10.17.25

have i met you?

Thursday 6:10 pm

I'm sipping my second glass of wine, sitting at a cute bistro style table for two, flying solo tonight. Always one to love anticipation, the fettuccini primavera is right up there but not as much as the adjacent Eisemann Center presentation I'm heading into soon: Samin Nosrat!

Before W, I dined alone a lot. I quite enjoyed it, so much that I'm always confused that so many others don't. I was looking forward to some pre-show time to hole up here and start a blog, but the live guitarist put a twist in my plan, playing and softly singing many Neapolitan love songs. First up was That's Amore! That the couple sitting directly across from him ordered a pizza, didn't go unnoticed.

The (wonderfully affordable) house Happy Hour Chardonnay was average but the pasta was great, and don't get me started on the crisp, light bread roll. Several songs later, I really didn't want to leave.

Friday 1:46 pm

Idol might be a little strong but it is the word that first pops in my head, thinking about Samin Nosrat. The Universe has woven its web for our kindred spirit paths to cross.  

She spoke to me like lyrics speak universally. We, Samin and I, seem like strangers accessing life in the same way.

The presentation was a conversational format, her friend and narrator setting up questions to admittedly cover the contents of the new book on tour. It was light and funny and yet full of richness in story and heart. Story and heart is where I so strongly relate to Samin.

The book itself was the first thing to stand out to me. She spoke of how many years it took to finish her first, Salt Fat Acid Heat, and then this one. Granted they are both large, larger than mine, but I still wanted yell out from the Tier-Row U Seat 1, "10 years for me!" She too, hates writing recipes and testing recipes! 

Her approach to food is very grounded. She understands that many populations of people can't afford organics or the highest qualities in any food group, but she believes that dishes and meals can still be made delicious. I'm sure her new book, Good Things, will show you and me just that.

Affordability for quality ingredients has been a soapbox of mine for a long time. As a pescatarian, I am saddened that a typical family cannot afford good, nutritious seafood. Where it is farmed or caught, where it is processed then shipped, are all issues which can't even be considered for a majority of consumers.

Leaping to entertaining, because that's what food does to some of us, Samin confesses to appreciating, owning, and adoring nice things. Her collection of cookware, serveware, and objects of delight brings her joy, yet she frets that friends and guests will think her pretentious. Oh, do I understand that. I explain I'd sincerely rather a guest use an expensive item than for it to sit on a shelf somewhere. If it breaks, and a few have, then it becomes a gathering to especially remember and cherish. Samin says that in a way it provides relief; a set that was six is now five and seems more usable without caution present.

The last, a lasting impression, is our shared belief in sharing food experiences, be they eat-standing-up appetizers in the kitchen, outdoor picnics, or a large, gussied up sit-down dinner. As I once tried to garner interest in starting Sunday Dinners, Samin wished for the same. Instead, she got Mondays. Hers are informal, very kid friendly, and everyone contributes as they wish. 

In my house turned pseudo Bistro, there is an anytime, fairly regular congregation of friends. W and I find nothing more heartwarming than having guests who wish to come and share in sacred friendships, wine, food, non-stop conversation, and abundant appreciation for it all.

truths and do i dare

Such a wonderful day at Dallas Arboretum in so many respects, the loveliest perhaps being when, seven quinceanera dresses, and 100,000 pumpkins later, we chose our spot to pause. W sketched, I stared and thought about the view in front of us as we shared glasses of a rare White Malbec.

That balcony! It taunted me. It screamed at me. And so I kept staring. 

I have an oil painting that hangs in my bedroom; a straight line of sight from where I often prop up with several pillows. It was purchased in a frame shop on a whim shortly after Spoke died, and only because it spoke to me. I wasn't sure how it did, or why it did, until I had stared and studied it across many of those cushy hours.

The painting is of what looks like a rustic balcony. There is an iron guard rail which suggests a place far away, clay pots lining its length hinting of flowers not withering but not thriving. Who lives here? Who used to live here? What are their stories?

It took hours with this painting for me to realize the access onto the patio is not a double door but actually windows, which makes the balcony instead, oddly, a large and awkward window box, it having free standing pots. The implication slipped by me, as it has every person who has laid eyes on it. Everyone imagines a balcony, and so as one does with opera plots, we embrace it as an unlikely truth.

I have promised to will the painting to someone, a young bartender forever dear to me, who was there for me during some personal months of grief when I wanted to be alone but not at home. I spent many hours with Joe. He used to introduce me to new customers as his best friend. Sigh.

Balcony or window box being a moot point now, I had shared with him my vision of a book about this painting and the many stories I think it has to tell. But I'm not a fiction writer so I've never gone so far as to even imagine the characters.

That painting, memories of Joe, the book premise, all swirled around me with each sip of rose as I stared at this other balcony, sensing it too seems to have many stories to tell. Each balcony, thus each book, could house many chapters of many imaginary lives. 

The bedroom painting might shield a group of girls on a vacation in Barcelona, or tell of the first impressions for the great niece from Wisconsin who has just inherited this ancient house in a village south of Rome. The arboretum balcony sets the stage for a honeymooning couple coming up for air and people watching all of us in the park from their rocking chairs, equally sweaty margaritas in hand.

Maybe some frigid January day, I'll tackle defining characters and their lives behind or on either balcony and I'll put them in ink. Or maybe I'll just, gloves on and scarf wrapped tightly, grab the same seat by the same pavilion and keep staring for staring's sake.