Pink of Perfection

I don’t know Jennie. But I know the reliable warmth of her writing and her creative recipes, and I’ve thought about her more this week that many of my real-life friends. Jennie’s husband died.

Just writing that makes me feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.

People like me, who love Jennie through the fibers of the internet, have felt achingly helpless. But I read her lastest post and felt grateful for some direction:

For those asking what they can do to help my healing process, make a peanut butter pie this Friday and share it with someone you love. Then hug them like there’s no tomorrow because today is the only guarantee we can count on.

Pie I can do.

I went to the grocery store this morning for the ingredients, and came home to bake. I tried to be mindful as I was mixing. Before this unimaginable news, I had been thinking about what it means to be married, how to share your life with someone and uphold the promises you make. I had been wondering about timing, and when to take the next steps in life. When is it time to buy a house? To have a baby? To take that trip we’ve been putting off? As I botched the cookie crust and struggled to spread the melted chocolate I thought, This is love. Making mistakes and making a mess. And extending the whole sticky mess as an offering.

If we walked around all the time, aware that at any moment our time with the people we love most could almost be up, it would drive us insane. So there must be some line we can walk, one where we are filled up with gratitude and so much joy for how lucky we are, but without making ourselves crazy over how fragile life is.

The pie smells delicious, and it’s sitting in the refrigerator right now. Tonight I’ll carry it upstate on a long train ride, resting securely on my lap. I’ll cut into the whole mess and watch it fall apart when the crust doesn’t hold, then pass out slices to old friends and my guy. And then we’ll dig in.

Time’s a wastin’.

Continue reading “Jennie’s Peanut Butter Pie” »

My mom always had a knack for parties. There was my dress-as-your-favorite Barbie birthday party (peaches and cream, naturally) and, before my time, the teddy bear picnic my sister still talks about. But one of my happiest childhood memories was the cookie swap we had one Christmas. I remember the rustling plaid taffeta of little girl party dresses and our dining room table covered with cookies and three-tiered silver trays. That was when I tried my first rosette, brought by a classmate and her grandmother: light as air, whisper thin, and dusted with powdered sugar. I was in heaven.

Without the grand silver and taffeta party atmosphere, a soup swap is founded on the same idea: every attendee brings something and gets to go home with something else. In this case, I piggybacked on my book club meeting (Angle of Repose, if you’re curious), and asked everyone to bring two 4-cup containers of soup.  We then went around in a circle, each person nabbing their first soup choice. Then we reversed the order of picking for the second choice.

I love the feeling of a wholesome meal just waiting and ready to go in the freezer. In fact, my second favorite part of making soup is freezing half of it (who says you can’t have your soup and eat it, too?). But there is something especially nice when someone else has made that meal that waiting for you, nearly as comforting as when your mother tricks out your freezer herself. Because of our soup swap, I had a wonderfully spicy chicken sausage, chard, and black-eyed pea soup one day when the cupboards were bare. And still, a a vegetable soup awaits for some night when exhaustion and hunger rule with an iron fist. In other words, some night very soon.

I remember being on the playground in elementary school wearing saddle shoes (everyone else had Keds) and seeing girls wearing those brokenhearted “best friends” necklaces. It seemed like a secret, highly-exclusive club: who had the other half, and how could I get one? Do you remember how important the title of “best friend” was then?

Looking back now, I wish I had appreciated those super rad saddle shoes and had not sweat the sly handing out of those necklaces. I mean, what do best friends in first grade do anyway? It’s not like you need them to help mend your heart, visualize your winter look, or talk about what the hell you’re doing with your lives. You’re seven.

Which is why I love this necklace so much. First off, it’s a whale, not a heart (cool), and it bypasses the whole idea of “best” which feels silly by the time you’re nearing thirty anyway. (But traditionalists, take heart: this Etsy seller has the whale take on the “best friends” necklace, too.)

Let’s talk about the weekend. What are you guys making and doing and––as equally important––not doing?

Photo: Whale Amies necklace on Etsy

If it seems like a stretch to call a meatloaf French, I hope you’ll permit the reach. Fennel and apple seem like a dignified way to class up this ’50s housewife favorite, and did I mention the gruyère? That practically makes it bona fide.

I’ve had two meatloaf recipes in life that were worth repeating. This one, and one that seemed a little Continental with its inclusion of prunes. (Am I saying that a recipe is “French” if it’s got that savory-with-fruit thing going on? Who knows.) I was introduced to that recipe where I get a lot of my good food ideas: book club.

