una festa molto grande

We doled out the money for All You Can Eataly, an evening event celebrating the majesty of the wine and food of Italy.

It was hosted by Dallas' Eataly, the Italian mega-market company in countries around the globe. They doled out what we paid for, and more, and they did it brilliantly and deliciously. 

The party's hours were excess layered on top of excess on top of excess on top of excess. It was loud. It was crowded. Everything was constant. It was sensory overload and I couldn't get enough. 

About the wine... 
There were wine stations every few feet throughout the store. Nice pours in your personal stemmed wine glass; 100 choices of whatever you wanted however many times you wanted. The later the hour, the larger the pours. That night Soave seemed to consume us. 

About the food...
It's a daunting task to try and describe. So grand I want a do-over. Now mapped and memorized in my mind, I'd know what was where and I would have a better strategy for missing nothing. Here's a peek at the splendor.

+Think of an antipasti table. Now think of several antipasti tables throughout the store, plated with every kind of Italian meats, cheeses, vegetables, fruits, mixed olives in pools of olive oil, touches of dried cranberries and Marcona almonds, baskets piled high with specialties of stuffed puff pastries...
+Mozzarella Bar, fresh, housemade offerings
+Focaccia Table, from simple with olive oil and rosemary (a favorite of the night) to fully loaded. We're spoiled forevermore.
+Pizza, Neapolitan and Roman styles 
+Pasta Stations, top of my list, especially the center-space-table featuring pasta tossed within a wheel of Reggiano, hint of truffle and garnished with a big chunk of Parmigiano if you'd like. Uh, duh. 
+Arancini, Sicilian rice balls we lucked upon, were likely the creamiest and best I'll ever eat. 
+Seafood Counter with salad samplings of marinated seafood plus freshly shucked oysters handed out, one by one
+Cannoli, Gelato, and Tiramisu all of which we sadly missed out on. A serious do-over craved.

There were tables featuring Fabbri wild Italian cherries, Acetaia Giusti Balsamic vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, meatballs, panini... You could watch a wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano be cracked, watch demos for making mozzarella, pasta, pizza,  and Tiramisu. Even how to hand slice Italian meats.

W and I never made it to the depths of the outdoor offerings. There was a band, more demos and there may have been a whole pig roasting. 

The energy inside was addictive and the closing of the night's event engaging. We watched the crew of people who made this event so successful, join the party and reap rewards for their hard work. The servers, head chefs, line cooks, bussers, dishwashers, runners, all partook. Many danced in celebration on the makeshift dancefloor. Managers shook hands, bumped fists, and hugged staff. A head bartender toasted his team with espresso martini shots.

W and I observed with joy and in awe of so many happy people together, like clams in the same shell. 

We sipped the last top-off and thought about which of our family and friends would have enjoyed this evening with us. Robin and Ashley definitely, with our history of such fun times. Joe and Helen and Misty for sure. Maybe Annie, maybe Anne, maybe Linda, maybe Doris, maybe Joyce, maybe Kerri, maybe Sylvia, maybe Jim. 

So, maybe next year...

W and I will certainly be there for a very long awaited, greatly anticipated do-over. 

all months matter

 
"Comparison is the thief of joy."

I think perhaps, this fifth day of this new year, that I should adopt the Theodore Roosevelt quote I'm always touting, as my New Year's Resolution and find a way to actually heed its truth.

The latest in my personal battle comes with the arrival of January. It may well be my favorite month, I'm ready to exclaim. But! Oh! Wait! So is November.

See?

Where this need or habit to compare and rate comes from, I do not know, but I do believe I'll be happier when I can stop. I like peach pie and I like cherry pie. I like fine-china and glazed pottery. I like several labels of Sangiovese. 

I am however, drawing the line at restaurants, and this is where Roosevelt makes things most confusing for me. Let's take Thai food as an example... 

We have such great Thai restaurants in Dallas, and W and I frequent many of them, preferring certain things at certain places. We both love two particular noodle dishes at Thai Soon, and the shrimp fried rice (add cashews) at Banana Leaf.  Appetizers at Royal Thai always offer something unique. The husband & wife team at Ruang Thai presents a delicious meal in a most welcoming way, while a couple other places have good food but are off-puttingly-cool to customers. And in contrast, there's the much appreciated BYOB with no corkage fee offered at several. 

So, if on a Friday night we've a hankering for the crispiest egg rolls and corn patties, or a green over a red curry, is it wrong to compare? I think not, but it certainly makes a New Year's Resolution trickier. 

Without comparison, I will simply say, I do so love January! 

The month is a much-needed breather for me, a calm after chaos. Coming days will be slowed down from post-holiday weariness, or the weather, or by my pure selfish preference. Excess diminishes, quiet prevails. January becomes not a comparison, just a truth; that was then, this is now.

 I'm finding joy in the now.

bookish things

If any words can make you revisit grief, sigh and smile within the same sparse page, or long to write better yourself - it might be Rachel Joy Welcher's in her book Two Funerals, Then Easter. She is an author, another skilled one, who says so much with so few words. This 'collection of poems' reads like a journal.
I'm reminded I wrote a journal. He left me, though in a way different from how he left her, but such shared emotions are universal, and she reminds us of that. 



