Grieving

I lost an old friend this week.  She and I weren't best friends or anything.  In fact, we'd lost touch a bit after high school... but I stayed connected through family and church.  And though our lives took different tracks that lead us apart, she always maintained that true beauty of heart, body, and spirit. She will be DEEPLY missed.

Sorry for the train analogy there.  Gavin's currently building a train track in the sunroom and keeps showing off his additions and improvements.  Guess I have trains on the brain now!

Anyway, it's been hard to stay focused this week.  And you're probably wondering what my grieving process has to do with a food blog.  In the almost-year since I started this blog, I've tried really hard to keep my focus on food.  I don't want this to become a mommy blog, a garden blog, a crafty blog or a bitching blog.  Nothing against any of those kinds of blogs!!  I follow a number of them myself, but I wanted to keep this one about food.

But where there's food, there's emotion.  I enjoy sprinkling in my little stories, anecdotes, observations, and notations among my recipes.  I cook because the act of cooking is soothing to me.  I cook because the smells are like my aromatherapy.  I cook because certain flavors, certain recipes, remind me of things, people, and places.  I cook, not so much to make others happy (although that's a fantastic perk!), but to make ME happy.

In situations like this, where the sadness threatens to overcome, I figure I have three options. I can make one of my mom's recipes, make soup, or bake something.  Tonight, I'm making soup.  Tomorrow morning I'll be baking.  And I have pretty good feeling that my mom's lasagna will make it onto the table in the next few days.  Because this is how I work through my pain.  Through the creation of wonderful, comforting smells and tastes, I will be able to get past the sad and remember the loving, happy, beautiful soul that my friend was, and always will be.