there's food at home

wherever the heart is

I was in Los Angeles this weekend, taking a mini vacation to see two of my childhood friends. I can’t recall when we reconnected in adulthood, but for a few years now, we’ve made the effort to see each other wherever our lives have taken us.

Before I left San Francisco, they came to visit and we brought my favorite ice cream sandwiches to a picnic by Ocean Beach. For a while, we anchored to Chicago, where one friend was finishing her PhD. We’d always put in an order at the same Indian restaurant as soon as she picked us up from the airport, running through an exact list of items I have saved in a note on my phone.

Now that she’s graduated, with a degree and a job that pays a real salary, as she says, we’ve started rotating who hosts. The two of them came to visit me for my 30th birthday party, where we drank way too much natural wine and ate pizza and fell asleep in my living room. In LA, we did wellness shots from Erewhon and cast my friend’s Hinge profile to the television. It was so silly but when she ran out of swipes, I Venmoed her $20 to get a premium account for the month so we could keep going.

Whenever we’re visiting each other, there’s a feeling of being at home without the usual flourishes of hosting. Of course, my friends are generous with their time and space, but there’s a sense of welcome that transcends being a guest. There’s no real pressure to craft an agenda, to entertain or to be perfectly gracious.

I feel it most in how the way we eat on these trips has evolved. At some point, we began to use each others’ kitchens like they were our own. It started with heating up takeout from the fridge whenever we got hungry, without having to ask where the plates were. One time when I passed through LA on a road trip and needed a place to do some laundry, my friend suggested we make dinner together while I stayed with her. I stopped by Whole Foods on my way to her house, picking up pork shoulder steaks and cucumbers and arriving just in time to grill before it got too dark.

This past weekend, we made air fryer chicken cutlets, brownies and honeynut squash cornbread over the course of the four days we were there. We ate dinner on the couch while watching reality TV, passed around a pint of ice cream with one spoon and scooped up cornbread directly from the pan without bothering to cut it properly into slices.

The coziness of it all reminded me of being teenagers and growing up with them. These are the girls who learned to play the flute with me in sixth grade, who I fought with and made up with on long bus rides to band competitions and math tournaments, whose moms made us curry puffs and other snacks that I still think about to this day. What a joy to become grown women together.

On Saturday, we made plans to go on a hike near Griffith Observatory and go out for dinner and drinks later that night. But we ran behind schedule, sitting in the sun talking about how our friendships and relationships have endured and changed and evolved. We ate lunch at this Thai place much later than anticipated, and left feeling too full to for a sit-down dinner a few short hours later. The night before, we had made Marcella Hazan’s tomato butter sauce and had to pack away half a pot full of extra pasta. We decided to skip dinner out — if we got hungry, there was plenty of food at home.

xx,

Annie

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home goods

I’m traveling quite a bit this month, and a little anxious about how to keep this newsletter full and relevant when I’m not doing that much cooking. My default is to curate lists of good tidbits, fun recipes and other recommendations, but if there’s anything that would be interesting, please sound off in the comments!

This week, here’s a list of everything fun we came up with in LA:

• Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce — She’s an icon for a reason. This recipe makes such a cozy bowl of pasta. I’ve always heard this described in the marinara-adjacent category, but my friend pointed out that it’s more like buttered noodles with tomato. I’d maybe use less butter if I made it again, but it was delicious.

• Air fryer cutlets — In Carla Lalli Music’s second cookbook, she directs people to use chicken thighs instead of breasts for cutlets. I am a huge proponent of this. My friend’s riff on cutlets uses honey and dijon mustard in place of the egg as a binder for the panko, a trick I will be incorporating into future cutlets. Spray with oil and air fry seven minutes on each side at 370 degrees Fahrenheit.

• Brownies — I either was in the shower or asleep on the couch when these were made, but they were very satisfying with one of McConnell’s special edition California ice creams. Those involved in the actual making say they were indeed quick and easy, but make thin brownies and could use a smaller pan if you’d like something thicker.

• Squash cornbread — I’ve sang this recipe’s praises before. This time, we went through the effort of roasting the honeynut squash rather than using the shortcut can puree. I think I could taste a difference. It came out much richer than when I used the canned stuff.

• And finally — If you’re ever stuck on what to say to a Hinge match, might I recommend replying to any photo in their profile with a cat, horse, dog, small child or fabulous grandma with the phrase “Who is this DIVA!!!”