Friends and Feasts, Cheese and Cake
Friendships are like cheese. My favourite cheese is Crackerbarrel, it's $6.00 which is pretty pricey compared to the generic cheese you can buy for $3.50 in a bag all shredded and ready to go.
But when you shred that Crackerbarrel cheese over my Mum's spaghetti bolonaise - it's freaking amazing and I'm not thinking about how much it costs but how good it tastes.
Any one you consider as a friend is like cheese and being with them should leave a good taste in your mouth.
The reason why I associate friends with cheese is that there are different kinds of friends and different kinds of cheese.
You can get blue cheese. You can get blue friends.
You can get shredded cheese. You can get shredded friends.
You can get holey cheese and holy friends.
You can get stinky cheese and stinky friends.
You can get Camembert. You can get classy friends!
I love cheese. I love the cheese platter at parties and how they compliment the glass of Moscato in my hand. I love sharing a cheese platter with my friends and in particular, with the friendships that I built in the last six months. Let me take you back to early September last year, I was frolicking in the waves at the Spit with *Victoria. When we were not screeching about how cold the water was or splashing each other, we were talking about life and in particular, our friendships - the friendships that had left us scarred and how we were afraid to let other people come into our lives and be treated the same way. We realised then and there that the way we perceived friendships needed to change and the right people would come into our lives. In my case, the right people were already in my life - I just had to open my heart a little wider. While I was hanging out with Jess and Hannah one night we made vision boards with all the things we wanted to achieve in our lives.
One of mine was 'Friends and Feasts" I cut a picture of some really delicious food and pasted it onto the pink piece of cardboard, not thinking that this dream would become a reality sooner than I thought.
Fast forward six months, I am happy to say that I have friends that I can reach out to whether it's pay-week or not. I can count on these friends to uplift me, to remind me that I have the strength and the smarts to do anything I want to accomplish, whether I'm dressed to the nines or in my Minnie Mouse pj's, whether my headspace is clear or cluttered, whether I am on fire or in ashes - these friends have shown me that true friendship survives and surpasses the ups and downs of life.
We all need an Aileen to text us on any given day to ask how we are.
We all need a Rachel to tell us how it is with love and sincerity.
We all need a Jess to tell us to go and change because she is never wrong when it comes to finding the right dress, at the right price and the right accessories!
We all need a Sky to tell us things from a different point of view that we would not have thought of.
We all need a Sarah to listen with a grin on her face and jump into conversations with enthusiasm and a story of her own.
We all need a Claire to keep it real, honest and authentic.
We all need a *Victoria who wants us to do our best and be happy and doesn't take our B.S.
We all need a *Cassandra who believes in the best of us even when we don't.
I have a story to tell about what happened last weekend - it was Alan's 34th party and I was anxious and hopeful for it to be a success because it was the first party at home he would have since the age of eighteen. I made an ol' faithful packet-mix cake that Alan had picked out for me - it was caramel flavoured and the mixture tasted freaking amazing (I checked this a couple of times and forgot to let the birthday boy lick the wooden spoon, much to his annoyance.)
So I poured the mixture into a pan and popped it into the oven, cleaned up the kitchen and went to shower before the guests arrived. 45 minutes later, I return to take the cake out of the oven and put it onto the cooling rack.
Thirty minutes later - I come back to ice the cake. The cake is stuck to the inside of the pan, it turns out in my hurry I forgot to oil the pan...
I run a blunt knife around the edge of the cake a couple of times and most of the cake comes out but some fragments fall off. I go into save-the-birthday-cake mode, I once watched my friend Rachel make a birthday cake, shaping it into an ice-cream cone with a lot of slicing and reconstructing with icing. I tried to adopt this theory and it worked...sort of...
So the good news is the cake and the icing tasted amazing. The bad news is it looked dreadful and I was afraid to serve it. I went to get Alan and showed him the cake, he said it smelled good and it would be all right. Easy for him to say, he wouldn't be the one judged on his baking skills!
Then Jess and her partner Alan came and had a look at the cake.
"It looks like shit but it tastes good." I informed them.
"At least you can own it. Good on you!" Alan said and the three of us laughed.
It turns out the cake was a success, for what it lacked in aesthetics it made up for with flavour - Sky had two pieces.
So with that particular episode, I learnt that true friends will laugh with you - not at you, they will eat that gooey, green mess and say "Thanks for a great night, babe. You did an amazing job!'
Genuine friendships like these are precious and bring healing and joy to the soul.
I consider myself very fortunate and blessed to have met these beautiful people and they are the kind of friendships that last not just a season, but a life-time. I know this because not everyone will laugh and eat a cake that looks like it fell apart and pasted back together with green slime, then give kudos for flavour.
These friendships are not just linked together as a group, but as a community as well.
Everyone looks out for each other, no one is the odd-man-out, no one is trying tear each other down - there is a genuine love, acceptance and peace that is passed around through every kind word and hug.
For those of you who are afraid to open your hearts to new friends.
You've learned what you've learned, you know what you know.
One of the first things we learn as a child is to be a good friend. Remember when you were looking for your first friend and who you hoped they would be for you and be willing to be the same for them.
In conclusion, our lives are enriched by the friends who can help turn an ordinary day into an extraordinary one, a bad day a more tolerable one.
