What a weekend! Friday evening and Saturday morning with amazing friends, and a Sunday cooking up Hatch ideas! I was in seventh heaven on Sunday night and didn't particularly look forward to returning to work on Monday.
How many of you can say you have a lifelong friend? I mean....really lifelong? Some of you, maybe, I'm sure, but not many. I am one of the lucky ones.
Lynn (pictured) and I have been friends since we were two years old. Our dads worked together at Humble Oil and Refining (now ExxonMobil), and our moms were pregnant with our younger siblings at the same time. Lynn and I were bestest, best friends; we were in the same first grade class.
Our families moved to Houston together, but they only stayed a year and moved to New Orleans. We kept in touch via snail mail (remember that?) over the next few years.
When my grandmother asked where I wanted to go on my seventh-grade trip, I hesitated not a bit. "New Orleans!" Grandmama looked somewhat surprised (not your typical seventh-grader's travel request, after all), so I explained why.
A few weeks before our trip, Lynn's father died in a tragic accident. The family moved to Scottsdale shortly thereafter; I never did get to see her. I enjoyed the trip, but the soul had gone out of it.
We saw each other a few times over the years, and I asked her to be a bridesmaid. The older we got, the longer it went between visits. She last visited over 15 years ago when we were in Virginia. Then we kinda lost touch.
When she found me a couple of years ago on Facebook, I cried and cried. We re-established contact and invited each other to visit when in town (she's in Colorado). And lo and behold, she visited San Antonio.
The best thing about lifelong friends is how easily you slip back into conversation, even after all the years. We had a great time catching up with each other.
We all enjoyed a fabulous dinner at Tre Trattoria (@tretrattoria). You definitely want to go with friends and order several dishes to share. They aren't "small plates" (like Bin555), but the dishes are meant to be passed around the table. The entrees come in both small (two servings) and large (four servings) sizes. We devoured a chef's market salad with black cherries, cannellini beans, asparagus, and wagyu meatballs with house-made pasta. The sweet onion sformato (sort of like a souffle, but not as airy) tasted smoky and fresh. We were simply all too full for dessert.
Lynn and I both promised each other that it won't be 15 years before our next visit!
The very next morning, our friends Shauna and Mike arrived bright and early at 7:30 am so we could enjoy watching a stage of the Tour de France. We had the TV, Mike's iPad, Shauna's iPhone, and my laptop all tuned into the action. Although the stage was not as decisive as expected, we still had a great time sharing all the hilarious comments on the various feeds. (From Twitter: "Confirmed: Jens Voight crashes on the descent; mountain suffers a broken collarbone." He was fine.)
Since he doesn't really care about the Tour, Bruce agreed to fix us a fabulous breakast (pictured). Cheesy grits with peppers, salmon croquettes, poached eggs, and hollandaise sauce, accompanied by an asparagus salad with vinaigrette and goat cheese toast. The acidity of the asparagus salad perfectly offset the richness of the salmon and eggs.
This is definitely another date next year!
And our Hatch experiments? Well, you'll just have to wait for a report on that one. :-) Everything is still top-secret.
I am truly blessed to have such great friends. They have made all the difference in getting through this challenging summer (see my other blog, Mighty Marine Mom), and I love them dearly.
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