grief and beef stew

I made this stew for my great-aunt in London the last time I saw her before she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, a couple of years ago. She passed away after a year-long battle just a few weeks ago, and I’ve been trying to find a way to honor her memory. I never knew my grandmother and so my great-aunt was always one of the great maternal figures in my life, and losing her was a blow I’m hard-pressed to describe with words.

My aunt was a giant among the men and women of her time. A groundbreaker, a trendsetter, a trail-blazer. She grew up in the ‘50s and ‘60s in Iraqi Kurdistan a bold, independent young woman in a time and place where that was not the standard at all. She and her sister never married or had children, instead choosing to live their lives on their own terms. She traveled internationally, became a beloved teacher and women’s sports coach, and relocated to London later in life during the war. There, she made a life for herself all over again, in a little basement flat in Shepherd’s Bush, and thrived. She traveled every chance she got and made friends as easily as she breathed. There was very little she was ever afraid of, and nothing at all that she couldn’t overcome. She was, for so many years, my icon, my ideal of who to be when I grew up- a fearless, strong-willed pragmatist with a thirst for adventure and a zeal for life.

For all she was independent and awe-inspiring, it must be said that there never was a kinder woman. People loved her as soon as they looked at her and she never wanted for friendship or company. She could soothe a bruised feeling or a scraped knee with practical aplomb and the sensible tenderness of your own mother, and she cared for her nieces and nephews and their children as if they were her very own. When I made her this stew a few days before Christmas, two years ago, and heavily, alarmingly, over-salted it, she still ate every bit of it without complaint.

My aunt had a garden behind her little flat in London. High walls, lush greenery, a little patio with a soaring trellis and a tremendous grape vine all cut it off from the hustle and bustle of London so thoroughly that you felt as though you were somewhere else entirely. A little slice of paradise she’d made for herself. She was so proud of it. There are so many memories still there- barbecues and family get-togethers, chasing little cousins through bushes, long, drowsy naps in the little swinging bench hung under the trellis. It takes a special sort of person to take an ordinary place and fill it with that kind of magic, that love that stays in your bones forever.

Brain cancer is ugly. It changes you, and the people around you, and it is a terrible way to die. There’s no way to paint it nicely. I wish we’d had more time with her, I wish that she hadn’t suffered so much, and I wish she were still here. But there’s no sense in regretting things you have no control over, and she’d tell me that now, if she could. Life is full of terrible, tragic loss, and the only thing we can do is hold each other a little tighter until it’s our time to go. My auntie was brave and steadfast to the very end, even when she was frightened and in pain, which is all any of us can aspire to do when it’s our turn.

At her funeral, her nieces and nephews brought dozens and dozens of cuttings from her grape vine and her rose bushes (her pride and joy) to give to the mourning attendees with instructions: to plant the cuttings in their own homes and gardens, and let that little piece of her live on with each of them. I think she must have smiled, at that.

My aunt, in the foreground dressed in blue, on her way to a garden party.

Part of her garden in mid-May of 2023, eight months before she passed. The roses are just beginning to bloom.

cake that burns your tongue, salty apple pie, and learning to fail with purpose.

Anyone who cooks or bakes knows how frustrating it is when something you make turns out disastrous. Making food is a labor of love, sometimes a LOT of work, and sometimes you don’t even know what went wrong. Last summer, I was planning to host a friend for a backyard picnic one day, so I made one of my favorite cakes- Martha Stewart’s Strawberry Cake. I’d made it at least a dozen times before with great success- it’s a simple cake recipe topped with strawberries that bake into the surface and get deliciously soft and jammy. I had zero concerns about it, but when we went to bite into it that evening, it had the most awful flavor!! There was something salty, almost acidic about it that was completely inexplicable. I turned the recipe over and over in my head all evening, wondering what I could possibly have done wrong. I was certain I’d added the regular pinch of salt, that I hadn’t mixed up my measuring spoons for baking soda/powder and yet- the awful cake had happened somehow. Sometimes it's much more clear what went wrong: like my mother infamously adding salt instead of sugar to an apple crumble she made for my sister’s birthday several years ago.

I really hate not getting things right on the first try. Perfection is the only option and failure is a personal insult- that’s something I’m unlearning. Baking, developing recipes specifically, is a great exercise for that purpose. A recipe is never in its best form the first time you attempt it, no matter how determined you might be to make it so. You will inevitably learn something in the making of it that you will improve on next time. You will realize that in fact you were too heavy-handed with the flaky salt on your cookies, that baking powder didn’t give you the rise you wanted on your cake, or that the jam you used was too sweet, and you’ll make it better next time. And even better the time after that.

One of the best things so far about starting this blog was looking back through all my oldest photos of things I’d baked. The same bread recipe that I’ve been using the last five years (from Ken Forkish’s Flour Water Salt & Yeast, highly recommend) looks nothing at all like the first time I made it. The first loaf of bread I ever made was incredible. It was underproved, overbaked, and stuck to the pot I’d cooked it in. But it was MY first loaf of bread. I had made something out of nothing, and bread is bread so it tasted damn good spread with butter regardless. Just because that same loaf of bread turns out so much better when I make it now, after five years of practice, it doesn’t mean that my first one was bad. Doesn’t mean that I failed in making it, or that I should strike it from the record and only acknowledge my picture-perfect successes. That was the bread that taught me how to make great bread, to err on the side of proving longer, that my oven ran hot and I should bake at a lower temperature, to properly heat the pot before adding the dough.

