here comes the sun!

well, a curse on me for sitting inside when the sun is finally out but blessed sweet relief and glory the man is out of the house fishing and the house is mine, mine, mine, mine, mine and I love it here when its quiet.  I mean I FUCKING LOVE it.  Dear Jesus Christ Allah and Buddha on a stick, I'm so glad sometimes for quiet.  And space.

 And if my home is a holy wreck and slightly untidy (very undecorated)  --  it is at least beautiful for itself, it's structure.   Form/function in this home is truly inspired.  It really is a gem.  But for some much needed updating.  How to describe?  Except this - I call it the secret annex and it really is almost like a tree top with lots of turns and corners.  My side of the building faces a large courtyard building so I'm on the "city side" of the building - and can peer down the galley way between the two structures and hear the heart of each home pulsating from porch doors.  Kitchen cabinets slammed,  a baby crying, footsteps of tired people coming upstairs from work, the clatter of someone running for the metra station, the sound of the train pulling in at Lunt.  Lunt!  Snort.  [asides...oh, the first blue joke I heard in Chicago, "there are three streets that all rhyme with...." ]

All the little noises that people make.  Even then, there must have been a blare of radios instead of TVs. Whatever the case, this side of the building is definitely more European.  Built in a time when you had little nucleus of community that was in your business by proximity.  On this side of the building there is more intimacy with others.  All the kitchens/back half of the homes face in together.  There is a delicate balance between walls.  Not as close and stupid as the ugly little homes of Jeff Park, but definitely in an arena when you know how your neighbors sound.

And because my side faces East, the morning glory of daylight makes this apartment glow.  It's a precious slip of time before the sun goes overhead but as it crests the building next door -- lord help me, it is so lovely I could cry.  The gold of the morning in the dining room is something beyond a cloud.   And all down the hall - north or south, seas of green from the trees.  This annex, this little haven in the city is far grander than my humble belongings can ever glorify.  My home is a deco masterpiece and I am grateful, always, for a tiny parcel of morning when there is no other sound save my clicking on the keyboard.  The quiet hum of my thoughts and surroundings.   Oh, the sounds you can hear in the city when most everyone else is still slumbering.  These mornings are more delicious than sex.  Not quite but just as tasty.  The sounds that come gently wafting are so delicious when everyone else next door is silent but for the hum of a fan, an air conditioner, the morning doves that perch on the gutters next door and coo sweetly. 

Dear fucking god in heaven and all the saints above: thank you, thank you, thank you - for a ray of sunlight after so many damn days of clouds.  Thank you, Ganesha, o'remover of obstacles, for delivering a fishing partner unto Big D.   And bless all sentient beings to know this peace within.  So yes, I should be out, but I'll make another cup of coffee and enjoy this tender little bliss all to myself. 

The cardinals are up and singing and I am so blessed.  A farmers market may be on the horizon.  Some fresh herbs, some new potatoes.  A big tomato.  A love story.  I will deliver these soon, I swear.

Madam S

The Fullness of Summer: what lies ahead...........

I took a long sabbatical.  It lasted through the winter and most of the spring and here on the cusp of summer -- I'm ready to plunge in again and start peeling back the layers. I don't know why I had to take such a long break but the winter of 2011 was a fierce one.  Like Persphone I was definitely underground.   The funny thing is that I didn't recall just how brutal it was till I downloaded some pictures off my camera and came across a few from our last tremendous blizzard in February -- the day after the debacle on Lake Shore Drive when 300 cars got stuck and the wind was blowing at 80 mph.

This is the view from my backporch -- around noon the next day --- when miraculously the sun came out and the world started to shovel. 

What lies buried from the melt, shall be revealed. 

It's too bad that I didn't take a picture of all the vats of soup I kept on my back porch during the winter.  The miniture frig we inherited at the Enchanted Annex is built for two 90 pound French anorexic sisters, don't ya know?  Even if I wasn't writing, I was a cooking fool.  What's been simmering these many months?  Let's find out.............

Acts of God Part II - or not

God did not help intervine. 
Part II takes a raincheck.

Sadly.

The truth is I really suck at making granola bars.  I've have made some 'interesting' batches true.  But not a damn one so far has been called tasty, delicious or even good. 

I have however discovered in the process and dedication to my quest: how to bake a really dense brick that's raw in the middle and burnt on the edges and consequently waste about $10 worth+ of butter, brown sugar, agave syrup, honey, nuts, dried fruit and various grains/oats in a batch.  rrrrrrrrrr.

