Gochujang and Carrot Soup and The Anatomy Of Friendship.

Hey Reader,

If you're new here, you're probably interested in This Week's Recipe Inspo: Gochujang and Carrot Soup. If so, scroll on down towards the middle and you'll find it. Otherwise, the beginning of this email will include my weekly musings on this or that--today, we're talking about The Anatomy of Friendship, which includes a new Korean Vegan Podcast episode with my dear friend, Nabiha Basathia.

But if you're really only interested in the recipes, I get that. Click here and from this point forward, you will ONLY get the recipes on Thursdays, with my Weekly Recipe Roundups!

Otherwise, read more for a short discussion on what it takes to build and maintain sustainable friendships.

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about The Friend Breakup and it sparked a lot of conversation. There are literally over a thousand comments beneath my various social media posts, and I have since received hundreds of DMs from people wanting to share their story.

In sum, the discussion struck a nerve.

I thus concluded that this topic merited further consideration. But in lieu of just talking to myself, I asked my friend, Nabiha, to join me for a chat and new podcast episode. Nabiha is not only studying to become a licensed therapist, she is also someone I consider to be an "expert" in friendship. She’s one of those women who has cultivated an array of strong platonic relationships, including one with a friend with whom she speaks every single day, a woman who has been in her life since childhood.

I, on the other hand, consider myself a relative neophyte when it comes to friendship. I don’t have any friends from my childhood. I don’t speak with anyone I’ve known since even college. The people I consider to be my friends today? Well, they’re mostly people I’ve only just gotten to know in the past decade or so.

I thus start this conversation on The Anatomy of Friendship with a fairly simple question: "What are the crucial organs of a friendship?"

As you'll hear, Nabiha and I cover a wide range of issues related to friendship and I even fold into our chat some of the thoughts from those generous enough to share their own stories in my comments. Our discussion went long, so long, in fact, that I'll be sharing it in parts.

Today, I invite you to listen to Part 1: Platonic Intimacy.

This Week's Recipe Inspo.

Gochujang & Carrot Soup.

Did You Get My Free Ebook?

Just in case you missed it, I created a FREE EBOOK containing Seven Spectacular Sides for the Holidays. If you haven't downloaded it yet, here's your chance!

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What I'm...

Watching. HOLY MOLEY we LOVED Black Doves!! A British spy show, a la Slow Horses, starring the brilliant Keira Knightley. With only 6 episodes, we were able to finish it up quite tidily in just 3 days. It is a TRIP from the first moment and it is as HILARIOUS as it is thrilling, so buckle up!! WATCH NOW

Reading. I just finished reading The Stranger Beside Me and it was SO good I'm going to keep it in the What I'm Reading section. It's quite long (over 500 pages) but it is absolutely riveting. Ann Rule is a master storyteller and often heralded as the "mother" of the true crime genre, as we know it. Her personal relationship with Ted Bundy--one that existed before she knew he was who he was--is nothing short of jaw-dropping. READ NOW

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2024 Holiday Gift Guide is Here!

"Great list and I really appreciate how well you’ve organized it and described everything." - Michelle

Parting Thoughts.

My lit agent, the wonderful Charlie, tasked me with writing a second chapter to include in the book proposal for the memoir that I'm currently working on. Over the past week, I've been reconnecting with a younger version of myself by diving into my diaries and journals. I've kept a diary of some kind since I was in 5th grade. I suppose I'm lucky to have these things to help me anchor the stories I intend to share. But, I've found myself, more often than I would like to admit, quite surprised at how poorly I'd remembered the events of my childhood, or even young adulthood. It's amazing how certain we grow, over time, of the gloss we put on the stories we tell.

"The story you tell" has been a phrase my husband and I have discussed a lot in the last several months: Be careful of the story you tell. We had an interesting chat with a friend of ours over dinner. That friend, a very good friend, cautioned that the stories we tell can be powerful. They can propel us in directions that frighten us, or they can define us and even prevent us from ever moving forward.

Are you a victim in your story?

Are you the hero in your story?

Are you the villain in your story?

I must confess that I don't like the girl in the journals I've been reviewing. I may even hate her, at times. She is selfish, immature, and colossally stupid in certain situations. She is so, so weak. Were I to answer the question, who are you in these stories?, I'd have to say,

"An idiot."

I know I sound uncharitable, especially given that the person in these diaries is 14, 15, 25, 26 years old. But the feeling--the visceral loathing--I had while reading my own writings... it was so deep, so thorny, it made me want to hide from myself. Which, let me tell you, is not ideal when you're trying to write a memoir!

I shared some of my deepest fears, the things I hated most about my story, with Anthony. These are things I've never said out loud, even to my very expensive therapist. He didn't flinch. In fact, I daresay we loved each other more at the end of all my ugly revelations.

Honesty is profoundly difficult, partly because we spend so much effort burying hard truths, those things we cannot face in ourselves. Luckily, though, we have each other as mirrors when introspection becomes too scary, too painful. And while mirrors can never offer a total and complete reflection of who we are, they can give us the courage to dive back in and pursue the trail, the one that does lead to those hard truths. Until the story we tell is the story we lived.

Wishing you all the best,