I like to think that the same principle applies to the rest of my life. I’ve had jobs that I left feeling drained to the bone, relationships that made me feel like I’d never be happy again, made mistakes that I thought had ruined my entire life. But those awful jobs taught me that I would never regret speaking up for myself instead of quietly tolerating mistreatment, those relationships taught me that looking for love from someone else would never fill the gap I made in not giving love to myself, and every mistake and questionable decision taught me that NOTHING is final. Nothing is the end. I’ve survived all the things I thought would kill me and I came out better for it.

Obviously I’m not like, magically healed now. I still get frustrated when a recipe goes sideways or a new idea won’t come together just the way I want it. But I really have made leaps and bounds of progress in my reaction. Now when something goes wrong, I don’t want to walk away, I want to try again.

Edit 11/27/23: Reader, since I wrote this post, the universe has tested me with a veritable landslide of culinary disasters, including but not limited to: an apple pie that completely fell apart upon demolding, bread that I forgot to put salt in, and a tray of elaborate hors d’oeuvres I’d made for a Friendsgiving that I dropped all over the floor of my car. That last one, in particular, made me cry. Nonetheless, we crack on in all cases. The apple pie was delicious, even deconstructed, the bread was dried out and turned into breadcrumbs for later use, and the hors d’oeuvres situation was explained to a lovely and understanding hostess and a wonderful party was had, regardless. Now please, universe, I’ve learned several lessons, cut me some slack please????

The burn-y cake in question :)

making stock from scratch, not melting your pie crust, and trying to be an adult.

Last spring, an old family friend taught me how to make stock from scratch. She’s been in my life since I was a toddler, and she’s filled too many roles to count- at different times my mother’s friend, my sister’s teacher, my teacher, our travel buddy, and, finally, having witnessed nearly 20 years of my life, my friend.

It’s interesting, the way relationships can evolve, the path people can take from being “my someone’s something” to “my someone”.

This friend (and her husband) live the kind of life I dream about. Both teachers, they bought some land at the foot of a mountain (many many years ago when someone could afford to buy land in Washington on a teacher’s salary) and built a charmingly cozy cabin of a home. They filled it with love and laughter and various labradors, as well as pots and pans and accoutrements from their previous life in the midwest, passed down from their parents before them. They built their home in a very real sense, with timber and nails and screws, but they also built their home in a way that had nothing at all to do with the materials and everything to do with who they are as people.

They built a front door that beckons, a kitchen that warms, a wraparound porch that invites lingering in early morning and late dusky hours. They built a den with an old wood fireplace that welcomes leisurely conversation over steaming brewed coffee swaddled in old woven blankets. They built, to put it simply, a place where no one could ever possibly feel unloved or unwelcome. Pressed once to describe them to a friend who hadn’t met them, I could only say “being around them feels like being hugged”. Their home and their love was a favorite haven for me over tumultuous, emotional years of life, and she taught me the value of food that makes you feel something. Food that hooks onto a memory and becomes an experience in your mind and your heart, not just your mouth. She makes pot roast that warms from the inside out, pillowy-soft blueberry pancakes, buttery-crisp pies, and midwestern staples that I’d never even heard of, growing up in Washington.

This friend, fittingly enough, makes the most delicious blueberry pie I have ever had in my life. I feel strongly that the best foods, the ones you remember years after having eaten them, are very simply what they are and nothing more. No complications, no pretension, just the best possible version of itself, which I suppose is what we all strive to be. Her blueberry pie is exactly that. The platonic ideal of a pie. Crisp, buttery crust and jammy, sweet-tart blueberry filling made from blueberries she grows in a giant patch in her backyard. It rests on a countertop in front of a window in her cozy kitchen and one expects to inhale the wafting steam and be lifted up and away as though by unseen wings (a la Donald Duck).

I’ve begged the recipe from her, but I can never quite do it justice. It’s the crust that’s my problem- I handle it too much and it falls apart- there’s a good lesson for me to learn in life. Maybe I’ll make another attempt this year, for the blog. I’m making an effort to do things, even if I don’t do them well- it’s okay to struggle with something, or so I’m told. That’s what I’m doing here in The Void, after all. This whole thing feels like pulling teeth, but I’m going to do it anyways. That feels like something an adult would do.

I think a good friendship involves a lot of giving each other things. Stock recipes and homemade pies, sure, but also things like love, advice, and encouragement. Life is a violent and terrifying experience for all of us, but surrounding yourself with people who help you find calm in the chaos is maybe the kindest thing you can do for yourself.

I don’t know if I have a point with all this, but if I do, it’s that family is the people you choose. It’s a decision you have to make every single day, but I’m a better person because of it.