Wednesday adieu

What a whirlwind was today! Good but whew! Coffee with a friend I see too rarely, a long talk with my sister which is also too infrequent an occurrence, 5 quarts of sour cherries pitted, the quickest trip to the gym you ever did see, a date with each of my dear sons, and some dinner. You cannot(!) go wrong with this simple watermelon salad: steaky slices of fruit, feta, mint and aged balsamic. Perhaps a little fresh pepper but otherwise nothing more, nothing less. Simplicity at its best! In addition, this kale and sugar snap salad was delicious, a solid riff on a recipe from today's NYT Dining section as we didn't have the two primary dressing ingredients. Kitchen improv! Whoo-hoo! Did you know that the umami in ground dried mushrooms makes them a solid substitute for miso paste? Nice! Isn't it positively alive with glow and health?! And what a beautiful evening, yes?

Okra

I know okra has its detractors, but I am decidedly not one of them. Rather, I am an ardent fan of this digit-like, seedy, green member of the mallow family. Growing up in Louisiana, okra was a common guest at our dinner table: fried (coated in a light cornmeal batter), smothered (maybe with some onions), pickled (Talk o' Texas is my preferred brand of store-bought) and stewed (with tomatoes) were the most typical methods of cooking it, and I have since discovered the treat with which you're rewarded if you grill this humble pod. Several years ago, somewhere in the South -I think I was in a Whole Foods in TX- I came across another amazing way of treating okra: dried to a earthy green crisp-crunch, these "chips" are addictive. I've never seen them north of the Mason-Dixon, not even here in DC  though we are officially just south of it. But in Wilmington, NC, a few weeks back, I found them. Now down to my last few crumbs, I'm savoring them, sometimes alongside some pickled okra which is one of my all-time favorite goodies. If ever you come across these, snap them up and enjoy.

Nora, we'll miss you

I am so sorry that Nora Ephron has died. She was so smart, so vibrant, so damn funny; such a neat woman with many gifts and a wonderful penchant for honest, unvarnished reflections on a multiplicity of topics. This is a lovely tribute to her. It is, perhaps, entirely natural that the passing of someone I admire or love or like or even just feel good about in the most general of ways makes me pensive. I've been stewing over a friendship in recent months, a friendship that for several years has meant the world to me but which has seemed to become frayed. One misunderstanding, one attempt to talk and understand, apologies, but then a gulf. A distance. A coolness. Slight trepidation where never before there was anything but enthusiasm. Brief and oddly perky chats where once there was the kind of closeness which you know is rare and for which you feel so grateful.

These sorts of sadnesses, confusions, disappointments seem like such a crappy aspect of living. No one makes it through the 20s and 30s -hell, middle school!- without new friends, best friends, ex-friends, old friends, but the older you get, the sadder the losses feel, the regrets more acute. I am sad. Baffled. I miss my friend. I feel that to try and revisit the initial misunderstanding, however, would just make things more awkward, sad as that sounds but true as that might be.

As is probably fairly clear, I'm rather an open book. Though I crave -no, NEED- a solid amount of alone time, I'm also a real extrovert. I love to know people, listen to and learn from them, help in any way that I can. Connection and community make me tick, and I value authenticity and honesty enormously. It drives me positively batty with both confusion and frustration when others are always "fine, great"- really? How is that possible? If it's true, hat's off; that is not my life experience. But I doubt that's the reality for most anyone.

In any case, friendships that wane in the absence of a clear cause make me question a lot of things but primarily myself. The times this has happened, admittedly and thankfully not many, I have assumed the fault to be mine: was I difficult to be friends with? were my expectations too high? did I misstep in a serious way unbeknownst to me? On the flip side, these relational shifts could have nothing to do with me.

I truly don't know, and that makes the getting-over-it process all the more difficult. Though less dramatic, it's somewhat like being broken up with out of the blue. Without a tidy summation, closure is tough. Sigh.