A couple of years ago, my husband and I were playing a silly couples trivia game, the kind where you ask each other lighthearted questions that you think you already know the answers to. At one point, he looked at me and asked, “What’s your favorite food in the whole world?”
Without hesitation, I answered: “Chicken cutlets.”
Not the kind dressed up with a fancy sauce or buried under pasta. Just a really thin, crispy cutlet, fried in olive oil, golden brown and sprinkled with a touch of Parmesan. To me, that’s perfection.
He laughed and asked the obvious question: “If you love them so much, why don’t you make them more often?”
The truth tumbled out before I even thought about it. “Because breading and frying is the one part of cooking I hate. It’s messy. It takes forever. I just don’t like it.”
He paused, looked at me, and said something I’ll never forget: “Then teach me.”
That’s how it began.
The first attempts weren’t pretty. Some of the cutlets came out far too thick, chewy instead of crisp. Others were over-salted or under-seasoned. Sometimes the oil was too cold and the breading went soggy. Other times it was too hot and the crust burned before the chicken cooked through. I watched him fight his way through splattering oil, flour-covered counters, and piles of breadcrumbs, and I admit—I almost told him to give up.
But he didn’t. He kept at it.
Little by little, he figured it out. He learned to trim the chicken just right, to slice it thin enough, to pound it evenly with patience instead of rushing. He perfected the dredging—flour, egg, then crumbs—until the coating clung just right. He experimented with the heat of the oil, finding the perfect balance where the cutlets sizzled without scorching.
And then, one night, he set a plate in front of me. I took a bite, and my eyes widened. It was perfect. Crispy, golden, tender. Better than I had ever made them myself.
That was the night my husband became the cutlet-maker in our home.
Now, it has become more than food. It’s a quiet act of love. On days when the world feels too heavy, when the kids have needed more of me than I had to give, or when I’m just plain overwhelmed, he knows. He doesn’t say much. He just gets out the flour, the eggs, the breadcrumbs. He painstakingly trims, slices, pounds, and fries. He sprinkles a little Parmesan on top and places the plate in front of me with a smile.
Sometimes love is grand gestures—a diamond ring, a wedding day, a kiss that sweeps you off your feet. But sometimes, love is found in the small, ordinary choices. It’s in someone deciding to stand beside you in the kitchen, to take on the task you dread, to turn something messy into something beautiful.
My husband didn’t just learn how to make chicken cutlets. He learned how to make me feel cared for in one of the simplest, most tangible ways.
And that’s the thing about real love: it often looks less like fireworks and more like flour on the counter, oil popping in a pan, and someone quietly standing at the stove because they know you need it.
Love is sometimes a shared struggle, the kind where you burn the first batch and laugh together. It’s an unlikely victory, the moment when one of you perfects the thing the other couldn’t quite get right. It’s an unconditional partnership, a willingness to take on each other’s burdens—even when that burden is just a frying pan full of oil and the chore of dredging chicken.
So yes, sometimes love is roses and candlelight. Sometimes love is whispered promises. But in my home, love is also crispy, golden cutlets—made by hands that chose patience, persistence, and care.
Because sometimes love is a chicken cutlet.