So we wait for God with our hearts full - knowing brazen acts of defiance and courage are NOT always rewarded in the kitchen and the prudent and the wise stop pretending that they can create a recipe from scratch and maybe stick to writing the story at hand, perhaps with food or cooking involved......but certainly not with a self-published granola bar recipe.  Buy a box and spare yourself.  Oy. 

This failure is only topped by the EXTRAODRINARY 2009 New Year's Eve "I'm going to teach myself to make pierogies flop" that still makes me weep with laughter.  I have never worn so much flour in my life.......................

We're On a Road to Nowhere....

I had this song in my head all day long and I can't quit humming it! Worse things in life than David Byrne so I'll live with it.  I do like the song so no big. But still isn't it funny how some tunes just mysteriously appear? I hadn't heard this song for quite a long while and today it seems I just woke up with it.  Like I had a mental tryst with this ditty overnight and now it sheepishly goes off on it's merry way but not without leaving me with its melody. 

Or maybe I did hear some sort of muzak version and didn't realize it... but I don't think so. I choose to believe that this song came for a reason: mostly that I feel in stasis before this race.  13 days out from the Chicago Marathon and I'm both scared witless and terribly excited.

And I've come to learn that I really don't know the difference between the two.

I also am in that mysterious place known as "TAPER."  I have been told that taper madness strikes during this slowdown phase.  And I think it is so.  I have very little appetite suddenly and after two days of solid rest (an unthinkable 8-9 hours+ each night) I'm wired.  Of course, the added coffee and tea ingested probably helped.  But with that much sleep in my system and no run today, I have reserves.  I am not at all comfortable with this bounty, mind you.  In fact I think I'm headed for trouble because the very thing I don't want to do is think about this next chapter. ANY OF IT. Actually I'm really pissed off to have this hole, this void suddenly to contend with.   I'm bored.  I'm upset. What to do when I so successfully ran from the things that were chasing me all year???? Seriously, I think I've been pushing myself so hard that to stop seems foreign, wrong.  Out of sync.  Because to stop I'm going to have to think about where I'm going. And I still don't really know. 

Am I happy with my lot?  Am I prepared to stand up and tell the truth finally.  To say my marriage is withering into something I'm not really prepared for. That I'm scared to move on but more petrified to stay?  That I miss having a dream. Am I at peace with the fact that my grandmothers are waning as this winter approaches? Who the fuck will I be if my grandmothers aren't here anymore? How can they go on suffering if they stay???  Am I prepared to fight the good fight in this marathon and champion self and will and light and yes even Love's existence itself --- in this mad dash of middle age vigor and vim. To prove what?  That I'm not dead, I only feel that way sometimes.  That I didn't have a baby (greatest sin) and I'm a failure except for this. (If this is really going to be a redemption story.) That I desperately am afraid to stop. BECAUSE TO STOP means feeling.  Just stop. Stop. Stop running, stop pretending, stop lying, stop trying, stop everything but sitting with this monstrous reality of myself and just be.

Yes, Virginia, these thoughts sucks ass.  No two ways about it.   

But I suppose this quest is worthy of some pondering.  Some soul searching.  And yes even a tear or two.

So I sit here with my cat on my lap purring, realizing that this moment -- like all others before it will pass.  And maybe the best thing to do is get acquainted with all the nasty little bits of me that I've been running from so I can finish this race with the best parts of me intact and the rest integrated. 

So yes my shadows can come along too because by hell or high water, we're all going to cross that finish line one day.  Why not for this race?  Get a'packing troups:  we're on a road to nowhere............

The Baby/Baked Pasta Exchange (BAKED ZITI)

Okay, so I made a lot of meat sauce- if you read the last blog.

I was in a sentimental way and when I am like that watch out; you're going to get fed.  Again, I repeat.  My hunger the last three days: TERRIFIC.  This is insane.  All I can do is taste the cool in the air and my body is screaming for starch.  Warm.   Hot.  Filling.  ME WANT FOOD NOW.  That is the constant roar in my ears.  Insatiable.   More to do with mental hunger I think than this physical one that seems to be rearing it's head.   But yes, there is a need to feed and be fed playing out.  What to do but roll with it.

