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“Seasons Greetings” from Far Away

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A little ahead of Christmas, I send Mr. Faraway a package, containing a card, the birthday gift I never gave him, and a scarf I had knit for him the Christmas before, but couldn’t finish in time. It goes out in the mail the same day as several other packages, and though I receive messages that those have arrived at their various destinations, I only know his package has arrived by checking the tracking number.

I message him on Facebook, the day after Christmas, wishing him a happy Boxing Day, and receive a quick reply: The same to you and yours. A beautiful scarf, thank you so much. Hope you have a great Friday.

Then he’s off for a day’s sightseeing.

It doesn’t take long for me to see who he’s sightseeing with, because she tags him in pictures, and he mentions the fact that he’s on a date or part of a couple in every Yelp review he posts.

A Christmas card arrives a few days into the New Year. The front of the card says Merry Christmas!! above a photo, and “Season’s Greetings”  below, in quotation marks as though it’s intended ironically. Inside the card is the key I had given him, mailed to the home whose door it opens, and an overly effusive thank you note, punctuated exclusively with exclamation marks. He wishes me laughter and joy! He loved the gifts!

I tuck the card away and put the key back into its drawer.

A few weeks later, The Child announces she no longer wants to participate in the children’s group that he and I both sit on the Board of – it’s too much work and not enough fun, she says.  I see her point, and decide to give him one last gift: our resignations. I call Mr. Faraway and let him know; we’re backing out of the Nominating Committee he chairs, she won’t be their next president after all.

He responds with the same effusive cheer as his card. Well, okay! Thanks for letting me know!

We’ll have no reason to see each other, now, not counting things like Facebook, where we’re still officially friends – but then, I’m officially friends with a lot of people I don’t really know, online.

 

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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Two Roads Diverge, Part 5

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After I send the email, I drive to The Child’s school, and she asks if we can go to the Old Drive-In and get burgers, so we do, and eat them, parked in the car, listening to Buddy Holly piped in overhead and sharing the extra french fries in the cupholder between us. I listen to her day at school, and how one of the boys thinks she’s awesome because she loves shoes and Lord of the Rings, and most girls like one or the other but not both and he was like Mind, Blown.

After she’s done with her news, I let her know that Mr. Faraway and I broke up, but I expect we’ll stay friends.

I will miss the flowers he brought, she says. It was so romantic.

It was, I say. I’ll miss them too.

She wants to know if I’ll ever get married again, and I tell her, No. This bothers her, but not me.

I’ll probably date again, I tell her. But I won’t get married.

Don’t go on Match again, she says.

I laugh, well, maybe just for entertainment, but not for real.

As we drive home, we pass a yard sale, and The Child insists, we have to stop, we have to see what they have. A lot, as it turns out: it’s an older couple, downsizing for a move into a retirement home. There are hair irons for the child and an extra colander for me and a fantastic 1960’s giant plastic lighted black cat that I simply have to have. There are piles of vintage cookbooks, and as The Child asks questions about slide viewers, I go through them all. There are several by an author I am familiar with, and though I have one of her cookbooks on my Wish List, that particular book isn’t here, so we settle up the bill and move on.

 

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