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Okay, Cupid? Okay, Okay – Part 2

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My friend and I finish our coffee, and make plans to go to the movies and get together on Christmas, like we used to. When I get home, there’s not much going on at work, so I pay OKCupid a visit. I had tried eHarmony a few months before, because I figured the price tag would eliminate the riffraff – which turned out to include me when I discovered how much it actually cost. OKCupid is free, so I sign up and upload the one photo taken of me in the last year that I like. I fill out the profile basics, then start answering the questions that will match me with that special someone. As I type and click, little alerts flash up in the corner, letting me know people are checking me out.

By the time I’ve finished, I have 15 messages. Several of them begin, hey beautiful, while others opt for the more subdued, hey pretty.

Some of these men seem to be very familiar with me, opening with hey dear, hey babe, hello sweets.

I don’t mind the messages’ presumptuousness as much as I mind the poor grammar that is their unifying feature.

I start reading the accumulated messages and checking the profiles, and immediately wonder if I’ve checked a wrong box somewhere – the first one is from Washington, D.C., which seems like Washington State but isn’t. I could see how you could mix the two up if you’d never been to the United States.

The next message is from someone whose profile states he is from Chicago, which is marginally closer to Washington State. The sender says his name is Duran, and though I’m tempted to ask if he’s named after the 80’s band or the bad guy from Barbarella, I don’t. He’s Dutch, he claims.

I never make the same mistake twice. I reply: My ex-husband is Dutch, too, and I don’t live anywhere near Chicago. Good luck.

He replies quickly. You seems like he must have treated you so bad..May be he does not respect the custom?

May be. I consider writing a reply, then running it through google translate into a foreign language or two, and then back again, but decide against it. There were so many other options in my inbox: Guys from Virginia, West Virginia, Texas, California, Ohio, Texas, Texas, and Florida. I mentally calculate travel times, by plane and by car.

I was looking for a date, and I got a geography quiz.

 

Okay, Cupid? Okay, Okay – Part 1

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My friend is worried about me: We must have coffee. I haven’t seen her in too long, and it feels good. I’m sorry about Thanksgiving, I say. I needed some changes. I still do, and I still don’t know what they are.

She understands: I moved here a decade ago because I like the outdoors, but I’m never in it. Why? I’ve started going hiking every Monday. I’ve started dating again, too.

I cringe. I didn’t have a lot of luck on Match, I say. It wasn’t worth the money.

Just sign up on the free sites, she says. I’ve been on a lot of dates. Plenty of Fish and OKCupid. I’ve had two dates in the last month, one from each site. I went to a flamenco dance show with a guy who didn’t know what flamenco is.

Still, she says, I feel like there’s someone out there, now. You need to get out there, too. You need to get out.

 

 

Macrina Bakery’s Tomato and Fennel Soup with White Beans

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I talk to Mr. Faraway a few days later, on the phone, and spend a lot of the time crying, although the conversation isn’t really unpleasant; nothing happened that he didn’t expect, and he’s not one for saying unkind things, no matter the circumstances. A few days later, I receive a birthday gift in the mail, the one he’d bought to give me at the now-canceled dinner; it arrives complete with a typed note on formal letterhead, and finally, one of us gets mad, and it’s me.

Really? Letterhead? I text him. I didn’t know we were at that point.

He calls me a bit later, and protests, but it’s my personal letterhead, because you’re a friend.

Lawyer, I tell him. You’re such a lawyer.

We feel strangely normal again, and I feel less lonely after we chat for a while and hang up.

I try to be careful – stressful times are always when I gain weight, and I’m at the point where I desperately need to lose it, rather than gain more. It’s not that I care what the scale says, but the last pair of pants I own that fit are telling me it’s time to do something, so I resolve to manage my stress with dog-walking rather than eating, and to try to eat healthily.

Eating healthy and comfort food don’t have to be mutually exclusive, I decide, and check out several cookbooks from the library in an attempt to prove the point.

When I get home, I realize I’ve checked out three baking books.

One of the books is from Seattle’s Macrina Bakery, which I’ve never been to but whose breads I can buy at the local upscale supermarket; mercifully, the Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook has a chapter of lunch items, one of which sounds perfect: Tuscan Tomato & Fennel Soup with White Beans. I don’t actually care much for tomato soup, or tomatoes in general, but somehow I managed to produce quite a few Roma tomatoes in my garden this year, and grilled cheese with a bowl of soup sounds like the perfect way to use them.

For some reason, I got the idea that this would be a very tomato-y soup, thick and red. There aren’t any pictures in the book to guide me, and the recipe calls for 10 Roma tomatoes, but I have a sneaking feeling that I didn’t use the correct amount of tomatoes – my garden tomatoes are smaller than the ones I typically see at the supermarket. The soup was a mellow broth full of vegetables and filling beans, savory and flavorful. I wouldn’t change a thing, except maybe to measure and write down the volume of tomatoes I actually used (my best guess: about half).

If the end result is delicious and satisfying, then it hardly matters if the recipe was exactly followed – I loved it and so did The Child, who helped herself to seconds and pronounced it The Best Soup You Ever Made.

Tomato Fennel Soup

 

Macrina Bakery's Tomato and Fennel Soup with White Beans
 
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Ingredients
  • 1 cup dried white beans
  • 2 bay leaves
  • ¼ cup olive oil
  • 1 medium yellow onion, diced
  • 2 medium fennel bulbs, diced
  • 1 tbsp ground fennel seed
  • 2 tbsp chopped fresh thyme (or 2 tsp dried)
  • 10 Roma tomatoes
  • 6 to 8 cups vegetable stock
Instructions
  1. Soak beans in water overnight.
  2. Drain beans and place in a medium saucepan with two bay leaves. Cover with water and cook over medium heat until slightly tender, about 20 minutes. Reserve 1 cup of the cooking liquid. Drain beans and set aside.
  3. Boil water in a large pot. Core tomatoes and score bottoms with an x. Plunge tomatoes into the boiling water for about 30 seconds, then remove tomatoes and plunge into a bowl of ice water. Peel skins from tomatoes, then seed them and cut into pieces.
  4. Combine olive oil, onion, and fennel in a large pot. Cover pot and cook for about 15 minutes over medium heat to sweat the vegetables, stirring occasionally. When the onions are translucent, add garlic, fennel seed, and thyme. Cook one more minute, until garlic is fragrant.
  5. Add tomatoes and cook 20-30 minutes over medium heat, until tomatoes are falling apart. Add reserved bean liquid and 6 cups of the stock, bring to a boil, and simmer another 20 minutes over medium heat to bring the flavors together. Add more stock as needed.
  6. Add the beans, heat through, and season to taste with salt and pepper.
Notes
I used approximately half the amount of tomatoes called for, which resulted in a nice, brothy soup. I inadvertently used whole fennel seed rather than ground, which I don't recommend unless you like little chewy seeds in your soup. the original recipe calls for garnishing the soup with fresh fennel fronds and aioli, either of which would be nice, but aren't necessary.
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