Worse (or better) depending on your mood: it's cool enough these evenings to run a stove and right now while I type a batch of homemade granola bars is filling the house with the wicked stench of butter, oats, brown sugar and cranberries.  It's smells like a big ass cookie in here and my cat is asleep under the desk by my feet and some kid across the gangway in the apartments next door is playing a recorder.  Funny little end of summer night.  Fall is round the corner, kids  Better pull out those sweaters and socks.  (And who the hell plays a recorder at 10:30 pm?)  Love the city and all her noisy inhabitants.  And except for the jaunty note or trill on that blasted recorder, it is quiet.  A few TVs.  A woman on the porch with her cell phone.  Sigh.  Why is it that no one thinks you can hear them on the porch?   It echos like hell.   And people talking late at night are often drunk and thus louder!   At least no one making love.  That can be so unnerving sometimes. Nothing worse than sitting alone in the dark and be penned somewhere innocently when that happens.   Especially waking up to it.  You have to acknowledge it and then heave that old "ho hum" I'm not listening declaration "lalalala" whilst the rhapsody of bed springs beat on.  I mean it's a fact of life and nothing to be ashamed of but no one wants to listen to it when they aren't involved. 

(I regret instantly any occasion when someone was forced to listen to my antics.  I know you're out there and I'm sorry.  Oy.  Not a quiet girl myself.  Oh dear.)       

It was my bad (amusing luck) once in college to be beset by a case of insomnia that lasted a few painful weeks.  One night - no matter what room in the house I went to (someone in the upstairs/downstairs apartment) was going at it.  It was ridiculously funny and tragic at the same time.  The whole house was humming: try the veal!  But seriously - the pathos of trying to find one small corner where I wasn't forced to listen to someone humping: it was a cosmic burlesque joke.  Alone, frustrated, single --- that wasn't enough....oh no, I had to wake up, wake up mind you when falling asleep was the hardest task ever, wake out of a dead calm to the horror of the bedroom ceiling shaking and a hideous cacophony of aerobic bedroom gymnastics.  There are certain indignities that make even the humorless take an aside (face the screen ala Ferris Bueller) and look to the skies with a complete WTF expression which is akin only to a pie in the face --- or the moment when you see the pie coming.  Especially when it seemingly never ends.   This couple was clearly athletic, invested, and knowledgeable enough to hammer each other for 15+ minutes without end.  Or until I finally called uncle and went to the living room.   But that first scene of pathos eroded into sheer comedy by the time I made it to the couch, sat down and sighed......only to hear another couple downstairs, and then went into the dining room to hear another; and so forth - till, shaking my head, I went to the kitchen to started a pot of coffee.  And then shazam.  "Did I hear??"  Thinking, "noooooo----????????? is it?  No?!  Are they having a fucking orgy up there???"   And then imaging my rather average looking female college students/friends who lived both upstairs and down and wondering how the hell there were all getting nailed simultaneously?  What the hell was going on with the moon that so many people where screwing in proximity???   Proximity to Me!?!  Then laughing mercilessly at myself for thinking that.  At least Mr Coffee was loud enough to blast out any residual noises I imagined were going on.  I remember crying, while the coffee pot gurgled.  Not real tears but the sort of bleary, drippy eyes one can get when you are so overtired you can't sleep.   Nope,  I doubt I will ever forget that long morning, where I sat finally on the quiet stoop off the kitchen porch in Bloomington, IL.  Drinking one of my first "adult" cups of coffee, watching a man delivering Sunday papers.  And realizing with glum aplomb and resignation that my untainted youth was gone.  And now that makes me snicker.  How droll and over dramatic I was, even at 21.  To this day whenever I hear a neighbor making love, I remember that morning and sigh. "Good morning, Bloomington, Illinois you infernal despot of humanity, I greet thee!"   

Oh but I do wax on.   Still the noises one hears when one is alone.  Like I swear there are mice in the wall.  The cats look up with eyes like saucers when I hear this in the living room here late at night.  And then there's always the distinct possibility that you only think you are hearing some things.  Or are you??  Anyway for those of you who live in the city there is a sound when most people are sleeping that bleeds through the rest of the diffuse noise.  I don't know if this is the collective energy in the ether of our dreams or if as poppa Jack K would say, the sound of the unborn breathing.  But it is there and I have heard it.  And it's at these times, like now, that I most enjoy writing. 

