It, in its truest form, is rare and ponderous - a mirror in which one can gauge the makings of oneself.
Friendship also provides wonderful insight into the varied differences which mark humanity. For example, do you run? Do you help? Do you laugh? Do you cry? Do you jump? Do you shield your eyes?
Friends come in many varieties, shapes and forms. They can pass into your lives for a season and move on, they can come and stay and change with you, or they can come and go like frost and warm fireside chats - here today, gone tomorrow, but back again next year.
Jennie and I have been blessed with a wide variety of friends, but some of our nearest and dearest (as the family well knows) are the Hatchers. We've known the Hatchers since the fall of 2004 and since that time we've, to put it simply, bonded. They're not our only friends, but there some of the very few who feel like family.
And family means a lot of things.
Family means celebrating and spats. Inside jokes and memories. Trips and tears. Triumphs and tantrums.
You drop and change plans for family.
Those of you to whom I am writing know this - I have all of this with you as well. And you, in turn, have similar friends - the Klewers, the Papas, the Hiatts, the Hannahs, etc. etc. etc.
Family also means you have history. A story. A timeline. You ask yourself if a favorite bit happened before or after you cried on each other's shoulder. And you smile (and cringe a bit) when you think back through the story.
I write all of this as a lead into another chapter into the Fights/Hatcher friendship. The Trial by Fire chapter. It was a time of laughter and, for a brief moment, a time in the crucible to see how you react to a moment of choice and how do you work with the aftermath - does grace factor into your real life?
In preparation for my review of Shauna Niequist's Bread and Wine, we prepared a full menu from the book's recipes. A main dish of Steak Au Poivre in a brandy cream sauce (both from the book) supplemented by a salad tossed in one of Shauna's dressings and roasted potatoes and finished with dark chocolate, sea salted toffee (also from the book). Four recipes in one meal, tried with our closest friends. What could possibly go wrong?
Now before you ask, we had opened both bottles of beer and wine to enjoy with the meal, but neither factored into the ensuing mayhem.
The evening started off with two attempts at the toffee. As anyone who has ever made candy can attest to, it's a challenge to make and work with candy. The proper temperature is everything. Shauna's recipe skips the candy thermometer altogether, a fact that both delighted and worried me.
The recipe itself is insanely simple. Dump in butter and sugar, heat, spread in a pan, cool, and top with melted dark chocolate and sea salt. My first attempt resulted in a crystallized candy that, while tasty, clearly was not toffee. After consulting with Jennie and Courtney, I made a second try and when I appeared to be going down the same path, Courtney jumped in and, between the two of us and some quick searching on the Internet, we saved the second batch from the fate of the first.
At this point, Courtney made the salad and, after we pressed in the requisite peppercorns, Adam moved onto grilling the steak (ignoring for the moment that, per the recipe, the steaks were to be cooked in a pan and the remnants were to be utilized in the cream sauce). Adam returned with grilled steak and Courtney moved to finish the preparations by preparing the sauce.
At another time, I may expound upon the evening, but for now, I will let the pictures speak for themselves with a minimal introduction.
1) We love Adam, but he did smoke the Steak Au Poivre (not suggested);
2) When viewing the below, remember that three of us would not have pulled the trigger and one of us abides by the better-safe-than-sorry motto;
3) We cleaned well into the night, though we were blessed to have the salad, the wine, the steak and the potatoes either covered, in another room or in the oven;
4) This evening is up there with the time the four of us were sharing a hotel room at a friend's wedding and Adam briefly thought he had forgotten to upload his bar exam to the Georgia bar examiners. The moment of fear left Jennie and I caught in no man's land and Adam fearful for his life, before Adam located the glorious confirmation that he had, in fact, completed the upload in a timely fashion; and
5) Memories are made from nights like this.
And because the Lord is good ....
