Pot of S’mores — The Sweetest Secret I’ve Ever Kept

Good news from the bathroom floor. The pregnancy test was positive.

I stared at it for three minutes. I counted the minutes because counting is what I do when I cannot process an emotion through normal channels. Three minutes of looking at two lines on a stick that cost $12.99 at Walgreens and contained, in its small plastic window, the answer to a question I have been asking for five months and for thirty years. The stick said yes. The stick said: you are going to be someone's mother.

I walked to the bedroom. James was still sleeping — it was 6:30 AM on a Sunday. I sat on the edge of the bed. I put the test on his nightstand. He opened his eyes. He saw it. He looked at me. I nodded. He sat up. He pulled me into him. He did not say anything for a long time. Then he said, "Stephanie." Just my name. Just my whole name. It was the only word that mattered.

We sat in bed for an hour. We did not get up. We did not make breakfast. We just sat there, holding the test, holding each other, holding the fact of it. A baby. Our baby. A person who will look like us. A person who will have James's jaw and my eyes and a combination of Korean and Taiwanese and American that has never existed before in exactly this configuration. A new person. A first person. A beginning.

I called Dr. Yoon on Monday. I said, "I'm pregnant." She was quiet for a beat. Then she said, "Stephanie. Congratulations." Her voice was warm — warmer than usual, warmer than clinical. I think she was happy. I think she has been hoping for this for me as long as I have been hoping for it myself. She said, "How do you feel?" I said, "Terrified. Ecstatic. Like I am standing on the edge of a cliff and the view is beautiful and I am about to jump and I don't know how to fly but I think I will learn on the way down." She said, "That is the most accurate description of early pregnancy I have ever heard from an engineer."

We are not telling anyone yet. The books say wait until twelve weeks. The internet says wait until twelve weeks. James says wait until twelve weeks. I am bursting with it. I am walking around with this enormous secret inside my body and nobody knows — not Karen, not David, not Kevin, not Jisoo, not Grace, not Priya. Nobody knows except James and Dr. Yoon and me and the small cluster of cells that is, at this moment, approximately the size of a poppy seed. A poppy seed. My child is a poppy seed. I am already in love with it.

I went to work on Monday and sat in a meeting about Alexa integration architecture and thought: I am growing a person. I am growing a person inside my body while discussing microservice redundancy patterns. The duality of it was so absurd that I almost laughed in the meeting. I did not laugh. I wrote notes about failover protocols. I went home. I made doenjang jjigae. I ate it slowly, thinking about the poppy seed. Thinking about the fact that Jisoo carried me for nine months in a body that was seventeen years old and terrified, and I am carrying this baby in a body that is thirty years old and terrified, and the terror is the same terror across decades and oceans: will I be enough? Will I be enough?

The recipe this week is doenjang jjigae, because of course it is, because this is the stew I make on the most important days of my life and today — this whole week — is the most important day. The stew is the same stew. I am not the same person making it. I am a person with a poppy seed inside me, and the stew knows, and the kitchen knows, and the onggi pots on the shelf know, and everything in my small world is vibrating at a frequency I have never felt before, and the frequency is: yes.

We never did make breakfast that Sunday morning — we just sat in bed holding each other and the enormity of it all — but by evening I needed to do something with my hands, something warm, something that felt like a celebration I couldn’t yet share with the world. This Pot of S’mores is what we made, just the two of us, in the quiet kitchen, dipping graham crackers into melted chocolate and toasted marshmallow and saying nothing because there was nothing left to say that the stew hadn’t already said and the test hadn’t already answered. It is a simple, ridiculous, perfect thing to eat on the night your whole life changes shape.

Pot of S’mores

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips
• 2 cups mini marshmallows
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 3 tablespoons heavy cream
• 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon flaky sea salt
• 10 full graham cracker sheets, broken into pieces, for dipping

Instructions

1. Preheat. Position an oven rack in the center and preheat oven to 400°F. Place a 10-inch cast iron skillet or oven-safe pot in the oven while it heats, for about 5 minutes.
2. Melt the base. Carefully remove the hot skillet. Add butter and heavy cream and swirl gently until butter begins to melt. Add all the chocolate chips and stir to combine, spreading into an even layer across the bottom of the skillet.
3. Add vanilla. Drizzle vanilla extract evenly over the chocolate layer.
4. Top with marshmallows. Scatter mini marshmallows in an even layer over the chocolate, covering it completely.
5. Bake. Return skillet to the oven and bake for 7–9 minutes, until marshmallows are puffed and golden-brown on top and the chocolate beneath is fully melted and bubbling at the edges.
6. Finish and serve. Remove from oven, sprinkle immediately with flaky sea salt, and serve directly from the skillet with graham cracker pieces for dipping. Eat while warm — the chocolate firms as it cools.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 310 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 14g | Carbs: 45g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 110mg