Despite my infatuation with spectacularly prepared and expensive restaurant meals, I think I find more romance in the best of my home-made meals, or bits of fabulously good food eaten simply on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

4. I was very pregnant for our last wedding anniversary - I ended up going into labor the next morning, in fact. But I bought good steak, mushrooms, greens and potatoes, and made my very favorite dessert: a nearly-flourless french chocolate cake. I chopped and melted chocolate, I whisked, I baked, I sauteed and mixed balsamic vinegar for the dressing, all in my most comfortable maternity clothes. I drank a little Spanish wine for the occasion and we toasted to our growing family on our living room couch.

3. I can't remember the wine I selected for the evening but it was surely Spanish, and pink, a rioja I think. My husband stopped at our favorite gourmet market and bought blue cheese, olives, pepperoni. I had organic grape tomatoes, porcini mushrooms and baby artichokes from the farmer's market. I sauteed the mushrooms in lots of butter and prepared a gigantic platter of tapas. The boys fell asleep and we sat on the back porch, eating with our fingers and sipping pink wine under the summer moon.

2. I can't pick one most romantic instance, but every time my husband and I eat good sushi together, it's true romance. There's something about eating with chopsticks, pouring soy sauce into our own personal boats, and drinking good Japanese beer in tall glasses that just sings to me.

1. On our honeymoon, we drove around Spain in a little Citroën. After a few days in Madrid, we drove to Motril, a very European tourist town on the Mediterranean. In summer, it must have been quite the hotspot; a boardwalk ran the length of the town. That first night there, we put our son in the stroller (he was nine months old) and walked as far as we could go, to a little thoroughly Spanish seafood restaurant with a patio. I ate octopus in garlic sauce and Jonathan ate a huge plate of shrimp who still had their heads. We drank a bottle of wine while our little boy slept under the Spanish stars.