Am eating classic BFF Fajitas…a major staple of our bestest kind of days…where we’d run to the market for fresh veg, a bottle of cheap red wine, and come home, setting on Swing or Samba or somethin’ equally sassy, and drink and cook until the light left the sky and we were well buzzed and comfy.
…I miss those days all the time. But it’s even worse on “Big Days.”
Yesterday was the first Birthday since I’ve known her that she wasn’t here to resume her place of festivity-planner. Foods from here to kingdom come, delights in outtings, special specifically NOT “cheap red wine”…the works.
…That girl does it up!
But dammit if she didn’t manage a co-feat-wonder with The Fella, being all the way on the totally wrong-opposite coast of America at the time, or not.
This was my BD gift of wonder, delivered with epic joy and hugs by The Fella, and slobbered over by me after he had left:
…”So, what’s the big deal?” you might shrug to yourself, if you’re new to the blog, and it’s earlier epic drunken posts of foodage joy…in days when The BFF lived just there: at the end of the street, and would ramble over many times per week for our cooking sessions, punctuated with theater debates and history talks and men worries and all the things that BFF’s always fill the space of time with.
Each food and drink and goodie, represents a very specific memory…a grin…and by the end of her little note tucked in the back, a mess of tears.
* A tiny watermelon. (In memory of the Gray Goose spiked one, that sat in my fridge all prepped for our naughty-secret of a picnic lunch, while we three watched Shakespeare in the Park, one summer.)
* Peppers & zuchinnis (Our oft-repeated BFF Fajita days, spread out over the entire coffee table, piled high with zillions of add-on sides n’ fixins.)
* An articoke. (The epic 100th BD of Julia Child, when we decided totally on a whim to tackle a full-course spread straight from “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” while drunkenly blogging our exploits.)
* Garlic. (A BFF staple in every. single. dish. Probl’y even the dessert ones. “Stink and think of me,” the note said…)
* Cabbage. (My refrigerator staple, for Polish kielbasa and potato stew — where both foods of “our people” gather in happy harmony, like we do.
* Spinach. (The major base for every epic salad we ever invented.)
* Dubliner Cheese. (Only the best sharpness of delish, also nodding to her time in ye old Irish Capital, together with Medium Tillamook, to be included somehow in some way, in nearly every meal we ever made.)
* A bottle of red. (Pin-up style, WWII ex-airfield-grown, an obvious toss up to our forever scout of delightful new reds, My obsession with WWII, and The Fella’s delight of period warcraft…bringing us all together in one bottle of joy.)
* Gourmet chocolate-covered cherries. (As with all the fresh veg, reminders of endless trips to Tacoma Boys, and their expensive little treats sections, upon occasion, finally splurged on with combining of fundages ‘tween we two.)
* A duel mix-tape CD. (Our greatest hits, our sing-alongs, our late-night cooking sambas…songs that each — like the foods in the basket — represent something you can’t always put in words…though the lyrics certainly help.)
…The last: a package that guided me with giggles and weepies all the way to my final “Anne Frank” show, and back home again.
Good thoughts.
Good memories.
…Proving that you don’t need to be “present” to be present on a day, in a thought, to make a moment special.
The BFF is just that good.
…Off to go and tackle the dishes now.
KP was always my job…along with the sous chef-prepping.
Dear The BFF,
I don’t cook the big stuff, good as you do. But I’ll try my best! And think of you with every chop, and fry, and bake, and swig, and garlic-stink.
I promise!
Love you lots and lots,
The (now) Double-Three
~D
