WHAT’S COOKING
Life is Always Sweeter with Good Friends and Great Food BY NANCY KEATING
I can’t imagine where I would be tonight were it not for a handful of friends who have given me a great deal of joy. Own it, friends make life a lot more fun! So tonight as I write this article, I filled my kitchen, updated in the late 1980’s in a solid 1830’s farm house with its’ fair share of squeaks and rattles, with a pile of great friends. These friends have been there through and through in the best and worst moments of my life whether they knew it or not. The point is, great friends do what great friends do! Great friends initiate conversation some many people are concerned with how they could benefit from a relationship and not how they could support anyone else.
Go deeper — when catching up with friends, ask what’s is going on and get a meaningful conversation going!
Know when to listen and when to offer advice — sometimes people just need to be heard, listen to the problem but don’t always try to solve the problem.
Ask good questions — be a listener, be
sure you have the right understanding of what is being said to you. Repeat it back in your head, ask for some sort of agreement that you are on the same page so you don’t waste any time or get off track.
Follow up — we so often get the “thanks
for sharing” feeling once we dish it out to a friend, be the friend that follows up but don’t be pushy (read the know when to listen and when to offer advice section above). Lastly, great friends bring a little something something, such as a bar of soap, a
kitchen towel, an hunk of cheese to share or perhaps a favorite bottle of wine; if you think it is the right thing to do, do it! It is so easy to put a smile on someone’s face with a little host gift in your hand as you crest their doorway. My great friends do it, expect it from yours as well! I picked up the habit of marking wine bottles handed over to me at my doorway with a little note of the person who gave it and the date. This way when I crack that bottle open hours, months or years later — I relive that exchange and that little bit of love all over again, warms up the soul! Ok, so what did I cook? My love and I had ambitious visions of doing short ribs which we didn’t get to until the morning of so that wasn’t going to work due to all that sitting overnight fussing to get the flavors melding and the chance to get the fat scraped off before serving. We opted for a roasted piece of salmon with a simple citrus sauce served with an herbed Israeli Couscous and a mixed green salad. This was much easier to execute, as work schedules often get in the way of weeknight entertaining, and so great. The fun of it for me is hanging with the friends and basking in that warmth and joy they bring into my hut. Oh, those short ribs, we made them anyway and are saving them for a couple of days from now on Christmas Eve, at the very least we will be prepped ahead of the game for that one and ready to be focused listeners to our friends!
photo: the braised short ribs... these things are full of fantastic flavor, too bad it all looks like a shimmering bunch of brown once it cooks up. It all starts out full of reds (the wine, tomato paste, whole plum tomato), orange (carrots), greens (celery, bay leaves, fresh thyme), yellow (lemon zest), darks (veal stock, the browned short ribs) and the glisteners (olive oil, onion and garlic - lots of it!)... these things are easy and decadent - check the web for a recipe to cook up for your crew over the holidays.
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DECEMBER 2015