Back to the meat sauce.  Well a vat of it went down stairs to Erik and Alex -- soon to be new parents.  Due date was yesterday.  Figured they needed to kill a little time in the great wait.  So they got some.  And then I figured, since I broadcast it anyway from last blog that a BAKED ZITI was in order.  So off I went to the Devon Market and pulled into that hot mess of a grocery store after work on Monday.   Which was perfect since I had just run my first 18 miler --- and suffice to say, it was a rest day which means I move slow all day long and dream about eating.  So I grabbed a giant container of ricotta, some pecorino, and went home and bake me up some ziti.  I baked two in tandem and threw the whole lot together like a super hero (under thirty minutes).  I then called Wendy and announced that the Rogers Park Commission on New Parents and Sleep Deprivation (RP CNPSD) had thoughtfully arranged for a BABY/BAKED PASTA EXCHANGE.   And we scheduled for the next day. 

Now if you don't have a BABY/BAKED PASTA EXCHANGE in your neighborhood - you should start one.  You need one over zealous cook who is baby mad and childless to ply tired parents with dinner.  You arrive, you tell the weary ones, the parents, to fire up the store and get to doing small tasks while you hold and coo the fussy little one.  They get a little time to clean, do laundry, talk to an adult and then finally sit down and eat.  You get a bit of one on one with the innocent looking adorable bundle of joy that is going to keep your friends awake all night.  They get a litte care and tending and dinner for the bargin.  You go home with the glow of baby love.  Win win all around.

Baked Ziti

Take three bags of pasta  --- 16oz and boil per instructions.  Strain.  Shells seem to be my preferred fav...they crunch up delightfully and hold enough cheese to get to that crisp state on top.

Mix 2 lb container of ricotta w/two eggs, salt, cup of fresh parsley (chopped) and 1/2 cup of parmesan.  I also add some fresh ground pepper to this.  This mixture is good enough to eat and actually for those who remember -- Leona's in Chicago, used to serve a ricotta/parsley mixture with their bread.  Very tasty.

Preheat to 350.  The whole thing cooks for about 45 min to an hour.  Depending on the density of the mixture and your preferred doneness.  Me, I go for a crunchy top.  Best part in my book.  But some like it wetter.  It's flexible...

Take two 9x13 lasagna dishes/bake ware - line with foil.  Dump the pasta equally between the two and stir together with the ricotta mixture. It will be an ugly clump.  No matter.  Add meat sauce as much or as little as you like.  The more sauce, the more cheese you need.   The concoction will be dense.  You should have shredded cheese (approximately 1 lb of mozzarella at bare minimum) for each --- but I often kill off the dregs of any left over cheese I may have around.  The secret for my Baked Zita is that I like it really cheesy.   The top itself must be covered in cheese and then the whole thing baked w/foil on top till the end when you uncover and let the top get to it's desired crispness.  Now sometimes I get fancy and add sauteed garlic, spinach, kale, onions, onions, onions.   Roasted red pepper.  This is hamburger helper for the oven.  Anything goes.  I mean the only thing better is simply making homemade mac and cheese by making a roux and then adding the cheese and fresh herbs and hearing people hit the floor.  But as long as you have cheese (ricotta) to get that richness and then an assortment of cheeses which marry well with the noodles and meat/vegetables - you really can't screw up.  Even a bad baked ziti is better than no baked ziti.  And when the coin is tight you can always live on one of these bad boys for a good long week; reheating and adding and re adding cheese till the very last (and I think) best part is eating the last portion with all the glorious burnt cheese pieces left over to pick on.   Yeah, that is my chef d'slob's favorite part. Hands down.  There is a glory to eating the last bit of the baked ziti and picking off all the little burnts bits left in the pan  ----  a guilty little pleasure.  And if you cooked it, it is your right.  Enjoy without shame!

Also -- there aren't many who would refuse this gift -- for it is both homey and practical and just nice.   It is also heavy.  The most frequent comment I ever get is, "God is this thing heavy!"  For a dish of it will likely weight in over eight pounds, more if I'm toting a glass dish.  Rgh.  My friend Carol Allerton has surgery years back and I told her I would make a Kugel -- which is just another form of baked pasta.  I hauled one, somehow, on the brownline from Rockwell to Michigan Avenue to Fourth Presbyterian Church.  I think I rigged some sort of contraption with plastic bags and some how navigated, switched trains, and scooted down streets with the thing without blinking an eye because there are sometimes when you truly are on a missive from god when you deliver food.  But there I was, scuttling up the steps of the Chicago Avenue El at rush hour with the other commuters - and walking down Rush Street en route with my swinging 10 pound baked kugel proud as can be.  And on heels no less so I felt truly righteous.  Dressed women bearing kugels.  You don't stand a chance.  When Don Allerton went to pick it up, his pallid blue eyes almost bugged out of his bony skull.  "You carried that thing?"   To which I smiled drolly and walked away.

