love chocolate, and sour cream frosting, and sprinkles, and not too much frosting, but a nice even layer all over and in the middle. He put all of that into the cake.

The night before the event, in my half-crazed, list-holding-it'll-never-work state that I get into, I hollered "And CAKE. We need CAKE!" The next day he just came in and started making cake. Instead of THANK YOU, I said, "Oh good. But will there be writing on it? Who will do that? No one can read your handwriting," and then ran off to finish some other project. You get that way, unfortunately, after almost 15 years. Sometimes you forget to say the nice things and give each other a pat on the back. But he just made me the cake. And because he knows that if he tried to put the whole book title on it, that it would have been crooked, or scrunched, or misspelled, he just went with "She".

I loved my She-Cake. And I love my husband who yes has been supportive and my go-to-guy for this whole book process, but also much more. He has been silent. He, who worked his tail off for 20 some years on the line, churning out 300 covers without a break, working for many, (though not all), assholes along the way. He, who just wasn't self-serving enough or self-advocating enough to be a celebrity chef. He, who has got to be bugged by my interviews and cooking demos and book talks, yet has not made hardly a peep about it. He, who manages to calmly smoke up and slice the godly stuff each day and night for the faithful, sometimes as if from thin air, even when the line goes out the door and we're running out of everything. He needs a He-Cake. German Chocolate, his, from scratch, with not too many pecans in the frosting, but plenty of the gooey stuff oozing out of the layers of cake.