‘Round midnight last night, I was sitting on my porch steps after washing the dishes for two and a half hours.  My husband Kenneth and I had our friends over for dinner.  Kenneth is a chef, so here's what we had:

1. Heart of Romaine with anchovies
2. Roasted beet salad with oranges and slices of manchego cheese on top
3. Barbecued squid salad with fennel, arugula, roasted pine nuts and two kinds of beans, garbanzo and white
4. Wild salmon with salsa verde
5. Barbecued ribs
6. Roasted artichokes, potatoes, garlic, and cipollini onions
7. Salt cod and flat bread
8. Barbecued prawns in a green bean salad with apple
9. Sauteed broccoli rabe with chili flakes

It was delicious.  I'm sure I'm forgetting a few ingredients.  Chipotle was in there somewhere, I think.  One of our guests was Pepper who is not quite two-years-old.  She ate everything.  Her parents have fed her adult food since she was tiny, pureeing it instead of feeding her the mush from the baby food jars.  Pepper is a toddler gourmand.  To avoid facing the mountain of dishes, Pepper and I played in the closet with my shoes.  She tried on every pair and liked my green high heels the best.  She clomped around the kitchen with me while I tried to make order out of chaos.

When everyone left, I sat on the porch steps, feeling that good feeling after feeding your guests well and having a great time together.  The weather was gorgeous last night, no fog, warm, and we ate outside at the patio table, sitting there for hours, talking and laughing, enjoying the tastes of the earth, each other, life.  Before I met Kenneth, I stood at the sink eating my sink meals alone.  It's amazing to me, the changes.  Even after fifteen years of this heart and soul and body nutrition, I am so thankful.

Makes me think of these lines from Gerald Stern's poem, "Lucky Life":

Lucky life isn't one long string of horrors
and there are moments of peace, and pleasure, as I lie in between the blows.

*

And here is the last stanza of the poem:

Lucky life is like this. Lucky there is an ocean to come to.
Lucky you can judge yourself in this water.
Lucky you can be purified over and over again.
Lucky there is the same cleanliness for everyone.
Lucky life is like that. Lucky life. Oh lucky life.
Oh lucky lucky life.