So if you have the time and inclination to do something nice and you start to feel that little hint in the air that summer is ending --- take up some time by delivering a Baked Ziti to someone who is in need - whoever that may be.  Call 'em up and say, hey -- hit that stove (350 degrees) cause I've got something for dinner.  When you arrive, dinner cooks itself and a little good company is shared.  That is the magic of the Baked Ziti.

Acts of God part II to follow.  (the perfect granola bar)

Switching Teams (an ode to the wondrous meat sauce of old)

It happens.

And yes I am being a bit tongue in cheek perhaps, but there comes a time when the issue is forced and one must claim one tribe over the other.  Till that inevitable fork in the road appears, we think we're on the right path.  And then looming before us a great choice.

And generally there is no turning back.   

Oh there can be swaps, when one team calls back a lost one to the fold.  Or the odd ball adventure or two that means you were uninhibited.  But there are but two camps, kids.  And those pesky players who insist they can happily live in between these two worlds can pucker up and kiss my NOW unchafed tuckas cause you are either a bicyclist or a runner.  And them there's the facts.  The awakening will be vast and will shake you to to core.  But in the end, you choose.  You have to.  The road knows and so do we  - if we claim it.  So yes these last few weeks I've come to realize that I woke up a runner and my bike is parked and dusty for more than a season.  So there you have it.  She who once had two dharma wheels to spin now uses her legs alone to guide her cross the landscape.  WTF?

You can snicker but this is a seminal change.  My tree ring for this year ---- dramatic.

And of course any bike story inevitably leads back to Dru.  And that's a long story, kids --- and one I think I'll have to share down the line.  But leaving the bike is in essence leaving Dru.  And till I can muster the courage to write that chapter down properly and truly observe it...let us please eat.  I'm tired.  My weary legs have crossed 18 big ones today and I'm simmering a meat sauce on the stove because 1) I'm always famished!;  2) it's finally cool enough to have the damn stove on; 3) it's one of those days that there ain't much in the larder and we're on a mission from God.

Also, since I've been musing about my old life ----  when my bike was my great love, it is appropriate to dine thus -- as we lived almost exclusively then on the pauper's standby - pasta.  And once in a blue moon, we'd get our hands on some ground beef and amp it up a bit.  It was never great but always filling.  And we ate it as is life depended on it because we were making pennies and we really couldn't afford anything else.  Plus today was a day I needed to face the dreary remains of last week's shopping and try to do something reasonable with the stuff.  So this humble sauce is an odd to the old life - although a bit better. I think I've done a good job today with this.  It's a happy melange of old cans of stewed tomatoes, paste, shallots, onions, kalamata olives, farmers market garlic (not from China!!!) fried up in beautiful Turkish olive oil (Sultan -- a very good value and truly fruity), fresh basil, and about two pounds of ground chuck previously cooked.  I didn't have any cheese rinds so I threw in a hunk of old manchego and fried down another pepper or two from the vegetable bin with a few scrappy onions.  In a bit, I'll add some red pepper and more basil and keep cooking this baby down till the house smells divine.   And maybe I'll put this over some pasta and bake it when the cooler winds come.   I love reheating baked pasta till it the last of it gets all crunchy.  But then that's me....

And maybe while that's cooking after work some night this week, I'll sit back and start up the next batch of something to share...........
Till then, pass the Parmesan and tuck in.

For David

There aren't too many things to do when one of your dearest friends leaves town --- except feel blue for a while.  I know all too well because my friend, David, just moved to Dallas. 

O'there are friends that I adore, friends I love fiercely: and then there's David: sprite of my heart.

David!  Eternally Dill to my Scout.  My affection for this man: exalted!  I think I fell in love with him after hearing his second sentence, swore once I would have his Semitic love-child if not this lifetime -- the next, and to this day call him My Gay Husband.  Although Kate and Jane and many others in our circle will also invariably chirp in kind, "You mean our Gay Husband."  And because he's David and infinitely lovable, you know you have to share and affirm by say, "yes, our gay husband."

He moved last week on a Thursday.  Damn, just a week ago. 