You would be surprised who they might be. You may have spent time with them or you haven't, they could be friends of friends or co-workers - every friend that we have ever met started as a stranger.
- Sarah x
But when you shred that Crackerbarrel cheese over my Mum's spaghetti bolonaise - it's freaking amazing and I'm not thinking about how much it costs but how good it tastes.
Any one you consider as a friend is like cheese and being with them should leave a good taste in your mouth.
The reason why I associate friends with cheese is that there are different kinds of friends and different kinds of cheese.
You can get blue cheese. You can get blue friends.
You can get shredded cheese. You can get shredded friends.
You can get holey cheese and holy friends.
You can get stinky cheese and stinky friends.
You can get Camembert. You can get classy friends!
I love cheese. I love the cheese platter at parties and how they compliment the glass of Moscato in my hand. I love sharing a cheese platter with my friends and in particular, with the friendships that I built in the last six months. Let me take you back to early September last year, I was frolicking in the waves at the Spit with *Victoria. When we were not screeching about how cold the water was or splashing each other, we were talking about life and in particular, our friendships - the friendships that had left us scarred and how we were afraid to let other people come into our lives and be treated the same way. We realised then and there that the way we perceived friendships needed to change and the right people would come into our lives. In my case, the right people were already in my life - I just had to open my heart a little wider. While I was hanging out with Jess and Hannah one night we made vision boards with all the things we wanted to achieve in our lives.
One of mine was 'Friends and Feasts" I cut a picture of some really delicious food and pasted it onto the pink piece of cardboard, not thinking that this dream would become a reality sooner than I thought.
Fast forward six months, I am happy to say that I have friends that I can reach out to whether it's pay-week or not. I can count on these friends to uplift me, to remind me that I have the strength and the smarts to do anything I want to accomplish, whether I'm dressed to the nines or in my Minnie Mouse pj's, whether my headspace is clear or cluttered, whether I am on fire or in ashes - these friends have shown me that true friendship survives and surpasses the ups and downs of life.
We all need an Aileen to text us on any given day to ask how we are.
We all need a Rachel to tell us how it is with love and sincerity.
We all need a Jess to tell us to go and change because she is never wrong when it comes to finding the right dress, at the right price and the right accessories!
We all need a Sky to tell us things from a different point of view that we would not have thought of.
We all need a Sarah to listen with a grin on her face and jump into conversations with enthusiasm and a story of her own.
We all need a Claire to keep it real, honest and authentic.
We all need a *Victoria who wants us to do our best and be happy and doesn't take our B.S.
We all need a *Cassandra who believes in the best of us even when we don't.
I have a story to tell about what happened last weekend - it was Alan's 34th party and I was anxious and hopeful for it to be a success because it was the first party at home he would have since the age of eighteen. I made an ol' faithful packet-mix cake that Alan had picked out for me - it was caramel flavoured and the mixture tasted freaking amazing (I checked this a couple of times and forgot to let the birthday boy lick the wooden spoon, much to his annoyance.)
So I poured the mixture into a pan and popped it into the oven, cleaned up the kitchen and went to shower before the guests arrived. 45 minutes later, I return to take the cake out of the oven and put it onto the cooling rack.
Thirty minutes later - I come back to ice the cake. The cake is stuck to the inside of the pan, it turns out in my hurry I forgot to oil the pan...
I run a blunt knife around the edge of the cake a couple of times and most of the cake comes out but some fragments fall off. I go into save-the-birthday-cake mode, I once watched my friend Rachel make a birthday cake, shaping it into an ice-cream cone with a lot of slicing and reconstructing with icing. I tried to adopt this theory and it worked...sort of...
So the good news is the cake and the icing tasted amazing. The bad news is it looked dreadful and I was afraid to serve it. I went to get Alan and showed him the cake, he said it smelled good and it would be all right. Easy for him to say, he wouldn't be the one judged on his baking skills!
Then Jess and her partner Alan came and had a look at the cake.
"It looks like shit but it tastes good." I informed them.
"At least you can own it. Good on you!" Alan said and the three of us laughed.
It turns out the cake was a success, for what it lacked in aesthetics it made up for with flavour - Sky had two pieces.
So with that particular episode, I learnt that true friends will laugh with you - not at you, they will eat that gooey, green mess and say "Thanks for a great night, babe. You did an amazing job!'
Genuine friendships like these are precious and bring healing and joy to the soul.
I consider myself very fortunate and blessed to have met these beautiful people and they are the kind of friendships that last not just a season, but a life-time. I know this because not everyone will laugh and eat a cake that looks like it fell apart and pasted back together with green slime, then give kudos for flavour.
These friendships are not just linked together as a group, but as a community as well.
Everyone looks out for each other, no one is the odd-man-out, no one is trying tear each other down - there is a genuine love, acceptance and peace that is passed around through every kind word and hug.
For those of you who are afraid to open your hearts to new friends.
You've learned what you've learned, you know what you know.
One of the first things we learn as a child is to be a good friend. Remember when you were looking for your first friend and who you hoped they would be for you and be willing to be the same for them.
In conclusion, our lives are enriched by the friends who can help turn an ordinary day into an extraordinary one, a bad day a more tolerable one.
You would be surprised who they might be. You may have spent time with them or you haven't, they could be friends of friends or co-workers - every friend that we have ever met started as a stranger.
- Sarah x
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