Which brings me, tangentially, to the pleasures of belonging to a social club. Are you guys in book clubs? Are there women you meet for tea and knitting, to talk about wine, to practice yoga together, or to swap mixtapes? It doesn’t really matter what the impetus is that brings you together (though a shared interest certainly leads to sustained enthusiasm when the meeting falls on a cold, rainy night in February). What matters is the idea incubator and mutual support that happens when you’re together. We talk about the book or cast on our stitches and then the real meeting comes to order: someone needs to talk about job hunting, getting over a broken heart, how to redo the kitchen, or just inexplicably having a bad case of the blues. Not to get all red tent, ’70s consciousness-raising on you, but something powerful happens when women come together like this.

My college experience had an idea-incubator quality to it among my female friends that made me hunger for the same experience in the real world. It turns out, though, that grown-up life isn’t naturally set up to foster this kind of togetherness. We all live separately, cordoned off in our own snug little homes, working away in our individual cubicle corrals, sweating silently side-by-side on the treadmills at the gym. Yet that sense of connecting, of being understood, of belonging to a group that likes each other and spends time together because they elect to––not because they’re receiving a paycheck at week’s end or share the same DNA––that experience can bring so much meaning to the day-in, day-out experience of waking up, punching in, and slogging through. A sense of community can sustain us through so much.

I spent the days leading up to New Year’s Eve in a white farmhouse in Wisconsin. There were eight of us, and three people cooked side by side in the kitchen, passing behind each other, crossing arms to reach pots on the stove, compromising on oven temperatures. Then we would sit down at the long table, folded paper towels under our knives, wine in Anchor Hocking teacups, and eat. I realized then, just clear as day, that one of my greatest pleasures in life is sitting down to a meal at a table filled with people.

“This is just what it would feel like to be in a really big family,” someone––maybe me––said. “Yeah,” came the expected quip, “except we would all hate each other.”

This is all to say: I hope you find a spot of community this weekend, whether elected or familial, and share a meal together. Maybe even this meatloaf.

Continue reading “French Friday: Fennel and Apple Meatloaf” »

In our house, we keep time capsules. It’s our way of dealing with life’s most excruciating moments. So, whenever things get really bad and unbearable, we sit down and right about three things: 1) what we’re unhappy about now, 2) what we’re grateful for in spite of the bad stuff and 3) what we hope for in the next twelve months. Then we seal the envelope and write on the outside in big cautionary letters, “Not to be opened before [the date 12 months hence].”

We’ve been writing time capsules since December of 2004, a cold winter when we felt desperate: I had just moved to New York. I was achingly lonely, afraid of my boss, so terrified of screwing up at work that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I missed my friends from college, I had $40 a week to spend on things other than groceries, and my boyfriend lived far away in New Jersey, his car having just sputtered to its final death, steam pouring out of its hood on a dark country road.

That first time capsule always makes us laugh when we read it now. The center of our disappointed world was that broken-down Bronco. But Sebastian would soon move 10 blocks south of me in Brooklyn, and I would grow to deeply admire my boss and even make a friend or two. I sound so very young and unsure of myself, and reading it makes me grateful for the aging process, despite these new fine lines I’ve noticed at the corner of my eyes. The time capsule is like a snapshot of exactly where you are in a moment in time, like those treasured old photographs of your parents, picnicking by a river and still so in love.

We recently split the seal on a time capsule from this time last year, and the picture was grim: I didn’t know where my next paycheck was coming from, I sounded untethered and uninspired. What struck me most of all was the sad, mournful timbre to the time capsule: I sounded lonely.

I got an email from a new-ish friend a few weeks ago. For the past year we’ve been getting to know each other over oysters and Monday morning emails. She was counting her blessings, she said, and thanking me for my part in hers. I’m embarrassed to say that her thank you reminded me of just how many people have played a part in my being in a much happier, hopeful place this year. I’ve got a lot of thanking to do.

What I needed in 2004 and this time last year was a community. I needed a circle of women to talk my head off with, who would help me see things from a different perspective, introduce me to new writers and new ideas, friends who would listen to my tales of woe and then make me laugh about them. But these things take time to develop, especially if you’ve got sky-high expectations for what community and friendship should feel like. Six years after moving to New York and starting my grown-up life, that community is clicking into place in a way that makes me feel so different about my life.

We forget to tell our friends how much they mean to us. It feels cheesy and florid and overwrought. So we wait until we’ve had too much to drink or someone’s getting married to let it all pour out in an urgent outpouring. The people in my life don’t need scented soaps and gift certificates: they need to be thanked. You’re first.

I love this space, not because I hold forth and blab about cookies and cocktails, but because of the community here. It’s like––to speak in television terms––the Peach Pit or the Double R Diner. I always know someone’s going to be sitting at the counter, ready to bust out with something pithy, wise, or funny. It’s really the best, and something I thank my lucky stars for.

