There were two friends...

Truth be told, there may have been a little romance in the beginning, when they were barely out of their teenage years, but principally it has been a great friendship, fueled by the love of cooking. One was from a big Chicago Italian family, in which all the women, and some of the men, cooked with purpose and passion. This one loved not only meatballs and pecorino cheese, but sports and motorcycles and reading history. The other one, a little older and wiser, was from sturdy Kansas stock, and as the oldest child grew up cooking when Mom was at work, and in high school learned from an old Army cook, and also from her Aunt Grace, who owned a from-scratch restaurant. Both friends went to Grinnell College in Iowa, where they met, and both gravitated to San Francisco after college, where, miraculously to them, a gay culture revolution and a food revolution were happening simultaneously.