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.