Here’s wishing you all a relaxed, love-and-eggnog-filled holiday, with lots of pajamas, good food, winter walks, and so much laughing your belly aches.

And thank you.

My friend Julie is always unveiling these delicious candy-like confections when she arrives at book club. To someone more than a little intimidated by candy thermometers, these artful, thin layers of chocolate, peppermint, and nuts look complicated, but Julie always recites the recipe as if it were as simple as tying our shoes and as if tomorrow, in the haze of book club wine glow, I will remember exactly what went into those peanut butter balls.

Recipes are for sharing, and I love the generosity of “oh it’s so simple, here’s how you do it.” Maybe you won’t find it simple when you are melting easy-to-burn white chocolate over a makeshift double boiler alone in the kitchen, but your friend thinks you can do it. Her vote of confidence rings in your ears even as you spill a bag of cocktail peanuts on the floor. “It’s so simple!” If she thinks I can do it, I can.

If confidence comes from competence, as my mom always said, then a kitchen triumph is as good as any to make you feel like you can conquer the world. When I remembered Friday morning that I was supposed to bring dessert to a dinner party 130 miles north that night, I thought of Julie. What’s simple, holiday, can be ready before you need to run off to catch your ride, and is a treat hardy enough to be toted in the back of a Zipcar? You guessed it.

This salty sweet chocolate bark sat on my friend’s kitchen table the entire weekend. Chunks were nabbed at breakfast, as fortification after a winter walk, and during a heated match of Uno. By Sunday afternoon, I carried a near-empty tupperware back to Brooklyn. And as usual, you can trust a real friend: it really is so simple.

Continue reading “Winter Holiday Bark” »

When an acquaintance from college moved to New York two summers ago, Sebastian and I offered to put them up for a night as they began their hop from couch to couch. She was more of a friend-of-a-friend than a true blue bosom pal, but I was more than happy to host them. We had shared bowls of cereal together when the dining hall options were subpar, and I have an irrepressible sweetness towards anyone who went to my alma mater.  But more importantly, this woman’s mother had taken me out for lunch years ago when she was passing through an Italian city where I was stationed for a semester, homesick and melancholy. She fed me and gave me some wine, and sent me back onto the cobblestones feeling set right again. So we blew up the air mattress and turned the air-conditioner on high.

The poor things. They arrived carrying heavy bags strapped to every part of their bodies. They’d been searching for our apartment number for a good fifteen blocks, having accidentally gotten off the subway one stop too early. It was June, and very humid, and my heart went out to them. Carrying heavy things in humidity is one of my visions of hell.

We ate sharp cheddar cheese and triscuits and drank a very cold rosé, and when Sebastian asked how well we really knew each other, our guest’s response was a little embarrassing for me. “I know Sarah really likes cocktails.”

Guilty as charged. At the time of their stay, though, I was feeling much too poor to spring for giant bottles of booze. Instead,I would lay out crumbled singles and slide quarters across the wine shop counter to pay for a bottle of wine. Who am I kidding: if need be, I charged it.

Cocktails in summer are dangerous business. I get so wiltingly hot that I can suck something potent down in just a few sips. But cocktails in winter are practically required: a quick warmer, a medicinal antiseptic, a honeyed drop on the throat with a fun extra kick.

My friend Laureen served these at our most recent book club. I wasn’t feeling well that night and I only decided to have one for the––you guessed it––medicinal quality of bourbon and honey on my sore throat. Also, what goes with the steamy heat between Rochester and Jane better than a stiff drink? A gypsy costume! Kidding. Anyway, I am exceedingly glad I drank one (er, two) of these. It gave me the dramatic daring to conduct a stirring reading, complete with voices, of a passionate yet understated encounter between Jane her “her master.” And then, in two weeks time, I rushed out to buy the ingredients myself.

First, you’ll need a bottle of amaro, a kind of Italian liqueur from herbs. It’s commonly consummed as a digestif and is a bit bitter, a bit sweet, and a little syrupy (fernet, also a kind of amaro, is the bitterest). There are many different brands of amari out there, which is always a surprise when you’re introduced to an entirely new-to-you category of spirits. I scanned the shelf and bought the cheapest one, cause that’s how I roll after I’ve purchased a $25 bottle of bourbon.

Make two drinks for you and a friend (or “the master” in your life), nibble a couple crostini––one with blue cheese and fig jam, one with ricotta and pesto––and welcome the weekend. Cheers!

Continue reading “Happy Hour at Home: Italian Manhattan & Blue Cheese Fig Nibbles” »