Yellowstone, the televised series, continues to mesmerize in picturesque and intense ways. For me, none stronger than the father-daughter scene in the episode, Under a Blanket of Red. Those few moments in that master bedroom boasting of fire and whiskey, were so moving that W and I have repeatedly watched.
The slow, rich dialog set us out to find Gretel Erhlich's book, The Solace of Open Spaces. Maybe we'll read it together, albeit in a fenced yard by a chiminea fire. That is, after all, often where we each, or together, find solace.



The Tender Bar is a book I speak of often, and often to bartenders themselves. Many people seek solace at bars. I've done that myself, in hours of grief as painful as Welcher describes. These days, these wonderfully joyful days, the bars find me with others, sharing laughs and bottles of wine.
I was thrilled and drawn to share that J R Moehringer's coming-of-age memoir is now a film. 

                                                Cheers!

 

dearest john

You are gone; left this Earth here in this November, just as you said the docs predicted it might be, way back in the year prior.

Everything seems wrong, yet right.

I, and I know I speak for Breezy, barely knew you, kind Sir, but feel we knew you on a level truer than we do many friends we spend many happy-hours with...

Though we never met, your soul and spirt was shown to us across the distance from your small hometown in Mississippi to our large Dallas metroplex. 

Both were visible in your hands, whether petting a dog or uniquely strumming a guitar. Your soulful eyes with an eye for others' emotions was visible in your art. Your innate southern gentleman persona could not hide under the occasional political Facebook tirade, even not giving a fuck, or two, just two days before you left us.

It's ironic that Breezy had posted about the power of social media to connect us - strangers - in the most unexpected and amazing ways. And that Helen and Joe proposed we bring you to Dallas next visit, next spring... We were all, all in.

Now, we are sad. We will be for a long, thought-provoking while. 

But we are happy knowing that you loved, leaving in a place so special to you. We hope you felt how special you were to us. 

thunder and lightning

Sitting here in the wee hours, I don't want to cry but it happens.

I used to tell Spoke what it was like to feel a period coming on... "It's like a storm is building," I'd say. "You feel it coming and you wish it would just get here already; the sooner the better, so then it'll be gone."

That's what these days leading up to Thanksgiving feel like. Six years he's gone, this time. Six, the average number of my heavy menstrual days. HaHaHa.

But I am happy today. So happy! Never thought I would be. That I could be... 

There are people I wish could be happy for me. No joke.

Breezy (as I call this Love-of-Mine who makes me genuinely laugh), and I are popping into a church the day after this holiday, to light candles. For Spoke, for Hyme, for Frances, and for so many others. Too, too many others. 

Note: 40% chance of storms. But of course. HaHaHa.

mondays

W,  as most of you know I call her in print, is at her place today and tonight. I am here at mine.

Our adobe and bistro, as they are affectionately known, are to each our own. I've never written about them as such till just now; 'to each our own'. Hmm...

It sounds quite separate. Distant. Cold.

So far from the truth. 

I love Mondays. It's a day apart after the weekends. I go back to book work, organizing the house, food prep work, contemplation. She goes back to desk work, artsy work, house/yard work, contemplation. The same but not.

Mondays remind me of how much I miss her. How much I love her. How much I wish she were here but glad she isn't. 

There it is again. Distant. Cold.

Makes me laugh. 

We are so close. Bare inches apart most often. Entangled. Tight in our thoughts. Mondays let us come up for air. I can think clearer in the few hours alone. So can she. Much, so much good comes from the brief time apart.

Mondays, by their end though, make me long for Tuesdays. 

what's in your fridge and pantry?

Funny I'm focused on writing recipes for others, when I've reached a point in my own kitchen where, baking excluded, I rarely use them. My approach is based on instinctual preferences from much I've learned and tasted and served over the years.

Example: I can now look at the head of cabbage I bought on a whim, knowing I have several ways to use it while it is fresh and without my tiring of it. I could make a rice wine vinegar Cole slaw to top blackened fish sandwiches, or bake sweet-and-sour cabbage rolls stuffed with rice-raisins-pistachios. I might toss crunchy cabbage shreds into a vegetable stir fry coming off the heat, or put cabbage chopped, in a pot for soup along with onion and white beans.

Prep work and planning that comes from intimately knowing my inventory, is my joy. Worth repeating; Is my joy! I make croutons if bread begins to dry out. I freeze all shrimp tails till I've enough to make stock. If there are a couple shallots on the rack and mint still growing in the patio pot, I'll make a quick tomato pasta sauce to freeze for a rainy night's dinner. I prefer my Herbs de Provence over any other blend. I haven't purchased bottled salad dressing in decades...

I am the home cook that chef and author Ronna Welsh hopes her readers will be. She wants you - us - to think of all foods in terms of their many possibilities, not as our Go-To for use in a few recipes. I feel I am very much already there but I know she has much to teach me. I am barely through a fourth of her wonderful book, The Nimble Cook.

She has a recipe, Seared Kale with Dates and Cream, which I got very excited about. I don't plan to make the recipe at all. I'm going to turn that (brilliant) rich combination of ingredients into a luscious penne pasta dish. Then I'll ever so joyfully, turn my attention to what to do with the likely large amount of remaining kale... 

I think the chef would be proud.