I caught him that Wednesday night before he left - realizing as I took off for my run that evening, that he was going to be gone the next day.  That thought shattered me like a glass.  It felt like a movie; my heart beating madly, me dashing like hell, afraid he wouldn't be home.  But thankfully he answered the door and we stood there for a moment before he let me in.  Surprised to see me, I think.  And he muttered something about a list and how empty the house looked and I could only sit there and sweat and say, "I've come to kiss you goodbye" before we both cried and hugged and then yours truly had to tear off down Sacramento crying so loudly that a little Hasidic girl playing in her front yard looked up and asked, "What's wrong?" and then looked at her mother for an answer.  I loved her little face, her eyes full of concern ---  but I could only shake my head and run on, whimpering.  (Bless you little girl on Sacramento.)  And I couldn't stop crying till I finished running and that was just fine.  I needed that cry; it was as natural as breathing and strangely curative.  Because I realized that night that there are some people who are put on this earth to teach you how to be yourself.  And David, my dear dear friend, has always allowed me to be JUST WHO I AM and actually love me (flaws and all) which renders me to tears even while I write this because whether David lives down the block or in Texas, he is always in my heart.  So hokey, I know and so absolutely, motherfucking true.  Which is how life goes......

Of course, I'm happy as pie (this is a hint!) that he and his partner Jake are off on a grand adventure and that they are moving close to David's family.  There's just so much hopefulness ahead for them.  And that is really grand to share.   Plus I know just as soon as I get through this blinking marathon, I will be down there sitting at their fabulous pool and laughing my fool head off and plotting some perfectly executed meal with David.   But for now, I'm still a little out of sorts and allowing myself to feel the tenderness/ache that comes when you really miss someone.

Like all seasons of mourning/funkiness -- there are a few tried and true things you can do to combat the blues: but mostly you just have wait it out.  But sometimes you can pull out the big guns and get back to business as it were; you can pull up your boot straps and fire up the stove cause by God, even the sad have to eat.  And being a kitchen witch means your magic is both fierce and practical.

Because I am also a sentimental Witch, I had to make something that I would make for David.  Something I would really feed him if he were here right now; something so suave and yet so homey that it makes you feel like a child again - waiting anxiously for the yummiest thing your favorite Aunt or Grandmother would put before you.   And of course that thing would be, o'Holy of Holies: O'TOMATO Biscuit Pie (ala Laurie Colwin) with adaptations by Madam SOS.  If you don't own her books, get your ass to Amazon now.  These are tomes no good cook should be without.   As my friend E once said, "once you read Laurie Colwin she will become your friend."  And it's true.  Read everything you can get your hands on -- novels, cookbooks, all.  She is priceless. 

Essentially speaking - TBP (Tomato Biscuit Pie) calls for two cups of flour, 1 stick of butter, & 4 tsp baking power and 3/4 milk for each biscuit crust.  My little trick? I doubled the batch and used a cup of chive cream cheese in place of one of the sticks of butter which resulted in a very fluffy/yet crisp biscuit crust.  Roll your dough out after chilling and do not over handle (essential) for a 9 inch pie plate.

Then it's simply sliced tomatoes (2 pounds appox per pie), cheddar cheese (1 1/2 cups shredded per pie) and half a cup of mayo thinned with lemon juice (per pie) and the largest bunch of basil/chives/parsley you can gather and layer everything:  tomatoes, cheese, mayo, herbs before topping with a reserve of the cheese, then plop on the lid/remaining biscuit crust and bake the whole thing at 400 for 25 min.   PS  I also like to lightly salt the tomatoes and let them sit while I'm fussing w/the dough --- so some of the moisture is wicked off. 

These things emerge from the oven smelling like heaven: butter, chives, cheese and basil.  It's intoxicating.
And they are versatile.  Adapt to your taste.  Next time I intend on using sour cream or yogurt instead of the mayo or maybe using something more pungent, but less over powering than sharp cheddar.  Gouda might be nice.  Or a lovely Manchego.

I baked these beauties and instantly felt better.  I was elated.  I decided then that they must be offered up to friends in memory to David.  So one was slotted for Wendy and Casey and the other went to my friend Jen Howard.  I trotted my tomato pies off to each house (drive by Pie!) and felt a strange sort of peace wrap around me.  I had manifested - literal, steaming, examples of my concrete love.  And that was GOOD.  I sat on the floor with Baby Olive and watched Wendy and Casey tuck in and cooed at the baby and realized that melancholy passes like a storm and friends, both near, far -- and yes even those in books we've never met (LAURIE!) are buttresses that hold us in place and anchor our lives.  Without our friends by God there would be no stories or pies worth sharing. 

So yes, there are seasons, my dears - which we cannot prevent and must endure.  But all things can be weathered when you feed your friends and are, in turn, fed metaphorically with their love.

David, David, David!!!!  We are stuffing zucchini when I get there, love. I promise.