This Valentine’s Day, we’re spotlighting a few of our favorite dynamic duos in the food community to learn how real-life couples celebrate the most romantic of holidays. See them all here!
Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell aren’t only a married couple; they’re also business partners. You may recognize them from the reality shows The Fabulous Beekman Boys and The Amazing Race (they won the grand prize!) but they spend most of their time on the Beekman 1802 farm they purchased in 2007, making small batch foods and skincare products and maintaining their garden. They are also the authors of two cookbooks, The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Cookbook and The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Dessert Cookbook. Here, they tell us all about their favorite Valentine’s Day traditions and memories, plus how they’ll be celebrating this year.
How did you celebrate your first Valentine’s Day together?
Our first Valentine’s Day, we were young and poor and living in New York City, so we went to the Chinese restaurant on the corner. On the flip side of our fortune, where they teach you how to pronounce a word in Chinese, the word was “forever.”
Do you have any memorable meals, gestures or gifts from over the years that you can share?
One year, we had our Beekman 1802 blacksmith build us a scale model of the Beekman Farm out of glass in the form of a terrarium. It now sits in the middle of our dining room table.
Do you have any Valentine’s Day traditions? Do you stay home or eat out?
As busy as we are on the farm and as the creative directors of Beekman 1802, a dinner at home by the kitchen fire (with cell phones off!) is the height of romanticism.
What does your ideal Valentine’s Day meal look like?
We raise or grow about 80% of all the food we personally consume, so any meal we have in the winter is basically decided upon by how good our harvest was in the summer. Based on what we’ve canned, pickled and frozen, this Valentine’s Day meal will likely feature lamb, some sort of potato dish and green beans. For dessert we’ll probably try to come up with some new chocolatey concoction so that we can share the recipe on Beekman1802.com.
Tell us about how you work together in the kitchen. How do you split up the work, or who does what?
Work in kitchen is a division of labor. Since Josh is the better cook, he gets to run the show and boss Brent around (one of the few times)!
How do you balance the professional and personal aspects of your relationship?
As soon as we learn to do this, we will write a book about it. Promise.
What’s your favorite dish the other person makes?
Brent: I love a very simple pasta dish that Josh makes with lemon, olive oil, roasted broccoli and pork sausage.
Josh: I love it in the winter when Brent makes snow cream. It was a special treat from his childhood and he gets so excited about it.
2 comments
You both sound like an amazing couple that compliment each other’s lives not complicate them. I’m definately going to check out your books. Your home sounds amazing! It’ s great to see same sex couples who are happy especially the married part. My hubbys and I exchange cards and maybe a small gift, but we love each other everyday we don’t need a special holiday for it. Enjoy your life together, I’ll be getting my nose in your books.
LOVED reading about the two of you! I’m now intrigued about your cookbooks and will have to order! For the past three years, my husband and I have scrapped a romantic dinner for two and have hosted a “Dinner for our loved ones”, usually consisting of some of our close single, unclaimed treasured friends. (And my mom- who lost her Cupid 8 years ago). We were never a couple engrossed into the commercialism of Valentine’s Day and believed the day should be shared with those around us who we love and shouldn’t be alone. I’m the chef and I do ALL the cooking…but my hubby loves setting the table and “scene” for the evening and prefers to do the dishes…so no complaints on my end! It’s not even New Year’s yet..but extending an early Happy Valentine’s to you both!