I came to marriage a little later in life. My first, when I was 38, failed miserably just 10 1/2 months after the “I do’s.” They say the third time’s a charm, but for me it was the second go-round, at 46, that captivated my midlife heart. When I made my vows before God and a small group of friends in the garden of our home on that oppressively hot first day of August, not only did I widen my familial circle, I willingly stepped into another culture. It took reaching midlife, and being open to all that life had to offer, for the magnificence to unfold.

When your kitchen is a blend of cultures–an outcrop of two separate and distinct ethnicities, ways of life and food traditions–a whole new culinary world begins to unravel.

In my kitchen, there is a mélange of soul food from my side of the family and Dutch cuisine from my husband Maarten’s lineage. Our palates continually undergo a metamorphosis of sorts as my natural curiosity in the kitchen leads us on a journey to create our combined food tradition, one that embodies fusion on a plate.

The herbs and spices that fill my kitchen spice rack are some of the same that ‘mijn schoonmoeder’ (my mother-in-law) uses in her dishes. From basilicum (basil) to petersilie (parsley), bieslook (chives) to rozemarijn (rosemary), knoflook (garlic) to zout & peper (salt & pepper), and from uien (onions) to nootmuskaat (nutmeg) to kruidnagel (cloves)—their names may be spelled differently, they may have a few more syllables and their pronunciation may be a dead giveaway, however, their purposes are one and the same: to flavor the foods we have grown to love and cherish as part of our heritage.

In an attempt to satiate the desires of a palate drawn to heavily seasoned and sometimes salty cuisine with that of one more attuned to foods rich in gravies yet much less muted in robust flavors, the kitchen had to become my imaginative culinary laboratory. In this lab, Maarten is my guinea pig as I experiment with various foodstuffs in an attempt to infuse our respective traditional cuisines with the flavors of each other’s to create dishes that are both palatable and interesting. And like its U.S. counterpart, Dutch food consists heavily of meat, potatoes and vegetables.

While not every dish that’s created in our kitchen is a shining example of my culinary prowess, the marriage of soul food and Dutch food is, and probably forever will be, a work in progress. A few years ago, I set out to evoke the comforts of home for Maarten by preparing a home-cooked Dutch meal. Stamppot (literally translated means mashed pot) was my meal of choice. The idea of a mélange of mashed potatoes with assorted vegetables initially didn’t appeal to me, but soon love won out. Maarten was thousands of miles from his homeland and I wanted our kitchen to be filled with the same aromas that he remembered growing up in The Netherlands. My stamppot of choice was boerenkool stamppot—mashed potatoes with kale—and the bright spot in the recipe was the tag-along ingredient of kielbasa.

While kielbasa would have been a great choice to go along with the boerenkool stamppot, I wanted a more robust, spicier, smokier flavor for our collective palates. I substituted kielbasa with andouille, a sausage mostly associated with Cajun cooking and one which speaks to southern influences and a soulful way of cooking.

On that day, I had my first taste of success as the non-Dutch wife of a Dutchman preparing a Dutch meal…a meal with a little touch of soul. It was then that I realized the gravity of the long culinary journey that lie ahead of me. Just as my food would no longer be my food, Maarten’s food would no longer be his. Together, we would share in the making of a food tradition that could be shared and passed down in the coming years…and hopefullly for future generations. We’re the beginning of this culinary legacy and it’s through our union that the blending of soul food and Dutch food has come to be in our humble corner of the world.

Together, Maarten and I have many more discoveries to make. Perhaps it will be a traditional Dutch split pea soup enhanced with the goodness of thick cut country ham. Maybe it will be pannenkoeken—what Americas might call crepes, but which are, in essence, very thin pancakes—served alongside scrambled eggs and savory home fries.

Diverse cultures can, and do, co-exist in harmony–in life and in the kitchen–respectively. Maarten and I are living proof. Our palates may not exist in a state of blissful simpatico all the time, but when our appetites converge and are in agreement, there’s nothing better.

I found my true love in midlife and, with it, I also discovered a world of culinary diversity.