Brownies, Bridget Jones, and Boys

Today I woke up at 6:30 (for no good reason other than that my body is a puritanically early riser) and after battling against consciousness for a few militant minutes, surrendered to the day and went down stairs to make some tea. An early morning “cuppa,” while still enveloped in a dressing gown and sporting eccentric bed hair, is one of my favorite moments of the day. And this morning was particularly scrumptious as I had the pleasant work of figuring out what to make for my third feast, coming up tomorrow evening. It is going to be a farewell meal and Girls Night for one of my dearest friends, Aleah, as she is heading off next week with her boyfriend to spent the next six months or so in Amsterdam (lucky buggers.)

Girls Night has become an institution among my Seattle friends and I. It all began in the rollercoaster years of high school, when we would ban all testosterone for an evening each week, watch goofy romantic comedies, paint our nails, compare notes on boys, sex, and love, and eat copious quantities of brownies with whipped cream.

This ritual was a balm for me, a haven of secretive femininity in which we all dared to confess our gravest sins and giggle over our silliest escapades. There was a unique dynamic created, in that space of undiluted feminine, one that wove between the therapeutic and the gleefully silly, yet was always supremely nourishing.

Over the years our evenings have often gone into hibernation, as we have all been sprinkled across the globe at different times and variously absorbed in our own lives. Yet Girls Nights still happen, more of a marking of passages now, than a weekly ritual. We’ll have one when someone’s leaving or returning, when a lot of shit slaps one of us across the face, during brake ups to sooth wounds, or when someone’s got a new guy and we want all the juicy details. As for tomorrow, I’m sure it won’t be the last Girls Night, but it’ll be bitter sweet nonetheless.

And so, as I leaf through recipe books this morning, I’m looking for something as warm and round and encircling as these evenings have always been for me. . . . Something communal and summery . . . I’m thinking a big skillet of seafood paella and a leafy green salad, some albariño wine and stewed peaches for dessert. We’ve come a long way from brownies and whipped cream, gastronomically at least.