Life has been piling up on me the last few weeks and in my much-needed evening of solitude, I was on a mission for comfort. And so I was concocting a simple chickpea-tomato soup – its muted red color was made vibrant by a hefty flavor. The methodical act of chopping the requisite knotty cloves of garlic and sprigs of fresh rosemary released strong scents, a (relatively new) olfactory pleasure that never fails to lift my mood. There is something very healing about the act of cooking alone, just for myself. The mechanics of stirring and chopping, listening to the crackle of onions in a pan, the sensation of steam on my skin are soothing. The time spent alone, concentrating on the stove and the sink, the washing of vegetables and the slow crank of the can opener clears my head.
And in the end when I sat with a good book, a glass of wine, and the quiet lilt of Bach, the warming soup with a hunk of fresh sourdough bread from the farmers market was just what I needed to feel like myself again.
My mind has been in somewhat of a haze in the past month with reverberations of my accident’s anniversary, ending romances, the unexpected death of a friend. And, as a result, I have not felt inspired to write. Even sitting down at my computer today I spent a long time staring blankly at my keyboard, not sure what, if anything, I wanted to write about. I certainly haven’t been cooking; that soup was my first foray into the kitchen in weeks. The act of going out to eat has been more of a tool for distraction, time spent with friends. But of course, that is sometimes the most meaningful.
Becca was in New York, unexpectedly, and on a Sunday afternoon we sat in a little French café just a few blocks from my apartment in Park Slope. The end-of-summer light was bright, streaming in the large front window and illuminating our glasses of water on the table. There was a young couple to our left, dressed in stylishly mismatched clothing and chatting with the chef who was obviously a friend. The woman behind the counter drank coffee from a big white mug; flaky brown croissants winked at us from behind the glass. We had spent the morning walking through the nether-regions of Prospect Park and were tired, hungry, in need of caffeine. The day before had been emotionally draining, spent at a funeral in New Jersey. It was difficult to put together any coherent words to express how we were feeling. But we sat and ate warm pressed sandwiches with fresh ricotta, oven roasted tomatoes and basil pesto; side-by-side with small, nutty arugula salads. It was comforting to be there, eating together. We later found
ourselves in Manhattan and stumbled onto the magnificent Il Laboratorio del Gelato, a small and eclectic ice cream shop on the Lower East Side. We munched on cones of buttermilk, cinnamon, sour cream and fresh mint ice cream. We enthusiastically pondered the existence of such delicious, unusual flavors as we wandered through a wild little pickle festival on Orchard Street, packed with people and uniquely brined things. Our day of culinary distraction was a welcome, rejuvenating respite from all else.Jon and I, too, have been spanning the boroughs on gourmet expeditions – to a pig roast on the sidewalk in front of Il Buco, fried plantains and empanadas at the Caracas Arepas Bar, spicy pasta puttanesca at a hold-in-the-wall Italian restaurant, quail and coconut pudding at a Brazilian restaurant in Queens. The barbecued chicken and grits in our own neighborhood’s Sadie Mae's was a lengthy and mediocre taste-experience that I would probably not subject myself to again – but the pumpkin ale we brought there from the bodega on the corner was excellent.
The culinary is, obviously, one of my favorite ways to deal with difficult times – but the most meaningful, comforting moment I have had recently involved nothing gourmet.
It happened after seven of my college friends and I stood side-by-side, next to an open grave on a beautiful early-fall morning. It was brisk and sunny; white and red flowers peppered the vibrant green grass in the cemetery surrounding us. The sound of spoken Spanish hardly registered as we listened to the priest; there was only the universal muffle of crying. The red carnation in my hand was cold; the creaking squeal of the coffin as it was lowered into the ground echoed in my fingertips. The eight of us had met our first week of college; the ninth member of that little family was no longer with us.
An hour later we stood together in the wide parking lot of a New Jersey strip mall. The men were in suits, their ties just beginning to loosen around their necks. Becca and I, the only women, were in stark, dark-colored dresses. Many of us had parted ways in the last few years; it was the first time we had all been together in a long time. And we stood together in our fancy, black clothing in a throng of people – men in flip-flops, women in ripped jeans, families with screaming children, gray-haired couples with matching canes – and waited for our names to be called over the loudspeaker. We were waiting for a table at Ihop, The International House of Pancakes. A favorite destination of our friend; we were there together to remember him.
We all squeezed into a booth in the back of the crowded diner and ate soggy pancakes, wilting bacon and coffee poured out of a plastic thermos. I could feel the warmth of the shoulders next to me, the taste of orange juice in my mouth, the slow laughter of my friends as we caught up on days past. And I was struck by the inexplicable fact that we were there, together, and alive. There was something so gut-wrenchingly moving about feeding ourselves together that day. It was the sustenance of companionship and food, together in remembrance of a friend.
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