Monday the Thirteenth

It's Monday the thirteenth, a week past the full moon. A little magic is in order.
Remember the box of goodies my friend Rachel sent me? Sure you do - she's the insanely talented poet over at The Waxing Moon, my friend in the Yukon, a woman I've never met but love like a sister.

Anyway.

Last Monday, as I was preparing for my trip to Texas, I had the Black Hat Society over for dinner and gossip. I haven't seen them in a while, and I missed them...and I was baking bread and they love to take it home, so we're a perfect fit.

Since it was already a baking day, I decided to make dinner for everyone, too. I had a few veggies to use up, and some corkscrew pasta left over from the pasta salad I made for the trip. I chopped up a zucchini, a yellow squash, and some asparagus lurking in the vegetable drawer and sauteed them in olive oil with chopped garlic and onion. I added some leftover green beans I'd steamed the night before (now chopped) and a can of organic, chopped tomatoes with garlic, basil and oregano, and let it simmer until the vegetables were just cooked. In went the already cooked pasta. Dinner was served...with a little grated cheddar cheese over the top of each bowl to give it a little extra zip. Yum!

I wanted something special for dessert...a celebration, of sorts. What were we celebrating? Friendship, mostly, and anticipation, and happiness.

What better way to celebrate friends than with chocolate? I had been saving the Lunatic bar for...something...and I decided we should share it.

We sat in a circle in the kitchen - smelling bread as it baked, laughing, listening to our children play - and shared the chocolate, savoring each bite, three women, three mothers, three friends, so different and yet...united by love, happy to be just where we were in that moment. The fourth woman was there in spirit, if not in body. Thanks, Rachel.

Kitchen witchery at its finest...