Of Steak and Friendship

You're to come away at once, out of danger. I've got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Peyraguey which isn't a wine you've ever tasted, so don't pretend. It's heaven with strawberries.
~ Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

Now that I have posted that quote (ahh the memories of my junior year of college that it evokes!), it strikes me as being wonderfully suited to the text of an invitation for an impromptu summer soiree. I will have to start planning one right away! But that is for another post on another evening….

Last Wednesday, I had a few friends help me move a couch I had just purchased (a beautiful piece to help formalize my living room) and I thanked them by grilling some beautiful sirloin steaks and frying up some potatoes with rosemary and mushrooms in a red wine sauce.

I had planned on feeding them, but the date and the menu were impromptu. And I must say, that a thrown together, intimate supper with friends is so satisfying to the soul. Anyone who knows me has become familiar with the large, fun and at times boisterous parties (ranging from 40 attendees to over 100) that I have thrown or enjoy attending.

But I am a melancholic-phlegmatic introvert. “Small is beautiful.” Really. Can you truly enter into the mystery that is your friend if there are 39 to 99 other people needing to be attended to, fed or any of the other services a hostess renders?

No. The mystery and sacredness of friendship demand a respectful quiet. Time to listen, to contemplate the countenance of one’s friend and to enter into the expression they are sharing with you in that moment. To be heard is to be known and respected. And to be known and respected is to be loved.

How wonderful to be able to pick up the phone and say, I have steaks and the grill is fired up. Come on over and set a spell. And let us enter into the mystery of each other. For by doing so, we become better men and women.

Thank you for sharing a little of your mystery with me, my friends. I treasure you.

Oremus pro invicem,
~ Mikaela