{"id":1813,"date":"2014-03-02T17:33:06","date_gmt":"2014-03-02T22:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/?p=1813"},"modified":"2014-03-02T17:33:06","modified_gmt":"2014-03-02T22:33:06","slug":"five-hours-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/2014\/03\/02\/five-hours-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Hours Later…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DSC_3279\"<\/a>Hospitality is about\u2026the energy to give the time necessary to add a flourish to the ordinary events of life\u2026Dorothy Kelley Patterson<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

I am so blessed to have friends scattered throughout my \u201cterritory\u201d.\u00a0 Whenever I travel for business there is no better way to shake off the day than to be welcomed home to somewhere where a friend lives.\u00a0 It starts with the smell of something amazing on the stove, a hug, an \u201cI love you\u201d, a glass of wine and a seat at the table.<\/p>\n

When the catching up begins all the usual conversation ensues, the talk of work, their former work, the talk of fond memories of former colleagues, of grudges still held, the usual gossip and the grapevine\u2019s latest rumors. \u00a0All of which are just a prelude to the amazing thing on the stove finally coming to the table.<\/p>\n

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My friend George is becoming quite the chef, not cook, chef.\u00a0 He is developing a honed love of the process, the curiosity and palate required to cook with abandon.\u00a0 He hasn\u2019t moved off the recipe book yet but he is ever so close.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure his specialty will become comfort food.\u00a0 He speaks those words as if they were a gift to him from above.\u00a0 From what I can see, smell and taste he is but a moment away from being a dedicated resource for my future questions on the matter.<\/p>\n

The menu was simple on the surface, braised beef short ribs, creamy mashed potatoes, and steamed green beans.\u00a0 Beneath the surface was the complexity of seasoning, the brown of the fond and the hours required to bring perfection.\u00a0 It was an amazing meal which led us on to the subject of our favorite meal ever.\u00a0 You won\u2019t be surprised to know that I have a list\u2026just sayin.<\/p>\n

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My favorite meal ever was a fresh pork roast, butchered that morning on a farm in Ohio.\u00a0 I was the guest of a business client I was visiting several decades ago, their kindness in my being far from home wasn\u2019t just touching but so genuine.\u00a0 I truly believe they had a part in developing my joy and willingness to open my home and cook for anyone who walks in the door.<\/p>\n

The pork roast was accompanied by roasted carrots and potatoes pulled from the ground that same morning and cooked in the roasting pan with the pork.\u00a0 That\u2019s it.\u00a0 I could not stop eating.\u00a0 It was the most delicious meal I have ever had to this day and I\u2019m sure they are still talking about the city girl that acted as if she had never eaten before.\u00a0 At that moment I realized I really hadn\u2019t ever eaten before, certainly not food like that.<\/p>\n

As my friends shared their favorite meals I came to realize it isn\u2019t just about the food.\u00a0 Each of our stories had a story.\u00a0 The meals were delicious certainly but it also had much to do with the company, the circumstances, the locations, the feelings that went along with the meal like a very special sauce.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure if anyone of us had the opportunity to smell that meal again we would be flooded with the nostalgia of those moments, not just that meal itself.<\/p>\n

And so I\u2019m adding George\u2019s now famous beef short ribs, mashed potatoes and green beans, served with a wonderful Malbec (similar to the one used in the sauce) to my list of favorite meals.\u00a0 In addition to the wonderful comfort it brought it was shared with friends I love, in a warm and eclectic home that has been collected over time, at what I hope is the end of an extremely long and very frigid winter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cPonder well on this point: the pleasant hours of our life are all connected by a more or less tangible link, with some memory of the table.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Charles Pierre Monselet<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hospitality is about\u2026the energy to give the time necessary to add a flourish to the ordinary events of life\u2026Dorothy Kelley Patterson I am so blessed to have friends scattered throughout my \u201cterritory\u201d.\u00a0 Whenever I travel for business there is no … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[393,392,395,394,391,396],"class_list":["post-1813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pause-points","tag-beef-short-ribs","tag-best-meal-ever","tag-comfort-food","tag-cooking-with-abandon","tag-food-memories","tag-hospitalityl"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27hQ5-tf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1813"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1815,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1813\/revisions\/1815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}